It’s October. The baseball games start to count for more, and in the National League where men are men, and players play on the field, the games become riveting managerial duels. Yes, I know I just lost readers. My Dodgers are home now and I can say what I want.
The polling is also getting more exciting though, as even the Gallup Poll is moving to a Likely Voter model. Let’s see where we are versus last week’s 49 seat Republican gain.
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 | – |
| Rasmussen 10/3 | LV | 48 | 52 | R+16 |
| Gallup High 10/3 | LV47 | 53 | R+18 | |
| Gallup Low 10/3 | LV | 40 | 60 | R+32 |
| Newsweek 9/30 | RV | 53 | 47 | R+6 |
| Fox News 9/29 | RV | 46 | 54 | R+20 |
| CNN/OR 9/23 | LV | 45 | 55 | R+22 |
| Politico/GWU/BG 9/22 | LV | 47 | 53 | R+18 |
Two polls really stand out, don’t they? Gallup’s low turnout LV model gives the highest swing I’ve ever seen. In fact, applying that 32 point swing to the electoral college wins the Republican 528 electoral votes. Under that environment Obama loses everything but DC, VT, and HI.
Newsweek’s raw 5 point advantage is also noteworthy. That’s the smallest swing to the Republicans we’ve seen since Gallup in July, Gallup again in June, and Quinnipiac in May. Even National Journal’s poll of adults in April only shows Democrats +4. I’ve already analyzed this poll in depth, so there’s not much else to say.
I include both odd polls as usual. Taking the weighted average I get a mean swing of 19.8. Plugging that swing into the Swingometer gives a projected Republican gain of 57 seats from 2008, giving the GOP a 235-200 House majority. The projection is back above 1994, putting this election back into historic territory.
The Gallup low and the Newsweek projections basically cancel out, meaning the gains this week come from no other poll showing it so close for the Democrats,keeping the swings in a 16-22 range.
House of Representatives Swingometer
Electoral College Swingometer
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