That basic agnosticism is a step back from my last horse-race column, where I sided with the conventional wisdom that Republicans would take control of the House.<\/p>\n
And let me once again lay out a big caveat:\u00a0 I stink at these predictions and others who are much better at them than me think the GOP has a 75-80% lock on a takeover.<\/p>\n
So me saying that it’s still a mystery is a distinct outlier.\u00a0 That said, here’s why I think what I think.<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 The polls have really been screwy this year.\u00a0 They’re all over the map.\u00a0 And they factor in a lot of fairly subjective calculations about voter zeal.\u00a0 I think it’s conceivable that Republicans will win really, really big.\u00a0 But I think it’s also possible that Democrats will totter to victory in just enough individual races to retain a majority.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0 When I look at the data of the people making these predictions, I find all kinds of questionable assumptions.\u00a0 I mentioned earlier that Pollster.com gives Matt Doheny an 85% lock on winning the NY-23 race.\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 85%?<\/p>\n
FiveThirtyEight.com, another highly respected poll-watching site, gives Doheny a 67.2% chance of winning.\u00a0 Again, really?\u00a0 I think this race looks pretty competitive, with the most recent poll giving Democrat Bill Owens a 5-point lead.<\/p>\n
Back Real Clear Politics’ website, meanwhile, I find that they’re putting the NY-19 race in the “leans Republican” column (and in fact, RCP lumps that race in with its overall Republican “win” category.)<\/p>\n
But all the polls this year show the NY-19 race as a statistical tie, with the most recent literally tied.\u00a0 To suggest that that kind of race in New York state leans Republican is a stretch.<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0 I think comparisons to 1994 are clumsy and likely wrong-headed.\u00a0 It may well be that some kind a national zeitgeist advantage for the GOP will sweep Democrats aside.<\/p>\n
But unlike 1994, the Republican Party is unpopular; and unlike 1994, the Democratic Party is fully mobilized, technically and financially engaged, with some very strong candidates.\u00a0 (In 1994, the Dems were sclerotic and scandal-plagued.)<\/p>\n
4.\u00a0 The margin for error for the GOP remains pretty narrow.\u00a0 They need at least 41 seats to gain a razor-thin majority.<\/p>\n
Most of the pundits suggest that they’ll top that number, but only by a small amount.\u00a0 Stuart Rothenberg says the GOP will win 45-55 seats.\u00a0 Larry Sabato puts the number at 47 seats.\u00a0 Charlie Cook puts the number at 52. Fivethirtyeight.com puts the number at 51.<\/p>\n
Everyone agrees that the first 30-40 seats of that surge are pretty much locked in; after that, it gets a lot more competitive.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that this will be a great year for Republicans.\u00a0 They’ll make big gains in the House, the Senate and in governor’s races.<\/p>\n
Will they run the field?\u00a0 If they do, the win could be much, much bigger than 41.<\/p>\n
If not, election night could go really, really long as we wait to find out who controls Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That basic agnosticism is a step back from my last horse-race column, where I sided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[886],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3064"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3065,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3064\/revisions\/3065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}