Posted by: Dale Franks on Tuesday, November 07, 2006 I have to move out of my house today, due to the start of the slab leak/mold-related destruction, so I won't be able to blog anything until this evening. I'll also have to try to drop into my polling place between moving loads of clothes, kitchen necessities and foodstuffs to the temporary housing I'll be occupying for the next month or so. But, I wanted to drop a final, last-minute forecast on you, according to the simple probabilities based solely on the polling averages, similar to what Jay Cost did at RCP a few days ago. Momentum has been shifting to the Republicans over the past week. Not only have the generic polls narrowed, but the individual race polls for the seats in play have narrowed as well. House polls have become increasingly problematic (read "inaccurate") in recent elections, of course. Unfortunately, they provide the only information we have, apart from anecdotal evidence, which may, or may not, be correct. Looking at the poll averages, however, gives us the following seat breakdowns: Solid Dem: 197 Leans Dem: 4 Toss-up: 16 Leans Rep: 21 Solid Rep: 197 So, we distribute these breakdowns into the following probabilities of of a Dem victory in the election: Solid Dem: 100% Leans Dem: 75% Toss-Up: 50% Leans Rep: 25% Solid Rep: 0% That implies the following results from each category: Solid Dem: 197 Leans Dem: 3 Toss-up: 8 Leans Rep: 5.25 Solid Rep: 0 That gives us the baseline expected result of 213-214 Dem seats as a result of the election. That means the Dems would still be in the minority by 7 seats. To win a majority, the Dems need another 4 seats. So, they need to run the table on all the "Leans Dem" seats and take 70% of the tossup seats. They could certainly do it, because so many of the races are so iffy, but the baseline prediction doesn't imply a Dem majority. Republicans stay in the majority simply by doing as well as probability suggests, Dems need to do better than probabilities suggest to take the majority. In the Senate, It looks the same for the Dems: Good, but not quite good enough. Solid Dem: 43 Leans Dem: 1 Tossup: 5 Leans Rep: 2 Solid Rep: 49 Using the same methodology, the Dems result looks like: Solid Dem: 43 Leans Dem: .75 Tossup: 2.5 Leans Rep .5 That's a pickup of 3.75 seat, i.e. between 3 and 4 seats. Of course, the numbers are pretty small, so, give the Dems the Menendez victory, and three of the tossups for a 4-seat gain. They have to run the table on the tossups to pick up a Senate majority. The bottom line is that if the Poll averages are reasonably accurate, and the probabilistic results work out according to the baseline, then the result looks like this: HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES SENATE Those are two large assumptions, however, and both of them are questionable in terms of reliability. Still, if I were a Democrat, I'd be as nervous as Rahm Emanuel. At the end of the day, the big variable in this one is quite simple: Who is going to get their voters to the polls? In a squeaker like this, it's going to be the biggest determinant of the day...and it can be a big determinant, making a mockery of pre-election mathematics. |
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