Rate the coming storm - Cat 1 to Cat 5

[Torie]

I am putting up the chart below to confuse everyone. Suffice it to say, if the GOP wins the House by 15% (57.5-42.5), which is reflected by the blue line, and every CD held by a Dem swings in a uniform manner from its PVI baseline (bearing in mind that a CD needs a PVI to GOP +2.5 to break even  (Bush +2.5%, Obama -7.5%, sum the two, and divide by two, for the PVI break even point), then the GOP wins 114 Dem seats (the red line). In other words, per this metric, if the Dems lose every seat they hold with a Dem PVI of +5 or less, they lose 114 seats. If the GOP just breaks even in the generic vote, the Dems lose about 50 seats if the Dem can't beat the the PVI baseline for the CD after deducting 2.5%, to get the CD down to even. So based on the PVI thing, as adjusted, if the GOP margin goes from -5% to 0%, and all CD's follow the PVI model, the GOP gets 50 seats. If there is no swing at all from the PVI, and the GOP loses the Generic vote by 5%, it still picks up about 42 Dem seats.

So, as a very crude cut, the Dems are holding a lot of seats they should not be holding based on 2004 and 2008 POTUS results, and thus a nationalized election, with the GOP in the lead, where incumbency is of marginal value, is one reason for the impending blowout. And sure some Dems will survive the PVI game, vis a vis the generic ballot swing, a substantial number of them. How many?  A lot fewer than we thought a month ago.

And yes, between 50 and 70 Dem seats, a lot are in play as compared to the PVI differential (i.e, the red line gets relatively steep between 50 and 70, and particularly 50 and 60), so as the GOP moves into positive territory (when the GOP hits a 5% generic ballot margin, it gets about 72 Dem seats), it hits a lot of Dem seats, against which the Dems have to play their incumbency card, etc.

And oh yes, you subtract GOP losses, be it 2 or 5 or whatever, from these totals.

[Torie]

I'm with the consensus -- Tonight I'm feeling about R+58 on my over/under.  However, if this ended up around R+70, I wouldn't be surprised.

I wish I had the balls to make off-the-wall predictions

To do that one would have to spend a lot of time at it, to figure out which seats not that closely watched or polled, are in real play to flip based on money, ad quality, candidate quality, along with all the more generic polls, and other races, etc. Other than that, you are just a Charlie Cook etc, drone, or just take a shot from the hip. That was what I did when I came up with 50-60 a couple of months back - I just shot from the hip. To now try to jerk it up another 10 seats is just too arduous for this old man, and after I did all that work (to generate something I could really defend), I might not come up with anymore seats anyway, and what fun would that be? 

It will be more fun to critique Sam and Vorlon, assuming they explain their calls of interest.

[Torie]

High Cat 4 - Cat 5.

I would be surprised by anything less than 55.

If predicting 87 Dem seats will fall is not a category 5, what is? 100 seats?