Unlikely Voter

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Another week, another look at where the generic ballot polls are taking us! Last week’s House update had the Republicans gaining 60 seats in the House of Representatives, truly a historic gain wiping out the last two elections’ worth of gains for the Democrats.

But with all the new polls out since, let’s see where we are now.

As usual, to run my projection I take the recent generic ballot polls from Real Clear Politics, subtract out the undecideds and third party votes to get a pure two party vote, then compare that with the two party vote of 2008.

From there, I take a weighted average of the swing from 2008 to now in each poll, with Likely Voter polls counting double the weight of Registered Voter polls. That average is then run through the Swingometer to get a projected House composition.

Two party splits
Poll	Filter	D	R	Swing
2008	Actual	56	44	–
Quinnipiac 9/7	RV	47	53	R+18
Gallup 9/5	RV	50	50	R+12
Rasmussen 9/5	LV	43	57	R+26
CNN/OR 9/2	RV	46	54	R+20
Fox 9/2	RV	45	55	R+22
ABC/WaPo 9/2	RV	43	57	R+26
Dem. Corps 9/2	LV	46	54	R+20

The Gallup poll I already addressed and it seems to be taking the place Newsweek had last week as the odd poll out.

So moving on, the weighted average of those swings turns out to be an R+21.1 point swing from 2008. Checking the Swingometer, that swing projects a 58 seat Republican gain from 2008, for a 236-199 seat majority.

So the GOP has slipped slightly in the polls from last week, but that is to be expected. Even in a steady rout, the random noise of polling will bring weeks that a party is up, and weeks that the party is down.