House is within reach in 2014. Really
Conventional wisdom holds that the Republicans will hold the House in 2014, and there is nothing unreasonable with that view. Democrats won the House national popular vote by one point in 2012, and yet still suffer a 32-seat minority. In fact, Republicans have been so effective at gerrymandering the House, that estimates suggest Democrats would have to win the House generic popular vote by 7-8 points to get the 17 seats they'd need for the majority. Crazy, huh?
That's not all. The president's party has averaged a loss of 26 seats in the House in the sixth year of his term since WWII, and of course, Democratic base groups are far less likely to turn out in an off-year election. So while conventional wisdom can be misguided, in this case, it's the safe bet for next year's elections.
And yet new polling from Democracy Corps suggests that Republicans are so incompetent that they genuinely risk losing control of the House.
In the polling, which featured an electorate shaped like 2010 (to give Dems a worst-case scenario), people prefer the Democratic Party over the teabaggers ... in Republican-held seats:
In seats held by Republicans, almost half rate the Republican Congress and Tea Party negatively. The Democratic Party enjoys a net 6-point favorability advantage over the Republican Party in these Republican seats.
Obamacare is not hurting Democrats, even in GOP-held seats:
Republicans’ obsession with repeal is out-of-step with voters in even these Republican-held districts. In the most competitive seats, voters favor implementing the law over repealing it by 8 points.
In 2010, seniors broke 59-38 for Republicans, buying into GOP claims that it was Democrats who wanted to kill Medicare. That GOP advantage appears to be gone:
More at: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/24/1218462/-House-is-within-reach-in-2014-Really
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