Unlikely Voter

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It’s early, so we’ve only had one House generic ballot in the last month that polled likely voters. Some would even say it’s too early to tell who the likely voters are, but as we learned last time, registered voter polls lean too far one way.

But, we peeked in on the early, naive Senate projection, so let’s do the same for the House.

As with last time, when my methodology outguessed me and hit +57, outguessing me getting very near the actual +63 result, the Swingometer focuses on the two-party vote, subtracting third parties and other distractions. In 2010, the raw vote went 51.38% for Republicans, and 44.77% for Democrats, yielding a 242-193 majority for Republicans. For a two party split that comes out as 53.4 R-46.6 D, for a Republicans +6.8 result. The difference from that edge is the ‘swing’ from year to year that I use.

Rasmussen’s latest is the one Likely Voter poll we have in the last month, and the only one at all in the last few weeks. Republicans 42, Democrats 39 is the reading. As a two party vote that’s 51.9-48.1, for an R+3.8 advantage. That’s a D+3 shift from the last election.

Plugging that D+3 shift into Swingometer, we get a 12 seat gain for Democrats, giving Republicans a reduced 230-205 majority.

With the Presidential election at the top of the ticket this cycle, it may be harder to get clear polling of the House. Presidential concerns may further shift the race. In addition, the redistricting we are seeing happen with this election makes it impossible to do a direct swing as I did from 2008 to 2010. I could last time, I can next time, but I can’t this time. But, we’ll muddle through and see how well it works anyway.

With 435 House districts, I’m thinking it’ll actually give a decent estimate.