First the numbers
Intrade
Democrats to retake the house 34.7%
Obama to win a second term 59.9%
2008
Obama wins the popular vote by 7.2%
House Dems win the popular vote by 10.8%
Now ponder the likely hood of these split ticket scenarios
A. Obama for President / Republican Congressman
B. Romney for President / Democratic Congressman
Now I’ll wait….
Now that you’re done laughing at the idea of a split ticket voter in this hyper partisan age you will probably agree with me that of what remains of split ticket voters B is more likely if not much likely than A.
And upon realizing that you now know that on Election Day win or lose house Democrats will receive a greater % of the vote than Obama will (just like they did in 2008)
Yet right now on this forum and media analysts cling to the pre hyper partisan election patterns of the 80’s and 90’s people like Charlie Cook cite 1984 where Reagan had a landslide and the GOP only picked up 13 seats as evidence that an Obama two point win equals a ten seat pickup for the democrats.
Redistricting helped vulnerable Republicans immensely, but not to the point where their majority can survive losing the popular vote by a couple of points.
Yes Republicans only gained 13 seats in Reagans 1984 landslide win, but that’s because the democrats won the popular vote in the house by 5% and bipartisan elections like that simply have no relevance in forecasting 2012.
All I’m saying is if Obama wins by a point or more the Democrats will retake the house and it’s mind boggling to me that some people are pushing the idea that Obama could landslide and the Democrats could still fall short of a majority.
America is not a 'party list' democracy. America is a democracy where all elections are between candidates - not concepts or ideas, but actual real ideas. I might question how a voter can simultaneously vote for Joe Manchin and Barack Obama, since they have rather different ideas on so many topics. Yet both are members of the Democratic Party. How somebody could vote Romney/Manchin is obvious.
Incumbents -- in all elections -- are known quantities, and this gives them advantages in terms of fundraising, and also gives them a natural base of voters who will always vote for the incumbent unless (s)he has been a disaster -- "who knows what the other candidate might do? Have you heard of this congressman in Oregon who put on a tiger suit and then..."
Before these facts, there's that Obama is unlikely to win by a 7.2% margin (I'll grant you that he'll probably win, albeit not quite by that much). This is before the fact that gerrymandering has 'locked in' Republican gains in the 2010 election; about 50 years ago, Democrats managed to do something similar with their gains from 1958, which lasted almost continuously for 36 years.
The likeliest result of the 2010 election -- by far -- is an Obama victory, a Republican House victory -- and an
extremely close Senate -- it seems very doubtful either the Republican or Democratic caucus will have 52 members. A few Republican Senate gains are inevitable even if Obama wins a landslide (though taking control of the chamber is not -- Republicans will have to fight for that).
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