Ezra Klein blog: Model update: No one knows who will win the House

[flpoljunkie]

Model update: No one knows who will win the House
By Dylan Matthews , Updated: October 8, 2012

If you’ve been following along with the Election in Numbers, you know that most models are predicting that President Obama will win reelection comfortably (more than 300 electoral votes, in many estimates) and Democrats will retain the Senate, with 52 to 54 seats.

The House, however, is a bit of a mystery. Democrats are leading in generic ballot polling, which prompted Sam Wang to predict that they’re favored to retake the majority there. And political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien have found that in midterm elections, generic ballot polling (even from a year ahead of time) is a pretty good predictor, bolstering Wang’s case.

Wang has altered his model to account for Republicans’ twin advantages from (a) being the incumbent party in power and (b) controlling most state legislatures and thus spearheading this decade’s redistricting wave. To retake the House, he concludes, Democrats need to win the popular vote by about 2.5 percentage points. And that’s exactly where they are in polling. The median poll since the convention gave Democrats a lead of precisely 2.5 points.

So Wang concludes the race is tied. His prediction estimates that both parties will get 217.5 seats, with a standard deviation of 11 seats in either direction. So at a 95 percent confidence level, the results range from a 43-seat margin for Democrats to a 43-seat margin for Republicans. That’s a more optimistic result for Democrats than the Monkey Cage model, which predicts a Republican margin of 47 seats, an outcome that Wang’s model rules out. But it’s a lot less promising for Democrats than Wang’s previous forecast.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/08/model-update-no-one-knows-who-will-win-the-house/

[longship]

1. Let's hope he's right.

R&

[Cosmocat]

4. Cook and all the other corporatist hacks

babbling about how it looks like only a 3 or 4 seat pickup ...

IF the race is restabilizing after the media circle jerk after the debate, the Ds seem capable of actually expanding a seat in two in the senate and chipping away at the house substantially.

They may not take it, but it darn well is going to be more than what the establishment pundit class is trying to set expectations at.

[Dawson Leery]

6. 3-4 seats? The most conservative models have the Democrats at +10 for seat gains.

"Corporate Hacks" indeed!

[Cosmocat]

8. Cook came out a week or so ago

and said it would be 4, maybe five seats max, and another guy, I think Sabato said the same thing ...

[TroyD]

2. Phew

At first when I saw the title I thought he was referring to the WHITE HOUSE.

[Blue Idaho]

3. Sounds like its time to help a few Democratic House members...

Do what you can - give what you can, I'd love to watch those crocodile tears rolling down the Orange Man's cheeks.

[former9thward]

5. " in midterm elections, generic ballot polling ... is a pretty good predictor"

The problem is that this is not a midterm election. So this model does not mean much.

[brooklynite]

7. I sent Wang's methodology to my FIL - a retired Ivy League Mathematics Professor...

...he couldn't understand it either.