* Harry Enten of CNN…

I went back since the 2006 election and looked at how much the polls from roughly within a month of this point in the cycle performed. (That is, polls completed from about 52 to 82 days before the election.) […]

Back in 2006, the average district poll had the Democrats trailing by 1.5 points. The result in those districts polled ended up being Democrats winning by 4 points. That’s a bias of 5.5 points against the Democrats.

Jump ahead to 2010. When Republicans were ones riding the wave, they were down by 3 points in the average district poll right now. They ended up winning in those districts by 1 point. That’s a 4-point overperformance for the Republicans.

The 2014 midterm election tells the same story. Republicans did 5.5 points better than the district polls suggested they would at this point. […]

Look at these same years, but only at the polls within the final 10 days of the elections. The polls have less than a point bias in 2006 and 2010. In 2014, the district polls — like all the national and state polling — underestimated the Republicans (though the underestimation was 2 points fewer than the polls two months out).

It’s not that the polls are wrong. It’s that the voting public starts moving more in tandem with the wave later in the season. Now, maybe something will be different this year. I don’t know. But this is a pretty established phenomenon and I first saw it up close in 1994.

* Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns at the New York Times…

Republican officials say privately that the performance of the economy under Mr. Trump has not been a major motivating factor for pro-Trump voters. For some Americans on the right, it may even be contributing to the mood of political apathy that has so alarmed G.O.P. leaders, since voters who are optimistic rarely vote with the intensity of those who are angry or afraid.

America First Action, a political committee aligned with Mr. Trump, conducted a series of focus groups over the summer and concluded the party had a severe voter-turnout problem, brought on in part by contentment about the economy and a refusal by Republicans to believe that Democrats could actually win the midterm elections.

Conservative-leaning voters in the study routinely dismissed the possibility of a Democratic wave election, with some describing the prospect as “fake news,” said an official familiar with the research

Oof.