Democrats Now Favored to Take the House?

     We haven't heard too much talk about the race for the House. We've heard a lot more about the Senate race which has gone strongly over to the Democrats over the last month. Why this is can be debated but my premise is that it's the Mitt Romney effect.

      http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/senate-forecast-what-has-gone-wrong-for-g-o-p-candidates/

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/is-there-rising-democratic-wave.html

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/more-proof-of-romney-wave.html

      What we haven't heard so much about is the House, although Silver did suggest that if Romney continues to hurt down the ticket maybe the GOP House might have to start worrying:

      "if the trend continues, the question may no longer be whether Republicans can win the Senate — but how vulnerable they are to losing the House."

       Now, Sam Wang, over at Princeton Election Consortium-I just discovered this site; it's great; if you like Nate Silver you should love this-gives the Democrats a strong chance of taking back the House. Now again, there hasn't been much talk about this. Most mainstream pundits have claimed that it's unlikely that the Dems could take it back outright.

        Indeed, it seems like a steep climb as they have to win so many seats to accomplish it-25. However, here is Wang with the counterthesis. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.

        "As seen in recent articles in Politico and U.S. News, few pundits think the Democrats will re-take the House. However, analysis of a leading indicator suggests to me that transfer of control is a distinct possibility."

        "Conditions through August showed a 2% lead on the generic Congressional ballot for Democrats. As of September 20th, in the wake of the Democratic convention, the lead has widened to 4.0 +/- 2.0%. Although it has yet to be appreciated by pundits, this could well translate to a November loss of the House of Representatives by Republicans. Based on the generic Congressional ballot, the probability of a Democratic takeover is 74% with a median 16-seat majority. Whichever party is in control, the seat margin is headed for being narrower than the current Congress. Like any probability in the 20-80% range, this is a knife-edge situation. This picture may change over the coming six weeks as more information, especially district-level polls, becomes available."

     "In post-convention polls, Democrats got a big bounce that peaked at D+6% and now appears to be subsiding. It is a good thing for the Republicans that the election was not last week. The most recent polls (Sept. 7-17) indicate a median lead of D+4.0+/-2.0% (+/- estimated SEM, n=7 different pollsters). (Note that the HuffPost smoothing software uses a different algorithm.) This 11-point swing from 2010, if it were to hold, would lead to big Democratic gains in the House."

      "let us translate the generic Congressional ballot to estimate House seat outcomes. Applying the Wisdom-of-Pollster-Crowds principle that has served so well in Presidential and Senate races, we will use the poll median to approximate the actual popular preference."

     "The HuffPost graph above includes telephone polls (i.e. not robopoll or Internet), but that is strictly for purposes of clear display. Using all polls and median-based statistics to address issues of outlier data gives the median of D+4.0% that I gave. That translates to a narrow 16-seat Democratic majority in an election held today."

     "This would be an unusual outcome. It would involve a Democratic net gain of over 30 seats, much more than the typical gain for a re-elected president’s party. But 2010 was also an exceptional wave year for the Republicans. Again, think of the pendulum. In any event, this is what the numbers are currently telling us."

     http://election.princeton.edu/2012/09/20/house-outlook-for-2013-take-2/
  
     To be sure, others dispute this as he uses the generic congressional ballot as opposed to district level data. However, he justifies this arguing that there isn't yet reliable district data-those who do use them are actually the ones being mislead:

     "The main issue with this analysis is that it does not use district-level data. In the coming weeks, those surveys will become more abundant. In 2008, district polls did a very good job of estimating the outcome – on Election Eve. Six weeks out, the generic ballot preference is the week-to-week indicator that is available."

      He discusses the question of the best models to use in predicting the race here

      http://election.princeton.edu/2012/09/21/monkeying-around-with-fundamentals-based-models/

      The way poll analysis works is you factor in many different polls and predictions, though you also access how much-or how little-weight to apply to different polls based on their methodologies. So this is what this debate is over. However, when predicting how the House goes, this has to at least be factored into predictions.

       It will be interesting to see if this leads Nate Silver and others to start discussing the House races more.

     "The main issue with this analysis is that it does not use district-level data. In the coming weeks, those surveys will become more abundant. In 2008, district polls did a very good job of estimating the outcome – on Election Eve. Six weeks out, the generic ballot preference is the week-to-week indicator that is available."