Bachmann bid for GOP leadership gets cool reaction

[Nichlemn]

I meant to say GOP incumbents. Let me make this clearer. Bachmann's CD's PVI is GOP +7%.  That means she should get an 19% margin ((7x2)+5) if she is to match a 50-50  national vote split, correcting for her CD's PVI. That is because running even with an EVEN PVI means that you lose by 5% (beaten 52.5 to 47.5). She won by 12%.  That is not very good, losing by 7% if the GOP bias of her district's GOP bias disappeared, in a wave GOP year.

And yes, the GOP may have gained some seats net this year, if they lost the generic ballot by performance was minus 7%, because that was better than 2008's minus 10.5%. Say as a wild guess, perhaps 10-15 seats - basically just the blue dogs living in very GOP districts.

In short, Bachmann is a drag - and a huge one - for the GOP. That is what the voters of her district who are swing voters whose sways back and forth decide elections, are telling us.

I don't know where you get this 5% from.

[Nichlemn]

I meant to say GOP incumbents. Let me make this clearer. Bachmann's CD's PVI is GOP +7%.  That means she should get an 19% margin ((7x2)+5) if she is to match a 50-50  national vote split, correcting for her CD's PVI. That is because running even with an EVEN PVI means that you lose by 5% (beaten 52.5 to 47.5). She won by 12%.  That is not very good, losing by 7% if the GOP bias of her district's GOP bias disappeared, in a wave GOP year.

And yes, the GOP may have gained some seats net this year, if they lost the generic ballot by performance was minus 7%, because that was better than 2008's minus 10.5%. Say as a wild guess, perhaps 10-15 seats - basically just the blue dogs living in very GOP districts.

In short, Bachmann is a drag - and a huge one - for the GOP. That is what the voters of her district who are swing voters whose sways back and forth decide elections, are telling us.

I don't know where you get this 5% from.

PVI = difference from average of 2004 and 2008 POTUS performance. GOP margin in 2004 was 2.5%.  In 2008 the Dem margin was 7.5%. Average the two, and the EVEN PVI is 5% [2.5%] to the Dems ((2.5 + -7.5)/2 = -2.5%.)  Oops, I understand why you did not get it. The 5% I was talking about should have been 2.5%!  Well depreciate my remarks by 2.5% then. My bad.

The national margin is completely irrelevant to CPVI, since CPVI is all about results relative to the national margin. In a 50/50 year, even CPVI districts should go about 50/50.

[Nichlemn]

Let's see, Bachmann ran about even with her district's PVI. If every Pubbie ran even with their PVI, that would mean the Dems would win the generic vote by about 5%. That is not a good number in a GOP wave election. If you compared GOP incumbent.s performance to their district's PVI, Bachmann this year must be close to the bottom. That might be why she got a cool reception: she is toxic with the swing voters needed to win POTUS, or for that matter, winning Congress. If everyone ran as well as Bachmann vis a vis their district's PVI, it is problematical if the GOP would even have taken the House this year.

As a result of the packing of Dem voters, there are 234 GOP PVI districts, 9 ties, and 201 Dem PVIs. This House election was unusual in that PVI was a pretty good predictor of the result (not in all cases, obviously).

A R+1 PVI doesn't mean a district is Republican leaning in the abstract.  It means that the district is one point more Republican-leaning than the average of the 2004 and 2008 Presidential votes.  Obama won by more than Bush, meaning a an R+1 PVI district actually leaned toward the Democrats, on average, in the past two presidential elections.

So what this means is that Republicans have a structural advantage. In a 50-50 election, Republicans would presumably win a majority.

I think I have this right now. A 50-50 district has a PVI of GOP +1.25%.  It is confusing, because the zero PVI baseline has a Dem bias since Obama won by a bigger margin than Bush 2004.

There is no bias. That's precisely what CPVI is designed to counter. A district that voted for Obama by the same as his national margin would have an even CPVI for 2008. It would also have an even CPVI for 2004 if it voted for Bush by the same as his national margin. It would thus be expected to vote 50/50 Republican/Democratic in a Presidential election that was 50/50.