Polling and Prognostication, Statistics and Wishful Thinking

DemFromCT at dailykos has an informative commentary on the variable factors being weighed, and how they are differently interpreted by Democrats, Republicans and non-partisan professionals. In the end, someone's right and someone's wrong. If the Republicans retain the House, there are going to be a good number of embarrassed professional and academic prognosticators. OTOH, whereas most of the reasons to believe there's a strong Democratic wave are based on published data, the reasons for Republican optimism are based on conjecture, anectodes, head games and fear.