Sam Spade's 2010 Predictions

[Beet]

Lunar, Kendrick Meek is a loser. He would be a loser if Charlie Crist had never run for Senate, or if Charlie Crist had never stepped foot in/been born in Florida. Please do not blame Kendrick Meek's loserdom on Charlie Crist. The only thing Kendrick Meek may be successful at is handing the Florida Senate race to the tea baggers.

[Beet]

Political scientists throw their hats into the ring:

"On average, the Republicans win 229 seats, 23 more than the Democrats and 11 more than the 218 needed for a majority"



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-bafumi/a-forecast-of-the-2010-ho_b_697051.html

[Beet]

Well, it should be noted that in the 2002 House elections, when Republicans won 229 seats, the popular vote was 49.6% to 45%, a 4.6% difference. The average size of today's RCP generic vote is 4.3%. Personally, I am predicting a bit more.

For example, RCP has GOP 45.9%, Dem 41.6%, and a very simple hypothesis could be that those who haven't expressed a preference at this stage are not sufficiently motivated and will not show up. That takes the denominator down to 45.9+41.6 = 87.5. In that case ,the two-party gap becomes 4.3/87.5 = 4.9%. Yeah, my simplistic thinking isn't as sophisticated as Sam's, but it takes less time to come up with Thanks for the info on this thread, though.

[Beet]

True but that partly depends on whether people are taking this into account when they respond to generic ballot polls. So a comparison of generic ballot polls from the same pollster in 2002 to 2010 may be a better comparison than a comparison of generic ballot polls from 2010 to the 2002 actual results. Even this is vulnerable to methodology changes, but it is at least as good as comparing poll aggregates across years, because the makeup of these aggregates may change.

In Gallup, the GOP generic lead starting with a breakout in late July in 2002 was 6,8,3,5,5,9, and 5, average 5.9%. Here we have the same breakout in late July and leads of 5,6,7, and 3, average 5.25%. I suppose taking into account polling effects makes the picture look slightly better for Democrats, but not in a really significant way. As of now, Boehner is still probably going to be the next Speaker.