Unlikely Voter

Back in December it seemed like Republicans were going to get walloped this year. But as of now, are they even set to lose the House at all?

This is going to be a bad year for Republicans, but the Senate race this year is so stacked in their favor, it’s practically impossible for them to lose control of the body this year.

Even after the Republicans choked away the Alabama seat, they have a 51-49 edge in the body. In the event of a 50-50 tie, votes by the Vice President Mike Pence will tilt the body to the Republicans, so Democrats must net a two seat gain in order to take control of the body.

Yes, technically two members of the Democrat caucus claim to be independent, but they both submit to the party whip and fully participate in the party caucus. One of them, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, even ran for the party’s nomination for President in 2016. So I will dispense with any pretense that Sanders and Angus King of Maine aren’t full members of the Senate Party.

Up this year is Class 1 of the Senate, along with two special elections from Class 2. the amount that this split favors Republicans is overwhelming.

Consider that Republicans not up this year number 42, while the Democrats not up this year are only 23. That means Republicans only need to win 8 seats out of 35 to hold the Senate. How easy is that?

Widely-accounted safe seats in Mississippi (Roger Wicker), Nebraska (Deb Fischer), Utah (Orrin Hatch retiring), and Wyoming (John Barrasso) account for half of it right there. That’s a virtual lock for Wicker, Fischer, Barrasso, and (probably) Mitt Romney to be Republicans 43, 44, 45, and 46.

That leaves four. Republicans have two more seats that are widely rated as “Likely”: Mississippi (Thad Cochran retired, Cindy Hyde-Smith appointed) and Texas (Ted Cruz). It’s conceivable for either of these seats to swing the other way, but when Cook in particular moves a seat to Likely as he has for Cruz and Hyde-Smith, it would be most unexpected for those seats to go the other way.

Beyond that, there are eight more seats widely rated as toss-ups: Arizona (Jeff Flake retiring), Florida (Bill Nelson), Indiana (Joe Donnelly), Missouri (Claire McCaskill), Nevada (Dean Heller), North Dakota (Heidi Heitkamp), Tennessee (Bob Corker retiring), and West Virginia (Joe Manchin). Between the eight toss-ups and the two “likely” seats, Republicans just have to win half, plus their safe seats, to get to 51 seats.

Winning half of the toss-ups may sound hard in a wave year, but look at the states. Seven of the eight toss-up states went for Donald Trump. Further, Democrats like McCaskill and Donnelly faced remarkably weak Republicans last time, and are unlikely to get so lucky this time.

On top of that, Democrats have their own Leaners in Trump states they have to defend: Montana (Jon Tester), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin). If Ted Cruz isn’t safe, then we can’t count them as safe, either.

Analysts often point out how lucky Donald Trump was in 2016. It’s true. But Democrats were also lucky in the 2012 Senate elections. They have to get more lucky than that if they want to net two seats and win the Senate this year.

One of the first posts I ever made at UnlikelyVoter charted Marco Rubio’s steady rise against Charlie Crist in his Senate primary.

Matt Bevin is not following that pattern against Mitch McConnell.

Rather than look at just one state, I thought it might be interesting to see what Swingometer has to say about a national poll, and as it turns out, the most recent national poll is the tracking poll from Rasmussen Reports.

This one is much better news for Mitt Romney than the North Carolina poll was.

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.

It’s that time again, when we start looking at the Congressional elections of this cycle. The House is a mess to project thanks to redistricting, so let’s start with the Senate this year.

It’s early though, so I’m calling my initial projection a “naive” projection, because I don’t know who the candidates are going to be, not yet.

While the 2012 House Swingometer may have problems due to redistricting making it impossible to do a perfect seat-for-seat swing, I’m going to try using it anyway to see what it says.

We have two generic ballot polls from last month. Let’s see what they might predict for the House in 2012.

And with my final survey of the House Generic polling done, it’s time to make my final survey of the Senate polling this year, now that it’s already election eve.

Last week the range of possibilities seemed to narrow. I expect that to continue, but let’s see.

This is it. Today’s is my final survey of the Generic Ballots. This is the last time this year I’ll ask Swingometer about the 2010 House elections.

Last week Republicans took their second straight week of a 57 seat projected gain. Will they hit 60? Will they fall below the 1994 benchmark instead?

Candidates are running out of time to make moves this year. Last week the Republicans stayed just on the edge of gaining seven seats, though I thought some of that was due to some freak polls.

We’ll see now just how freaky they were.

Good evening. We’re getting so very close to the end here, I may start running these more than once a week to see where they go. It depends on the interest level I see in that.

Last week it was Bloomberg filling in for Newsweek as the odd poll out, but now the original thing is here: Newsweek is back. We’ll see how far down it drags the overall average Republican gain.

It’s crunch time. The lines are being drawn, the late, final strategies are forming, and voting is underway in many places (my own ballot is filled out and ready to mail). Last week all the polls fell into a fairly narrow band and gave Republicans historic gains.

So let’s see if that’s sustained, or if the Democrats are closing it up late.

Tuesday is not only Soylent Green day, but it is also Senate Projection day now. Last week was pretty big for Republicans, and if the trend from then continues, we could see +8 be the projection, as well as a double digit chance of a majority shift.

In theory some races should start to tighten and others should just blow wide open, constraining the options Republicans have to gain further. But will the theory carry over to practice?