Reading in this morning I have found THREE pieces that are swimming against the House November popular pundit narrative about which party will have the majority of that body next year…
(There actually ARE more from the tech pundits….)
These views are very technical….
(IT IS about TURNOUT.….)
If they are correct?
The American political world could be turned upside down come post election day in November….
And Donald Trump would be in trouble politically…..
Over the last few decades, we’ve gotten accustomed to the idea that Democrats could easily win the popular vote but struggle to win control of government.
This time, there’s a chance of a reversal. After years of winning without carrying the popular vote, Republicans might just need to win the most votes to win the House in 2022. There’s even a small chance of something we haven’t seen since 1952: Republicans winning the most votes, but failing to win control of government.
If you’re finding that a little hard to believe, you’re not alone. I struggled to make sense of it when I first reached these calculations myself. After all, gerrymandering does tilt the House slightly toward Republicans, even if nowhere near as much as it once did.
But FiveThirtyEight has reached a similar conclusion, with Republicans “favored to win a majority of seats if they win the popular vote by at least 0.4 points.” (These types of estimates are very imprecise — even one race going a little better than expected for Republicans could be enough to upset that kind of balance.)
One reason Democrats could pull this off is mundane: the number of races contested by only one of the major parties. This cycle, there are about twice as many races without a Democratic candidate as without a Republican one. Democrats won’t have candidates in about two dozen races, compared with about a dozen for Republicans. No one in South Dakota or North Dakota wanted to run for the House as a Democrat, apparently….
…
It’s hard to say with much confidence how much this turnout factor could help Democrats erase their usual structural disadvantage. We’ll find out in November. But it has the potential to be a big factor. Even if, hypothetically, every district were contested by both parties, the usual midterm turnout disparity and the Democratic incumbency edge could be enough to flip around the usual Democratic disadvantage in translating popular votes to seats….
With a month remaining before the midterm elections, House Democrats are in a position where few expected them to be even just a few months ago: competitive.
While the nation’s top political handicappers remain confident that Republicans will win control of the lower chamber in November, the expected margins have shrunk considerably heading into the home stretch….
…
Last week, the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election forecaster, continued the trend, shifting its forecast in 10 House races, seven of them in favor of Democrats. A day later, analysts at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an election handicapper based at the University of Virginia, shifted six House seats, four favoring Democrats.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, said he’d predicted earlier in the cycle that the GOP gains would be somewhere between 20 and 30 seats. “I’m now thinking somewhere in the teens,” he said.
“Republicans remain in the driver’s seat to flip the House,” Kondik said, “but it does not look at the moment like some sort of big wave.” ….
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In the eyes of some election experts, though, the deciding factor may be the simple question of which party more successfully dictates the flavor of the national dialogue in the final weeks….
Note…
The feeling MOSTLY IS still that the House most probably will have a Republican majority, however thin….