Welcome to the latest edition of the 2010 DemConWatch House Forecast, a summary of the best House forecasts.
House Forecast: 242.4 (-14.6), a huge drop from the last forecast on Oct 9, (253.8 (-3.2)). Yet at this point, Democrats would be ecstatic with only a 15 seat loss, in the face of overall forecast losses of 24-28 seats, 25-35, or even 40 seats.
So why are there differences between the seat-by-seat forecasts and the macro forecasts?
One reason is that the seat-by-seat forecasts give a lot of weight to incumbency. Dave Wasserman, who does the House Forecasts for Cook Political Report, told DCW:
Our ironclad policy is at Cook is to never rate any unscandalized incumbent any worse than a tossup.
Another reason is that there's an assumption that the GOP momentum will continue. A look at the 2008 chart on the right shows why there's a good deal of validity to this assumption.
The scary thing, of course, is that at this time in 2008, there was no wave forecast. It built up slowly all year long, with most of the gains coming in October '08. A similar knee in the curve in 2010 would mean a loss of unprecedented size.
Maybe Obama's speech last night is the start of a turnaround? We shall see.
Welcome to the latest edition of the 2010 DemConWatch House Forecast, a summary of the best House forecasts.
House Forecast: 253.8 (-3.2), amazingly, essentially no change from the last forecast on July 1. How is this possible in face of all the gloom and doom of predictions that the Democrats will lose 20-40 seats?
Looking at the macro factors: history of off-year elections, congressional generic ballots, and the general sense that the GOP is primed for gains, it's easy to understand the worst-case predictions. But when it comes to actually identifying specific seats that will be lost, our three major forecasters just can't bring themselves to actually identify a large number of Democratic incumbents who are in significant danger of losing their seats.
Will that change in the future? In a upcoming post, we'll show that most movement in these numbers occur in the last 6 weeks of the campaign, and that the numbers here could change significantly a year from now.
The House Forecast is an average of the projections of the Democratic held seats in the 2011 House.
The House Forecast for each source gives Democrats 1.0 seats in a race that is projected Solid/Likely (D) for the Democrat, 0.8 seats for a Democrat-Lean (DL), 0.5 seats for a a Tossup (T), 0.2 seats for a Republican-Lean (RL), and obviously 0 seats for a solid/likely (R) Republican seat.
The House seats are sorted by the likelihood of the seat being won by a Democrat, so the most solid Democratic seats are at top, the most solid Republican seats are at the bottom, and the Tossups are in the middle. Only those seats that have at least one of the rankings showing the seat as Lean or Tossup are shown.
Update: The end-of-July forecast will be coming soon - sneak peek at the numbers: 255.4 (-1.6)
Welcome to the first edition of the 2010 DemConWatch House Forecast, a summary of the best House forecasts.
House Forecast: 253.6 (-3.4) (See the latest Senate Forecast here)
The House Forecast is an average of the projections of the Democratic held seats in the 2011 House.
This early in the cycle, only two of our sources, Cook Political Report, and Rothenberg, have issued House Forecasts so far, and they average out to a net loss of 3.4 seats for the Democrats in the House. Note that with the large majority the Democrats currently have, Democrats would gladly trade a single digit loss in the House for a pickup of 2-3 seats in the Senate.
But it remains early in the cycle. Swing State Project lists 44 Representatives who might still decide not to run for reelection, either due to retirement or deciding to run for another office. If half of them move on, and half of those seats are competitive, another 10 seats could see significant battles next year.
Another issue is that, with redistricting coming in 2012, challengers are looking at whether it makes sense to run now, or possibly wait until 2012 to see how their district is reshaped, or even if it exists at all!
Here's The Fix's list of the top 10 seats most likely to switch (All seats show up on our chart except DE-AL):
10: CA-44 (R currently) - Dems just fell short of a big upset here in '08. 9: MS-1 (D) - Childers won this in the '08 Special Election, but Obama got only 38% here. 8. AL-2 (D) 7. PA-6 (R) - Will Gerlach (R) even stick around to run? 6. NY-23 (R) - With McHugh departing to be Secretary of the Army, the Special Election will be a tossup. 5. MD-1 (D) 4. NH-1 (D) - Rep. Carol Shea Porter (D) will have a tough fight. 3. DE-AL (R) - Assuming Castle retires or runs for Senate. 2. ID-1 (D) - The toughest Democratic hold in this really red district. 1. LA-2 (R) - This district is way bluer than ID-1 is red. The only question is, who wins the Dem primary?
The House Forecast for each source gives Democrats 1.0 seats in a race that is projected Solid/Likely (D) for the Democrat, 0.8 seats for a Democrat-Lean (DL), 0.5 seats for a a Tossup (T), 0.2 seats for a Republican-Lean (RL), and obviously 0 seats for a solid/likely (R) Republican seat.
The House seats are sorted by the likelihood of the seat being won by a Democrat, so the most solid Democratic seats are at top, the most solid Republican seats are at the bottom, and the Tossups are in the middle. Only those seats that have at least one of the rankings showing the seat as Lean or Tossup are shown.
Welcome to the latest edition of the 2010 DemConWatch House Forecast, a summary of the best House forecasts. 
Another reason is that there's an assumption that the GOP momentum will continue. A look at the 2008 chart on the right shows why there's a good deal of validity to this assumption.
