ELECTION RESULTS

There is one reason to expect the Democrats will do better than anyone expects right now.

Cell phones.

There is also a reason to expect that things will be as bad as the super-rich hope for.

Young voters.

Young voters don't have land lines or answer them when they ring. They have cell phones, and they use them to talk and text and play goofy games while they are waiting for the bus to arrive or the class to end. What's important about this is that they almost NEVER get included in political polls.

Pollsters only call land line numbers, and talk to those few people willing to answer their questions. That process reaches many more old people than young people. So young people, and their political opinions, don't get included in polls.

Pollsters get around this by weighting their responders according to how likely they think the responders are to vote. They expect settled older people to vote, so their responses are counted as a lot of real votes on Election Day. They don't expect young people to get their act together, so their responses don't get weighted as heavily.

This is how we get right leaning pollsters and left leaning pollsters, by the weights they choose to use to massage their data.

Right now the polls are heavily weighted by the responses of older voters, many of them still deluded by the notion that Republicans are fiscally responsible instead of shameless liars and thieves.

But young voters aren't even in the polls. Pollsters can't even talk to them, because they don't call cell phones.

If young voters act like typical young voters, the GOP may get back to its usual shenanigans. If young voters actually vote, a lot of people and pundits are going to be surprised.