Republicans 267, Democrats 168 in House

One always hesitates to get way out in front of the crowd or in this case the other political analysts. So far none of the other analysts have been willing to go above a 57 seat gain for the Republicans or a 235 to 200 House in favor of the Republicans. So where do we get off projecting an 89 net seat gain for them?

Unlike other analysts, we have been using the results of the likely voter generic congressional ballots as developed by Gallup over the last 60 years for midterm elections. When you have 15 data points like this, you can apply a regression analysis to develop some mathematical equations that can allow you to predict how many seats the Republicans will wind up taking from the Democrats.

Never before in the last 60 years have the Republicans been able to get a spread of more than 7 points in their favor and that was in 1994. Right now the Real Clear Politics average of the generic ballot is 7.3 points in their favor and the Republicans picked up a net 51 seats when it was 7. This already says that the Republicans should do better than a 51 seat gain.

Remember that Gallup is the pollster that has data going back 60 years so they have all that experience in developing a screen to pick out the likely voters from a sample of registered voters. This year Gallup is offering two types of likely voter screens depending upon how many voters actually do turn out to vote. The spread in favor of the Republicans is a whopping 9 to 14 points.

If a 7 point spread got the Republicans a net gain of 51 seats, what would 9 points get them let alone 14? A simple proportional analysis says that 9 is 1.29 times greater than 7 so 51 X 1.57 = 65 seats. On the other hand, 14 is 2 times greater than 7 so 51 X 2 = 102 seats. While this kind of progression is way too simple and way outside any existing data points, it does tell you that our projection of an 89 net seat pickup for the Republicans does not seem so outrageous.

So why do we pick 89 seats instead of 65 or 102? We use results from previous equivalent elections as a starting point and then add in an adjustment for the Obamacare votes and poll results. Actually we project that the Republicans will pick up 91 seats from the Democrats but will lose 3 of their own (DE-AL, IL-10 and LA-3). On the other hand they will gain back their now vacant seat (IN-3) so 178 + 91 - 3 + 1 = 267. This gain means the final generic ballot spread will be 12.5 points in favor of the Republicans.

We go further and try to project which seats will be among the 91 seats the Democrats will lose at Who's Winning the House? As you can see from that table, the 91st seat is Carolyn McCarthy in NY-4. An October poll from McLaughlin and Associates has her up 1 point over the Republican Becker, 46 to 45. That 1 point can be made up in the 8 days remaining before the election. The 92nd seat is Ben Chandler in KY-6 and he is ahead by 4 points in an October poll from Mason-Dixon, 48 to 44. While it is possible for the Republicans to pick up this seat since Chandler is polling under 50%, it is not an odds on bet.

Likewise, Tierney in MA-6 is up 6 and Braley is up 11 in IA-1. On the other hand, in the 95th seat, there is a tie in an August poll from Action Solutions, but that is an old poll so who knows where that race is today. At best, it could make up for one of the ones listed in the first 91 that the Republicans end up losing. The point is that the pickings are pretty slim below that 91st seat so that is why we stopped there.

Continue...

Summary only...

Gallup is not Promoting This

Gallup Polling released a bombshell today when it quietly applied a likely voter screen to its generic ballot polling. As followers of this website know, only likely voter samples have any real predictive value for the midterm elections in the House of Representatives according to Gallup itself. Last week, Gallup showed the two parties tied in the generic ballot using a registered voter sample. Today they applied a likely voter screen to both last week's results and this week's and suddenly the Republicans have a 13 point lead in one scenario and 16 in another one.

Their analysis is very instructive. They start with a sample of 3,037 adults for the last two weeks. Of these, 2,764 are registered to vote, but only 1,882 are considered likely to vote. As we have repeatedly told you, adult polls do not be mean beans in politics and should be ignored. If you are not registered you cannot vote so you have no influence on an election. But not all registered voters actually vote so registered voter polls only tell you what would happen if everyone actually turned out which never happens. Turnout varies from election to election being much higher in presidential elections and much lower in midterm elections.

