Unlikely Voter

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As I hinted yesterday, it is now time to update my House projection. My last comprehensive review gave Republicans 52 seats over 2008, but let’s see how far the Swingometer needles move this time, as even I have been surprised by how far some of these new Generic Ballots have shifted toward Republicans.

Old reliable Real Clear Politics again has seven generics for us to look at. Two of them polled likely voters and the remaining five polled registered voters. When I average the Swingometer projections from all seven polls, it will be a weighted average giving the likely voter polls double weight.

To get a “swing” to put into the Swingometer for each poll, what I do is subtract out all of the voters in each poll that don’t choose Republicans or Democrats in order to get a bare two party vote. I then compare that with the actual, total two party vote in 2008’s House elections. This compares apples with apples.

Two party splits
Poll	Filter	D	R	Swing
2008	Actual	56	44	–
Rasmussen 9/5	LV	43	57	R+26
CNN/OR 9/2	RV	46	54	R+20
ABC/WaPo 9/2	LV	43	57	R+26
Fox 9/2	RV	45	55	R+22
USA/Gallup 8/30	RV	47	53	R+18
Gallup 8/29	RV	45	55	R+22
Newsweek 8/26	RV	50	50	R+12

First thoughts: Gee, that Newsweek looks pretty far off, doesn’t it? And I find it interesting that the Gallup poll done for USA Today has a sample size of 928 (a typical size) while Gallup’s own has a sample size of 1540 (second largest, behind only Rasmussen’s 3500). Who paid for a poll matters.

But moving on, the weighted average of these swings is R+22. Which means even with Newsweek included, Swingometer says Republicans gain 60 seats over 2008 and take a 238-197 House majority. If all of this is accurate then we’re in territory never seen since the Truman administration in terms of a single year swing. Back in the day, Presidential coattails would move the House far his way, but the mid-term would react to that, causing the House to be remarkably swingy. That’s not entirely the case anymore, as two of the last three midterms have even favored the party of the President, so a 60 seat win just isn’t done anymore.

But the generics suggest the Republicans just might.