From The Marston Chronicles
There has been a definite fall off in the Republicans prospects for this year. Our average of the opposition to Obama care had reached as high as 17% opposed and now it is only 11%. Obama's disapproval rating has never gotten above 50% in our average and does not look like it will any time soon. Finally and worst of all, the Republican edge in the generic ballot polling has lost a point in Rasmussen Reports and this figure is backed up by identical results in another likely voter poll from McLaughlin & Associates. As you know from our Handicapping Control of the House article, in midterm elections, the generic ballot results are a predictor of the percentage of the vote percentage of the two major parties. That in turn gives an estimate of the seats each party will wind up with in the election.
The table in our article shows that a drop from 8 to 7 points in the generic ballot translates to a failure to gain 8 more seats than would otherwise be the case. Another factor to consider is what the various polls in the House races are telling us as shown in our A Reality Check article. That showed that we were erroneously favoring the Republicans in 4 out of 5 cases. Between these two factors, it was obviously time for us to adjust our projections once again. The end results of that is that we are now projecting a gain of 56 seats instead of 63 seats for a drop of 7 seats for the Republicans.
Once race in IA-1 has dropped out of being in play. The races that returned to being now more likely to be retained by the Democrats are AR-4, CA-10, IL-14, IL-17, NY-1, NY-19, NC-8 and OR-5. There was one offset where ND-AL moved from a toss-up favoring Democrats to one favoring Republicans. We may be Republican analysts but we are very careful to adjust our ratings in whichever direction is required by the shifting political winds. Still none of these adjustments jeopardize the projected Republican control of the House. A net gain of 56 seats produces a 234 to 201 seat majority for the Republicans and that still is even better than what happened in 1994 by a few seats.
What is causing this drop off? One must remember that very little of the projected big gains for the Republicans is due to voters suddenly favoring the Republicans. It is primarily due to dissatisfaction with the Democrats and there is really no real other choice but the Republicans. Perhaps the change is due to people turning to third parties in a "pox on both your parties" attitude. It could also be that there is nothing going on other than suggestions that the Democrats will still try to jam through their Obama care plan. What turned things dramatically better for the Republicans was the Christmas Eve vote on the Senate version of Obama care.
The Louisiana Purchase and Cornhusker Kickback really turned the voters off. The Democrats still have the opportunity to once again annoy the voters and help out the Republicans by trying to bend the rules and pass Obama care with reconciliation or the so-called Slaughter proposal. If they come to their senses and stop pushing Obama care, we will undoubtedly wind up making more adjustments in their favor.
Bad News for Republicans
Handicapping Control of the House
From The Marston Chronicles
Can you really accurately predict this far in advance which party will control the House of Representatives after the November elections? The answer is only in midterm election years can you do it this far in advance. As we wrote in Will GOP Regain Control of the House, there is a known correlation between the generic ballot results and the percentage of votes that a given Party will get if the election were held today. You can find a table of how good of a predictor of the result the generic ballot is at Election Polls -- Accuracy Record Midterm Congressional Elections on the Gallup website. You will notice that only a generic ballot poll that uses likely voters works well.
Unfortunately Gallup does not switch to a likely voter model until just before the election. Indeed, there is only one pollster that always uses a likely voter model when polling and that is Rasmussen Reports. If you look at where Rasmussen lists the results of its generic ballot polling, you will see that the results of the polls have changed drastically since the last election. That means that who would have controlled the House and by how much if an election had been held at the same time the poll was taken has varied considerably over that same time period. This is not surprising because voter sentiment has varied greatly over that time as we are sure you have noticed.
That brings up the question of how to predict the makeup of the House. The Gallup table gives the relationship between the generic ballot result and the vote total a Party will get nationwide in all the House races combined. We know what the makeup of the House was after each midterm election so we ought to be able to correlate the two. It turns out that directly using the generic ballot to predict the House makeup does not work that well. It requires a two step process to first predict the vote percentage and then use that to predict the House makeup. For you mathematical wonks, the best fit in the first step is a quintic equation and then use a straight linear regression to get to the House makeup from there.
