It’s Not Too Early to Pay Attention to Polls

Nate Cohn and Josh Katz: “The conventional wisdom holds that at this stage the so-called fundamentals of a race, like the partisanship of a state and incumbency, are more predictive than the polls. That assumption is based on data from presidential election cycles, but political scientists have not found, to our knowledge, any analogous research in Senate elections.”

“An analysis of Senate contests since 1992 suggests, surprising as it may seem, that polls are at least as accurate as the fundamentals at this point in the cycle. That’s because the fundamentals influencing Senate elections are already shaping public opinion.”

Listen to our new conversation with Cohn about The Upshot/NYT Senate forecasting model, LEO.