If you are a republican or an independent who cannot stand what President Biden has done, polling trends are headed your way. The question is “fast enough?”
Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight Website assesses the odds.
How the Senate Forecast Has Changed
How the House Forecast Has Changed
House Stats
- There are 435 seats in the House of Representatives.
- A majority is 218.
- The current makeup is 224 Democrat, 213 Republican, 3 Vacant
A net gain of five seats would flip the House and end Nancy Pelosi’s leadership.
Competitive House Races
House Analysis
- If those races came in exactly as forecast, and no other races mattered, Republicans would only pick up a net of three seats and Democrats would hold the House.
- Defining a close race as anything with 60 percent odds or less, Republicans have a chance of 8 additional flips (yellow highlights), with Democrats an additional 5 (blue highlights).
Not Shown But Significant
- WI-3, 78 in 100 Chance of Flipping to Republicans
- OH-13, 86 in 100 Chance of Flipping to Republicans
- CA-3, 84 in 100 Flipping to Republicans
Factoring in the three additional Republican pickups, if all the races went as forecast, Republicans would pick up a net total of 6 seats, one more than necessary.
Wild Cards
- Turnout will matter.
- And so it seems does the Supreme Court ruling on abortion. Democrat odds shifted greatly after after the abortion ruling.
Since the incumbent party usually picks up seats, and since the following seats are in generally republican states, TX-15, AK, and KS-3 are the places the 538 model may be overstating Democrat chances.
Senate Odds
Senate Analysis
- Control of the Senate will come down to no more than 7 races and most likely only 2, Nevada and Georgia.
- Green highlights are very weak candidates Trump had big roles in selecting.
- The blue checkmark is a likely flip.
- If the forecast plays out according to the script, Democrats will pick up one more Senate seat and would then no longer need Senator Joe Manchin’s vote to pass Progressive agenda.
Admit it or not, Trump does not give a damn about the party. He backed extremely weak candidates who ran on blind allegiance to him and his Stop the Steal nonsense.
Arizona governor Doug Ducey, a Republican is very popular. Because of term limits he will step aside. He wanted to run for Senate but didn’t because Trump vowed to campaign against him, claiming Ducey did not stop the steal. Trump-backed Masters is likely to get hammered.
In Georgia, Trump-backed Herschel Walker is involved in a major controversy. The pro-life Senate candidate is accused of paying for the abortion of a former girlfriend. Walker denies it, but Walker’s son says it’s true and his father should never have run.
In Pennsylvania, a very weak Mehmet Oz won the Republican nomination based largely on allegiance to Trump.
It’s possible Oz or Walker win their races, but if so, it will be despite Trump, not because of Trump.
Inflation Inferno Scenario
If Democrats hold the House and Senate, expect a barrage of highly inflationary free money handouts will pass Congress via reconciliation maneuvers.
Do not dismiss this possibility outright. 29 percent is nothing to sneeze at. Even if you think Silver is way off, even 15 percent chances happen 15 percent of the time by definition.
Importantly, it’s not national motivation to vote that matters. Turnout in a mere 24 districts will decide whether Progressives unleash inflation or not.
I have no way of assessing turnout in the districts and states that matter, nor does anyone else.
Q: What are the odds of a Progressive inflation inferno?
A: The same as the odds of Democrats holding the House and Senate. My guess is about 25%.
Closer Than Expected Isn’t a Win
Yep but look at who he has ahead in some of these Senate Races.
Closer than most expect is not a win.
BTW – I flipped Nevada based on Trafalgar
— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) October 15, 2022
Mish Forecast
The administration is going totally ape in energy policy, and Independents are more likely than not, in aggregate, to figure this out.
The abortion issue has sailed. It’s up to states, not Congress to settle.
Factoring in typical Republican mid-term gains, my House forecast is Republicans pick up 9 seats and the Senate remains tied at 50-50.
I mentally place Nevada in the Republican column. If so Trump will have Republicans cost seats in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.
But good riddance to Nancy Pelosi. I expect she will soon be gone as speaker.
This post originated at MishTalk.Com
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Mish
Democrats blue
Neither of them
Give a (censored) about you
extremely weak candidates who ran on blind allegiance to him and his
Stop the Steal nonsense.”
I would expect the R’s to sweep everything in 2024 – about 245-250 seats in the House, perhaps 57-60 in the Senate, and the WH as well.
Here in WA State, if the R wins an upset it will be a major earthquake. I’d be shocked if it happened.
link to realclearpolitics.com
So why not ignore Federalist/Susquehanna? Answer: Susquehanna is a D-leaner. Why not see Fox News (D +3) as a counterweight? Answer: Fox News polls have a strong D lean. To cfheck poll leans, go here:
538 has not been a good election forecaster for quite a while, but I still trust their pollster “mean reverted bias” rankings. They help a great deal when interpreting individual poll numbers.
link to harvardharrispoll.com
I have a very longstanding interest in polling, dating back for about 45 years when I subscribed to a quarterly magazine that published all kinds of polling numbers. In recent years, pollsters (especially the partisan ones) game the accuracy ratings by waiting until the last couple of weeks to release the real numbers. We’ll have a much better idea by the end of the month, but I think the polls are breaking toward the Rs. To what degree is hard to say.
Two particular ones stick out.
In Wisconsin, the hard-right semi-nutcase, Ron Johnson, was +1 in the D-leaning (but non partisan) Marquette University poll. In October, Johnson was +6%. He’s responded by thumping the tub on abortion, which almost makes me laugh. See, I grew up in Wisconsin and still follow their politics. Once you get out of the city of Milwaukee and Dane County (Madison), plus a couple smaller college towns (Eau Claire, LaCrosse), Wisconsin is culturally conservative with a very large Catholic population. If Mandela Barnes thinks he’ll win over fence-sitters with abortion, I think he’ll be rudely disappointed; in fact, I think this will LOSE votes there.
In Oregon, which is right smack across the Columbia River from where I live now, it’s impossible to overstate the degree to which the sharp decline in Portland has hurt the Democrats, who are widely and accurately seen as the defenders of crime, violence, drugs, and vangrants. Looks like Oregon is going to elect a Republican governor for the first time in 40 years. It’s hard for me to capture in words just how much “public disorder” has become THE issue.
Bottom line: I’ll be cautious and say R’s +2 senators and maybe more than that. The House numbers are much harder to predict. I’ll say this much: Back in 2010, when the Ds were complacent going into the mid-terms, they lost 60+ seats. That’s not going to happen this time, but I think the Dems are going to have a lot to cry about starting November 9th. Will the Rs run away with it? I don’t think so just yet, but stay tuned. Everything I’m seeing is that the numbers are breaking toward the Rs, with the magnitude the real question.
Putin and Trump? No one cares. It’s not going to matter to voters.
Both parties have been guilty of what I call “the politics of subtraction,” so this isn’t somehow blessing the Republicans. Still, the Democrats fail to realize that they are talking about things that voters just don’t care about, or more to the point, about things that will not draw people across the line. Both parties have been ignoring independent voters, the Democrats much more so than the Republicans lately. They’re going to get a wake-up call next month. Will they listen? I’m really not sure that they will.
link to bigserge.substack.com
He thinks the Russkies will wait for the ground to freeze and and then go on the offensive.