Since most of you never liked algebra in high school anyway, we will skip to the chase and give the results in the form of a handy-dandy table and not strain your brains with polynomial equations and least squares regression analysis.
GENERIC BALLOT DEM PCT SEATS MARGIN M.O.E. Democrats +20 58.73% D 292 R 143 D 149 +1 Democrats +19 57.75% D 284 R 151 D 133 Democrats +18 57.09% D 279 R 156 D 123 Democrats +17 56.65% D 276 R 159 D 117 Democrats +16 56.35% D 274 R 161 D 113 Democrats +15 56.13% D 272 R 163 D 109 Democrats +14 55.93% D 271 R 164 D 107 - 12 Democrats +13 55.72% D 269 R 166 D 103 Democrats +12 55.46% D 267 R 168 D 99 - 9 Democrats +11 55.15% D 265 R 170 D 95 Democrats +10 54.78% D 262 R 173 D 89 + 3 / -7 / -15 Democrats +9 54.34% D 259 R 176 D 83 Democrats +8 53.85% D 255 R 180 D 75 -12 Democrats +7 53.32% D 251 R 184 D 67 +18 Democrats +6 52.76% D 247 R 188 D 59 -8 Democrats +5 52.19% D 243 R 192 D 51 -4 Democrats +4 51.62% D 238 R 197 D 41 +27 Democrats +3 51.08% D 234 R 201 D 33 +2 Democrats +2 50.57% D 230 R 205 D 25 -5 Democrats +1 50.11% D 227 R 208 D 19 Tied 49.69% D 224 R 211 D 13 Republicans +1 49.33% D 221 R 214 D 7 Republicans +2 48.99% D 219 R 216 D 3 Republicans +3 48.67% D 216 R 219 R 3 Republicans +4 48.33% D 214 R 221 R 7 Republicans +5 47.92% D 211 R 224 R 13 Republicans +6 47.39% D 207 R 228 R 21 +3 Republicans +7 46.65% D 201 R 234 R 33 -3 Republicans +8 45.63% D 193 R 242 R 49 Republicans +9 44.20% D 183 R 252 R 59
A few things jump out at you from this table. First, the Republicans have to be 2.5 points ahead to gain control of the house. The margin of error column tells you that this prediction can be anywhere from 1 to 27 seats off which can make a rather large error in some cases. In three midterm elections, 1962, 1978 and 1982 the Democrats were 10 points ahead in the generic ballot and they achieved 259, 277 and 269 seats respectively. The mathematical equation cannot be in three different points at the same time so the best fit predicts 262 seats. Even so, this table is better than nothing since none of the errors changed which party controlled the House. The last point is that the Republicans only had control twice out of 15 midterm elections since 1950.
The Rasmussen Reports have had the Republicans ahead by 3 points or more ever since July 5th and our table says they get control of the House if that result held up at the time of the next election. The Republicans have been ahead by as much as 9 points since then. That would translate to a 59 seat margin in our table and even the maximum error of 27 seats would still give them control. Any generic ballot result of 7 or more points in their favor gives the Republicans control even with the maximum error applied.
Now you know why we have had the Republicans regaining control of the House as a result of the November elections ever since last October unlike the other analysts. That was when the Republicans got ahead 4 points in the Rasmussen generic ballot and never fell below it. That was when we projected a gain of 46 seats which would give the Republicans control by 8 seats. After the election of Scott Brown, we revisited our projections because by that time the Republicans had been ahead by at least 8 points for 4 weeks in a row. That caused us to adjust our formula for projecting which way a seat will go (a cubic equation this time) to give the Republicans another 17 seats for a margin of 47 seats just as the table would predict.
Our current prediction is from 63 to 72 seats for margins of 47 to 56 seats depending upon a 8 or 9 point generic ballot lead for the Republicans. Can we be off in our projection? Of course, we could be off by as much as 27 seats but that still gives the Republicans in a worst case scenario a margin of 20 seats. We do not make these projections up nor do we overestimate for the Republicans just because we are Republican analysts. There is a solid mathematical basis for our projections because unlike other analysts, we do not make "seat of the pants" calls.
