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2018 Midterm House Predictions
Here’s a quick summary of how I see things going down:
- You start out with 240 GOP seats (235 incumbent and 5 vacancies) vs. 193 DEM seats (with 2 vacancies)
- There are about 10 net seats that look likely to flip DEM at the outset, so: 230 vs. 205. (DEMS will take 12 red districts at the outset, GOP will take 2 blue, so a net of 10 for the DEMS).
- DEMS need ~12 to 15 more seats to flip the house after that (25 net new seats altogether)
- There are approximately 35 seats in play… tossups.
- 12 of those look to be good for the GOP.
- Another 12 have favorable GOP trends or models.
- 12 look to be leaning to the DEMS.
Bottom line: it’s going to be very tight and history tells us the DEMS have an advantage but if the turnout model is a 2014 turnout model then the GOP will retain by 10 seats.
Here’s a set of models I’ve run for the top 35 districts:
Alert Nate Silver. He’s wrong … again!
Models?
If life were a political novel, here’s what would happen…
On Election Day the Democrats win a majority by one seat.
The American people get to see a spectacular fire storm (think Tokyo 1945) as a small group of Democratic Socialists decline to support Nancy Pelosi’s election as Speaker of the House.
On New Years Eve, a Democrat Congressman elect dies under mysterious circumstances. Leaving the soon to be seated House with a 50/50 split.
In a further shocking development, the Democratic Socialists announce their support for, to quote their spokes human, “whatever tool the Republicans decide to nominate because the worse the better”.
Kate Moss has long been one of my favorites.
I tend to agree with the above assessment. I think the republicans will loose seats, but not enough to loose the house.
I think they’ll pick up seats in the senate, getting to 55 or 56 seats.
I am thinking, the following will be winners in a week:
Ted Cruz. – Its Texas, he’s running against a fake Hispanic, who’s had a DUI, B&E, and worse said “F*** the NRA”. Beto will take in millions to place second.
Martha McSally
Mitt Romney – actually surprised this race didnt get more national attention than what its gotten.
Less safe picks:
Josh Hawley – this is what happens when your opponent isnt Todd Atkin.
Kevin Cramer
Matt Rosendale
Bob Hugin – it should be no contest to be running against Bad Bob, who’s been tried on public corruption charges, and accused of using child prostitutes. Its an embarrassment to NJ that this is even a race, let alone a close race. The DNC has dumped millions into the state in order to keep Bad Bob in the senate. Far more than they had in any other race. Its funny how times have changed, Obama wanted Bad Bob gone for not supporting the Iran Deal, even risking Chris Christie to appoint a republican, now the DNC is spending millions to keep Bob. I am sure Obama enjoys the irony.
Rick Scott – Just because I’d like to see him win.
I saw Ronna McDaniels say today that it looks like 2016 turnout right now based on early ballots. Are we robbing Peter to pay Paul? I hope not… early voting is good, but people must show up on Tuesday. My state is mail in, I mailed it today after having filled it out a week ago. I kept forgetting…. don’t be me, don’t forget!
Republicans have traditionally been election day voters. Generally voting after 5pm on election day.
The early turn out models are tracking better for Republicans than they did in 2016. I linked to a webpage the other day that had voter data from Nevada. That was tracking about up 1.7% from 2016 numbers.
I prefer the Rush Limbaugh model. Do not believe the results of ANY poll.
When you work in probabilities you can never really be “wrong.” Trump had a 25% chance of winning according to his model. That means he should win 1 out of 4 times. It’s totally reasonable that he ended up winning.
That’s why this year their models are expressed as “6-in-7,” et cetera.
That’s why they are useless.
There are more than enough undecideds to decide races. They will decide to either not vote, or generally break one way or another and they don’t break until the day before the election or the day of the election. That’s why it will either be a 10-15 seat majority in favor of either Republicans or Democrats. It’s why Silver is useless. Because he doesn’t know and can’t know. If this were going to be a Democratic wave election, it would be a 25 seat Democrat majority. My guess is, it will be 10-15 seat Republican majority because the Democrats have not made their case and the electorate knows that having a Democrat majority will mean lots of unnecessary turbulence.
Sorry. How would you do it?
Let’s talk on November 7th, after the election.
I wouldn’t. I’d just make all pollsters appear on TV with a box score like in baseball.
Name: Smith, John
Affiliation: Leans Democrat
Elections Called
President: 2 of 4
Governor: 12 of 16
Senate: 8 of 24
Congress: 125 of 158
Overall Won Loss %: 72.8
FiveThirtyEight actually has one of those:
You can find the whole thing here.
Is there a reason to expect turn out to be like in 2014? Seems to me Dems are more motivated. And in special elections and primaries many have been turning out to vote. Which indicated a higher level of awareness and interest in this election as compared to other midterms. Doesn’t it?
Yeah. The idea that the turnout will look like 2014 does not seem to be in line with reality.
Of the 35 seats in play, are there a handful (say 5-7) that would be a bellwether for the 35? Next Tuesday, I will be tracking results and would like to know which 5 – 7 districts to watch closely. Thanks.
At this point, I choose to believe any model that indicates the GOP retains control so I can get through to November 6th.
One interesting observation: Early voting in Arizona is high among Republicans yet polls show Sinema tied with McSally. Mind you, Arizona gives Trump an approval rating of 52%, among the highest in the country but polls show 46% to Sinema and 46% to McSally. Something is obviously not right here given the extreme differences of these candidates…and I’m talking EXTREME differences. If the GOP retains control, we will look back at Arizona as the sign that things we’re not as rosy for the Democrats as we thought because it’s one of the few states that we actually have some empirical evidence of WHO is voting rather than polling. The caviat to my comments is that the Arizona race is statewide whereas the House seats are district-by-district, which skews more toward local politics than national politics. Nonetheless, this particular race has me wondering if Republicans may do better than we are led to believe.
That, or Republicans are talking themselves into thinking things will be better than they really are.
I am curious about one thing with respect to early voting and peoples looking at it. Wouldn’t we expect that it just cannibalizes votes from the actual day of election? Seems to me if you are motivated to vote, you vote early out of convenience, since you know you would stand in line for three hours if you had to on Tuesday, but now you can just show up Saturday morning before election day and wait like 20 minutes and get it done and out of the way. That’s what my parents and I did last weekend when we voted early in Illinois. I know they would wait on Tuesday to vote if they had to. But they don’t. So they didn’t. \
Still I guess it is best for Republicans to be optimistic about the election at least of the sake of peace of mind. Though don’t be too optimistic lest you feel cheated by reality. As with most things in life it is best not to care one way or the other about them. Especially things you can’t control, like bees or elections.
Early voting is just another aspect of the horse race that the press uses to capture your attention. The press assumes it is a proxy for enthusiasm. I’m not sure that’s been proved.
Do they rate themselves? I couldn’t find their grade.
It’s a list of pollster ratings. FiveThirtyEight doesn’t conduct polls, so they won’t be on that list.
I’ll revise and extend.
People and firms who make election predictions should have their box score depicted during TV appearances.
I don’t get the grudge against FiveThirtyEight. They just collect data, look at it, and create models based off it. I don’t understand the hostility towards doing that.
Conversely, I don’t get the adulation and idolization of 538.
Well, my “analysis” (that’s a little generous) has been impacted by the Green candidate bowing out in Arizona and endorsing Sinema. Bout to get uglier now.
Well, I don’t know who anyone who does that. Do you have any examples?
Do you have any examples of the “grudges”?
I’m afraid you answered my question with a question.