Republicans turn out better in all national elections and even more so in midterm elections so registered voter samples under-represent votes for Republicans. Only likely voter samples correct for this bias. This is illustrated by the registered voters in this sample going for the Republicans by a 3 point margin. However, the likely voters show a whopping 13 or 16 point spread depending on the overall turnout. As you can see this is a huge difference and accounts for the so-called enthusiasm gap where the Republicans are more motivated to turnout in 2010 by about 20 points than the Democrats.

So what are the practical results of this huge gap? We have provided a table that allows you to convert the generic ballot spread in likely voter samples to actual seats in the House of Representatives. A 13 point spread blows of the end of the table because the Republicans have never gotten better than a 7 point spread in any midterm election since 1950 and trying to extend the table out that far gets to be mathematically imprecise. Still even if Gallup's lower estimate of 13 points is correct, we are looking at the greatest blowout election for the Republicans in the last 80 years.

We can only estimate what the House would look like after such an election by extending equations out beyond any known data points which we have done in our ongoing series, Who is Winning the House? As you can see, a 13 point spread translates to the Republicans gaining 92 new seats while losing 2 seats of their own. That net gain of 90 seats would produce a 268 to 167 House for the Republicans and a 101 seat margin. The 16 point spread blows off the end of even the extended table and takes off into the wild blue yonder.

We find it hard to believe that kind of spread especially when Rasmussen after being as high as a 12 point spread is suddenly showing only a 3 point spread. Still it does tend to validate our own prediction of a 256 to 179 House for the Republicans with a net gain of 78 seats and a 77 seat margin.

Continue...

Summary only...

Democrat Toast

When the Gallup Poll says the Democrats are toast come November, you can believe it because even their registered voter generic congressional ballot results are usually below what other pollsters show for the Republicans. Today Gallup has the Republicans up by 10, the highest ever recorded since 1950. On July 19th, Gallup had the Democrats up by 6 when no other pollster had the Democrats up at all. Obviously Gallup has made some adjustments to how they weight their samples. Rasmussen has had the Republicans up by as much as 12 and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democrat firm, has had the Republicans up as much as 11. The previous high for Gallup was 7 for the Republicans in 1994 and that was using a likely voter sample rather than a registered voter sample. Had Gallup used a likely voter sample, the results would be even higher for the Republicans because likely voter samples always favor Republicans more than registered voter samples because Republicans turn out to vote better than Democrats.

If a 7 point spread in 1994 gave the Republicans control of the House by 231 to 204 seats, what would a 10 point spread do? If you have been following our model adopted from Gallup, you already know the answer: the Republicans would control the House by a whopping 71 seat margin, 253 to 182. That last time the Republicans controlled the House by that big a margin was as a result of the 1928 election, some 82 years ago. The last time the Republicans gained more than 71 seats was not in 1994 (54 seats) or even in 1946 (55 seats), it was in 1938 (81 seats). Thus a 75 seat gain would be the biggest in 72 years, but we have already pointed that out. At this point, it seems fair to say that the Democrats are not just toast, but burned toast.

All of this is merely a prelude to saying that we are adjusting our projections from a 67 seats picked up while losing 2 for a net gain of 65 to a whopping 80 seats picked up for a net gain of 78 seats. Thus our new projection is for a 256 to 179 seat House for the Republicans. Since the current House has the exact opposite of that, we are projecting a total flip over of the House giving the Republicans control by the exact same margin as the Democrats have now. Our reason for doing this is precisely because of what has been happening in the generic congressional ballot polls. This would require a 10.6 point margin in the likely voter generic congressional polls.

That average has been 10.5 lately even though today it is only 7.3 because Rasmussen has dropped down to 6 from 12 two weeks ago. The Gallup poll says that the latest Rasmussen poll is most likely an outlier poll and will return to the 9 point range next week. If you are interested in just which seats the Republicans will pick up, you will find that in our Marston Report. To give you an idea of what that means in the real world, it means the Republicans will have to defeat the likes of Bob Etheridge in NC-2, Ed Perlmutter in CO-2, Chellie Pingree in ME-1 and Bruce Braley in IA-1. The first two are rated by Real Clear Politics as leans D, but the last two are listed as likely D. If we cannot get those last two, the next two in our rankings are Phil Hare in IL-17 and Melissa Bean in IL-8 which RCP does list as leans D.

Continue...

Summary only...