Larry Sabato is bearish on the Democrats taking the House, but others are bullish. I haven’t looked at it, yet.
It’s probably the most important question in politics today, so I want to know what I’m talking about before I weigh in.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I think this is a situation where prior experience isn’t going to be much of a guide. We have a highly gerrymandered House against a especially unpopular and unqualified Republican, but with a Democrat who’s been successfully smeared by the media. On top of that there looks to be a coalition shift going on, with older and less-educated whites becoming even more Republican while more-educated whites are becoming a swing group. On top of that polling is more questionable than usual because modeling likely voters is extra difficult with all this going on.
So I don’t think anybody is really going to know what they’re talking about this time.
Until there is broader state polling, I don’t think there’s a way to tell.
Some polls now in Trump’s firewall: SC, Missouri, Texas, Mississippi that also included the Congressional races would be very informative.
A good poll of races in California and New York as well.
The last polls including in 538’s model are from June for Texas and Mississippi. So much has happened since then.
This year, granularity of polling is going to be very important to understanding what is happening.
There is only one relevant Congressional district in any of those states: TX-23, R+3. Everything else is either safely Democratic or at least R+7. The intensity of the Republican gerrymanders is a significant threat to democracy in the US, a la Hungary.
California and New York are very relevant.
Those R+number ratings are PVIs? How would one know if Trump’s presence has shifted things from 2012 data? You think that the GOP can hold all of the Latino Republicans in line? All of the women Republicans?
Conventional wisdom goes out the window when Clinton starts pulling closer to 50% and a 10% margin.
It is very easy to see how the red state-blue state meme and even Cook’s PVIs can be instruments of GOP growth (or strategic retreat) by setting limits on Democratic understanding of the turf or Democratic strategies through rote recitation of verities.
Yes, Louis Goehmert’s district was R+24 then. What is it now? Give me a more current actual number.
What makes California and New York relevant is the fact that the delegation is split in a somewhat continuous range of PVIs — and most importantly the fact that they have so many potential swing districts up for grabs. That’s in the midrange of PVIs.
What makes Texas interesting is the possibility that Trumps xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric (and outright misogyny) narrows the spread between red and blue PVIs. Better to find out now than after the election as a missed opportunity.
Sam Wang is bullish, too.
This is where I disagree with him, pretty strongly. He cites the correlation between presidential and congressional election margins, and it’s a compelling argument. But the sample size is small. He buttresses those arguments with generic congressional preference polls and presidential approval ratings. Again, compelling arguments, but none of those polling arguments are nearly as robust as candidate preference polls. And when it comes to congressional races, there’s really nothing out there.
So it’s possible that the Democrats could win the house, and their success is going to be tied to Clinton’s, but I would hardly bank on it, even with a large Clinton margin.
Sabato is probably correct.