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House Prediction, September 13 Edition: Democrats 218, Republicans 217

• Sep 12, 2010 from dagblog(dagblog) in *
  Whether Nancy Pelosi or John Boehner leads the House of Representatives is a difference fraught with consequence.(Don'tcha think?) Will Barack Obama replay the second half of Bill Clinton's first term, beating back government shutdowns and vetoing legislation, while facing a series of investigations launched by Speaker Boehner? Or will the Democrats weather an awful economy, and populist anger and anxiety, and preserve a thin majority?The New York Times is having an argument with itself on this question. Its House election page suggests that Democrats have 168 seats firmly in their grasp, with 47 more leaning their way, and 33 more jump balls. From that, you'd extrapolate a prediction of 231 or so seats, which is merely a loss of 24. (Some of that is because horserace predictions overvalue past performance, just as sports preview magazines tend to predict that last year's champ repeats.)Meanwhile, fivethirtyeight.com founder Nate Silver, now blogging for the Times, puts the mean outcome at 209 Democratic seats, for a loss of 46 and with it a loss of control of the House. Nate is on the more popular side of the issue, as he opines that Democrats are 66% likely to lose the House. I have reviewed data concerning all of the House races thought to be in play, and provide below my predictions. So as not to bury the lede, this piece makes the case in between that of the two NYT cases: I see the Democrats narrowly retaining the House. Here's how I got there. Part One: All Tied Up at 168-168 Per the New York Times, there are 168 safe seats on both sides. This already tells you something, as there are 255 Democratic seats, and 168 safe (meaning that there are 87 Democratic seats thought to be in play), and there are 178 Republican seats, with 168 safe, meaning that only ten Republican seats are in play. I did not accept this assumption uncritically, but instead sifted through races to see what supposedly "safe" races might be in play. The closest I could come was WA-02, where incumbent Democrat Rick Larsen ran 50-46 behind GOP challenger John Koster in a GOP-funded quasi-push poll. However, Washington has an open primary system in which both parties' voters vote at once, and Larsen not only had more votes than did Koster, but the non-Larsen-or-Koster vote for second-tier major party candidates was pretty heavily Democratic. If Larsen is the least safe of the safe Democrats (Nate Silver projects him winning by a 51-47 margin with a 74% chance to win, which I think understates the probability of victory), then I'm good with the NYT's 168/168 base. (NC-04, rated safe by the NYT, shows one poll funded by the R's with a 47-46 R advantage, which Real Clear Politics believes is likewise off.) Next, we move on to the 99 races in play, which we separate into different categories. Part Two: The Weird Races: Four Likely Democratic Pickups In 2010, this will be a brief discussion. The pickup possibilities are in Delaware, Illinois, Hawaii, and Louisiana. First, in LA-02, Rep. Anh Cao (R), elected in a D+20 district by a 50-47 margin in a post-election day runoff after the Democratic incumbent, Jefferson, was caught committing crimes. In this heavily D and heavily African-American New Orleans district, Cao will face African-American Democrat Cedric Richmond. Good luck with that, Anh. In HI-01, equally accidental GOP Congressman Charles Djou won a squeaker special election among himself and two Democrats in heavily Democratic Hawaii. Nate inexplicably rates this race as a jump ball, his model apparently overvaluing incumbency. Djou is toast. In DE-01, moderate Democrat John Carney, who has won statewide elections, is favored to replace incumbent Mike Castle, who is running for Delaware's open Senate seat. Polls suggest that Carney is in good shape (Nate pegs Carney as the most likely Dem pickup, which to me makes little sense, but it corroborates the likelihood he wins.) The final of the four races in which the Dems may win a new seat is a true jump ball. In IL-10, Dan Seals, the Democrat, won 47% of the vote against Rep. Mark Kirk in both the 2006 and 2008 wave elections, which are long gone. Seals runs now against a conservative political neophyte, businessman Robert Dold. The district, won by Obama in 2008 with 61% of the vote, trends wealthy and educated, and many of the GOP's national issues don't resonate as well in affluent suburban Chicago. Seals' own polling shows him up 13, and picking up 22% of Kirk's voters. I'm buying it, though barely. Here, the Democrats will pick up four seats. This puts the Democrats up 172-168, and means the Republicans have to flip 42 seats. But can they? Yes. Will they? Very hard to say.Part Three: Wherein Republicans Cruise to Fifteen Easy Wins All but one of these are pickups, many of first-term Democratic seats. AZ-05: Rep. Harry Mitchell (D) in a rematch against David Schweikert (R) in J.D. Hayworth's old district. Mitchell won 53-44 in 2008 in a wave election. NYT recently...