POLLING MADNESS….So how many House seats are Democrats likely to pick up this year? Over at Showdown ’06, Ruy Teixeira takes a look at all the available projections:
Three political scientists…using model-based computer simulations of the 435 individual House contests….predict a 32 seat pickup for the Democrats. As we shall see when we get to the race by race data, this is not such a crazy prediction.
….”Majority Watch”…indicates a possible Democratic gain of 38 seats (43 wins minus the five seats they already hold in the competitive 60 seats).
….Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin look over all the available public polling on House races and assign 222 seats to the Democrats with 25 tossups. Let’s say the Democrats and Republicans split the tossups….That would bring the Democratic total to 234 seats ? a gain of 31 seats over where they now stand.
….It’s also worth noting that Charlie Cook now predicts Democratic gains of 20-35 seats (with a hedge toward a higher number than 35). Using the midpoint of his range, that would put the Democrat gain at around 28 seats ? again, not far off the 32 mark.
The average of all these averages is pickup of about 32 seats ? exactly what the poli sci geeks are predicting. Not bad.
Ruy also takes a look at the Senate races, and has some skeptical words about the legendary GOP get-out-the-vote effort. Take a look at the whole thing.
