It took me all morning to go through link by link every one of them over at Margin of Error, but after going through them, it seems that it is not as much of a long shot as it seemed just a couple of months ago when handicappers were projecting an approximate 20 seat loss for Democrats in the House.
It seems there is a very real possibility that Republicans can take more than the 40 seats needed to obtain control of the House of Representatives in November.
With current polling in conjunction with Bafumi et al.'s paper predicting a Republican national vote between 53.6% and 54.7%, the Republicans could easily gain 50-60 seats from their current 178. Gains of greater than 60 seats also look quite possible. Even in the best case scenario for the Democrats, it would seem that holding the House would be very, very difficult.
It looks like a red blizzard is going to sweep through Washington in November.
Go to Margin of Error and remember, clickity clickity click all the links to confirm the numbers for yourself.
Reactions:
Matthew Yglesias "Conventional wisdom is that 2010 is going to be ugly for Democrats, but it’s possible that the conventional wisdom is seriously understating how bad the outlook is. It’s true that some factors, like the balance of open seats, are in the Democrats’ favor but the basic outlook is strongly tilting GOP."
Economist headlines "How badly will the Democrats get creamed? "
FiveThirtyEight:
Again, none of this is to suggest that the results that Democrats will encounter any fewer problems in 2010 than they did in 1994. Frankly, it has become easy enough to imagine Democratic losses of the same magnitude as 1994 or even worse. But the less superficial one is in comparing the two cycles, and the more one is willing to uncover root causes, the less similar they seem to be. There's well more than one way to lose a majority.
Cook Political "House: National Winds Move 25 More Races Toward Republicans"
Democrats currently have 53 seats listed as Lean or Toss Up.
Republicans currently have 6 seats listed as Lean or Toss Up.
The New Republic, pointing to Margin of Error's figures:
The whole post is worth reading -- he's not just pulling numbers out of his ass. This graph, an extrapolation as he concedes, suggests the possibility that the election good be literally off-the-charts bad for Democrats:
Instead of reassessing how things got so bad for them in the first place, Democrats and Obama are doubling down.
