US Midterms — SMI Trends

(Below is a partial excerpt from a previously published report on using SMI to forecast US Midterms)

Social Media Influence (SMI) forecasts have the Republicans ahead in the House.  SMI puts this week’s results at Democrats with 214 seats to Republicans with 221 seats.  Approaching election-day, Republicans should be near their strongest position and with positive momentum.

SMI forecasts had consistently been in the range of 221 to 235 seats for the Democrats (218 needed for majority), which more or less coincided with the general consensus.  This was the case until the last two weeks, when SMI forecasts basically inverted.

Even before the recent forecast inversion, Republicans were benefiting from news flow.  Though they were not able to gain a lead, Republicans made considerable headway based on SMI during the Kavanaugh Hearing and when the Caravan first formed.  When these items left center-stage, however, SMI returned to providing the Democrats with a solid advantage.

It seemed as though the default was for the Democrats to win a slight majority in the House, which was put into jeopardy each time a controversial news topic appeared that had the potential to stir the Republican base.  These hit social media with force but with apparent little staying power as SMI would snap back once the media switched focus.

Immigration has retaken center stage in the last two weeks with multiple headlines.  Trump sending more troops to the border, an apparent second caravan forming, and Trump announcing a potential executive order to nullify birthright citizenship have hit more or less at the same time.  These news items escalate the immigration debate with less than a week to go.  As there are multiple immigration-related topics occurring simultaneously, this current SMI surge could last longer than the previous ones.

One of the main reasons why such items are important for Midterms is that they are apt to influence turnout, which normally declines dramatically in Midterms as compared to Presidential Elections.  So any shift can have outsized impact.  What we see in SMI is that the current news items appear to be stirring the Republican base more than that of the Democrats.  In close races, this is bound to make a difference.

The fact that this surge for Republicans is so late does tend to dampen the potential impact.  SMI has tended to work well as a leading indicator, so there is a question of how much will be transferred to votes as this surge has occurred within a few weeks of voting.

The development of SMI forecasts can be viewed in the following table.

Table 2:  Social Media Influence (SMI) forecast of number of seats by party, 2018 US Midterms, from July to November 2018

Source:  ZettaCap

Democrats had a dominating lead according to SMI in July and August.  In September, SMI showed that for the first time the Democrat’s dominant position weakened due to the Kavanaugh Hearing.  Though not apparent in the summarized monthly figures in the table, daily data shows a considerable spike, but not enough to provide the Republicans the SMI lead.

The resurgence of the immigration debate during October made a more significant impact, erasing almost all of the Democrat’s advantage.  It was only in very late October and early November however that SMI inverted to show Republicans in the lead, as the immigration debate intensified.