Krugman: IF election was today, repubs lose the House - but much can happen in 12 months.

[pampango]

My Princeton colleague Sam Wang, one of the best poll aggregators out there — and one of the people who, if you were reading him, made you smarter than any of Romney’s advisors — takes on the PPP poll of selected Congressional districts. His conclusion:

If the election were held today, Democrats would pick up around 30 seats, giving them control of the chamber. I do not expect this to happen. Many things will happen in the coming 12 months, and the current crisis might be a distant memory. But at this point I do expect Democrats to pick up seats next year, an exception to the midterm rule.

Wang does this with “swingometrics.” We know that Republicans have a structural advantage in the House: Partly through gerrymandering, partly through sheer accident, Democratic voters (especially African-Americans) are heavily concentrated in a relatively small number of districts, so that even when Democrats win more votes overall — as they did last year — a GOP majority is likely. Wang estimates that a swing toward Democrats of 6 percent would be needed for them to retake the House. It don’t mean a thing if they don’t get that swing (sorry, had to put that in.)

As he says, November 2014 is a long way away. But it’s at least possible that the Republican brand will get worse, not better, over the course of the year, in which case an upset will indeed be in the cards.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/the-midterms-sam-wang-weighs-in/