Unlikely Voter

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It’s Monday, so it’s time to head over to Real Clear Politics and round up the most recent Generic Ballot polls to come up with a new projection of the House.

Last week’s said Republicans +58. 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	–
Gallup 9/19	RV	51	49	R+10
Rasmussen 9/19	LV	44	56	R+24
Fox 9/16	RV	47	53	R+18
CBS/NY Times 9/14	LV	49	51	R+14
AP/GfK 9/13	LV	45	55	R+22
PPP 9/13	RV	51	49	R+10
Politico/GWU/BG 9/9	LV	50	50	R+12

That’s a greater range of polling than we’ve seen in recent weeks. The entry of the Politico/George Washington University poll by The Tarrance Group poll is odd to me. It’s a Likely Voter poll, but it still has Obama favored by 9 points 53/44, but Obama loses the Presidential generic ballot 46-42, and even despite that the Congressional generic ballot is tied. That’s confusing.

Also I’m puzzled as to why PPP is using Registered Voter polling for this when the individual races are shifting to Likely Voters.

Regardless, taking a weighted average I get a mean swing of 16.5. And plugging that swing into the Swingometer gives a projected Republican gain of 47 seats from 2008, giving the GOP a 225-210 House majority. The projection has now fallen below the gain of 1994, thanks in large part to the Politico poll. But I said from the start I would work off the polls and the Swingometer, warts and all, and that is what I will continue to do.