JLT's House Predictin' Thread 2010

[Sam Spade]

Excellent stuff, really.  I disagree on some things, but that's expected.

[Sam Spade]

Most of my changes will probably mirror yours, fyi...

[Sam Spade]

I agree with your changes. (two of them were as I saw anyways.  )

The one thing I would say is that every competitive Arizona Dem seat needs to be bumped up a notch.  What Obama is doing is simply going to be a disaster for them, I suspect.

[Sam Spade]

CT-05 (Chris Murphy) - moved to Democratic Watch List from Likely Democratic - Caligiuri won the nomination and is broke.

I can see that.

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In agreement, especially as now the national Republicans are at least acknowledging his existence.

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Mirrors my last change, so yep.

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What matters just as much is that Boswell has always been a weak incumbent and when weak incumbents get into bad national situations....  Of course, I've had Boswell at Lean D for months. 

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Don't know whether I agree.  Yoder is definitely favored (Lean R), but I don't see Likely R, yet at least.

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Raczkowski has raised some money (Peters has a ton), but you have to admit the birther stuff don't look too good.  Given D+2 (even in Michigan, where 2008 was likely a tad off), I'm not there yet.

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I've been there for a while too... 

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When MAS117 is involved in a political stunt....

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Albuquerque is a very strange area.  Anything can and will always happen there, regardless of what national numbers say "should happen".  I put it in Lean D the moment Barela raised a few centavos for this reason.

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Yep.  Still don't understand what he was doing voting for cap-n-trade in this CD.

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Yep.  Plus McIntrye doesn't have much cash on hand himself.

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If Kissell can't raise money, this should definitely be in pure tossup, imo, at least.

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Should never have been taken off - these are the types of CDs that can mysteriously disappear if a wave comes about, for no reason at all.

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Pomeroy is another classic weak incumbent.  But I see no evidence this is anything but tossup right now.  Maybe Republican-leaning, sure.

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Yep.

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Actually, it makes me wonder whether I should have it in Lean D.  Same with TX-23, btw.

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My gut tells me that Dahlkemper is in trouble.  My gut has been wrong before, of course.

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I noticed it! 

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Interestingly, SUSA poll mirrors turnout from both polls in 2006, with both 2008 polls showing a completely different turnout altogether.  Just something to keep in mind.

It should be in Lean R anyway because GOP has united behind Hurt.

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Not there yet.

[Sam Spade]

Fair enough.

I have this gut feeling now that we have reached an inflection point, and there is maybe now a 60% chance that there will be a wave, and the GOP will take back the House, and then some. The economic news is just terrible, the Dems are demoralized, with the Left mad at Obama, Obama has really mishandled the immigration issue (this business of not wanting to make the border more secure in order to have leverage to legalize millions of folks, cannot possible sit well with a majority of the voters), and the Dems borrowing another 26  billion to keep public employees employed (ya they say it is paid for, but they ain't cutting food stamps, so that will go by the wayside, just like the slash in doctor reimbursements), insurance premiums are ratcheting up, and emergency rooms are more clogged than ever, since so many docs will not take medicaid patients anymore, because they lose money on them. Can the news get any more terrible?

It looks to me like we may well be heading into a perfect storm, and the boat is not going to make it back to port.

I wrote this a few weeks ago.

As an overview, my thoughts are that the GOP chances of taking the House are presently somewhere between a 1 in 3 chance (33%) to a 2 in 5 (40%) chance.  An argument can be made for a 50-50 chance, but I'm not making it yet.

I didn't note this earlier, but the GOP chance of taking the Senate is probably at 1 in 10 right now.

Quite frankly, I think the evidence is now there to put GOP chances of taking the House at 50-50.  Can't agree on the 60% yet.  Still probably at 10% in the Senate, though.

[Sam Spade]

Sam, as I say I am extrapolating based on a gut feeling, and a sense that I have that folks are beginning to panic a bit, and/or get really mad, above and beyond the usual suspects of the GOP base. I of course could be totally full of sh**t. But, well, just relying on polls and money all the time gets boring - at least for me. So when a divining  rod magically comes into my hands, I "enjoy" playing with it a bit. It is also hard in this environment for pollsters to predict turnout models - very hard. And finally I am impressed with the high GOP primary turnouts of late, and the low Dem ones. So I am giving myself "permission" to rely on my instincts here a bit. Don't you like to give yourself permission to do stuff, Sam?

Of course.  Fwiw, I don't think your conclusion is out of the mainstream of possibilities at all.