Who will control House/Senate in 2019?

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

If you asked me in Jan. I would say Republican Senate + Democratic House.

However, I would say the GOP controls both at this very moment.

Senate: 54-46 R
House: 229-206 R

I say this because at the moment we have seen Trump's approval numbers shift up (which would probably start making him more of an asset in IN and MO now) and GCB numbers have leveled out to about D+5/6 (but we do know that these are R incumbents in GOP leaning districts) so I think it will translate to a tight GOP majority.

Lol you really think dems only get 12 seats in the house? You do realize that Hillary won 25 Republican-held seats, right (You probably don't realize this given your inane, reality-detached prediction). And Conor Lamb won in a district that TRump won by 20 and Tipinerni nearly won a district that Trump won by 21 / Romney won by 25

Sorry sister, but you're kinda delusional. I think the GOP does have a chance to keep the house, but no way they have such a big house majority. Especially when the GOP has pissed off people who voted for them in 2016 (like me).


I voted House (D) Senate (R). I think dems lose one seat in the senate.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

If you asked me in Jan. I would say Republican Senate + Democratic House.

However, I would say the GOP controls both at this very moment.

Senate: 54-46 R
House: 229-206 R

I say this because at the moment we have seen Trump's approval numbers shift up (which would probably start making him more of an asset in IN and MO now) and GCB numbers have leveled out to about D+5/6 (but we do know that these are R incumbents in GOP leaning districts) so I think it will translate to a tight GOP majority.

Lol you really think dems only get 12 seats in the house? You do realize that Hillary won 25 Republican-held seats, right (You probably don't realize this given your inane prediction). And Conor Lamb won in a district that TRump won by 20 and Tipinerni nearly won a district that Trump won by 21 / Romney won by 25

Sorry sister, but you're kinda delusional. I think the GOP does have a chance to keep the house, but no way they have such a big house majority. Especially when the GOP has pissed off people who voted for them in 2016 (like me).

I am going off of the fact that the GOP has unique circumstances as well with the top 2 primaries in CA + we have seen polling showing ALL major Trump district races going to the GOP (all of the GOP candidates had leads), and the fact that Trump was at -8.6 during the PA-18 special election (he had an avg of -12.9) and through the early voting period for AZ-08 he was around -11-13 the whole time.

Analytically -8.6 and -13.0 are very different. It could mean the difference in turnout. Not to mention sucky candidates make a huge difference too. We saw little to no difference in approval or GCB between the timing of GA-06, PA-18, or AZ-08. The difference that we saw was candidate quality.

If his approval average holds around -8 or -9 for OH-12 I think we could see a shift back to the GOP. Simply because less voters are going to be casting ballots because of him.

Again approval ratings are only one metric, but it is the only metric we have seen that has changed in the past few weeks. It's important because the less unpopular someone is the more likely they can become an asset (Senate's case) and the more likely people won't base their votes off of a person in a smaller race such as a House or State-level race.

Bill Clinton had a 48% approval and Obama had a 46% approval in their respective midterms and both got whacked.

And Dems winning the generic ballot by only 4 (which would be by far their lowest lead) would very likely give them more than 12 seats... Hillary won a net gain of 13 seats with her 2.1% win....

Also no, there was not a big difference in candidate quality in AZ-08. Lesko was perfectly fine and the GOP spent a lot more than dems there. Also, 47% of voters in AZ-08 were Republican, yet nearly 20% of them crossed over to vote for a random democrat who never held elected office before.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Senate stays 51-49 (AZ and NV go dem, IN and WI go GOP), Dems pick up maybe 10 seats in the house, if they're lucky.

So you think democrats manage to win states that Trump won by 42 & 36 (WV & ND), but somehow aren't able to even match Hillary's 2% PV win in the house (which would result in a 13 seat dem pickup).

Please tell me who you're dealer is... I want in on that good stuff.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Senate stays 51-49 (AZ and NV go dem, IN and WI go GOP), Dems pick up maybe 10 seats in the house, if they're lucky.

So you think democrats manage to win states that Trump won by 42 & 36 (WV & ND), but somehow aren't able to even match Hillary's 2% PV win in the house (which would result in a 13 seat dem pickup).

Please tell me who you're dealer is... I want in on that good stuff.

How much does the binary vote need to be to pick up 23 with that logic?

D+4.3%. The district that gives dems the majority is NE-02 (2.2%).

Obviously, that's not quite going to be what will happen. Colin Peterson, who represents a Trump +20 or so district, is more likely to win than the democratic opponent to Mario Diaz or Karen Handel, who both represent districts that went to Trump by less than 2.

But it goes to show that winning the house really isn't as hard as people say it is. Also, democrats will likely underperform in heavily miniority districts where they already win by a massive margin anyways (e.g districts in Chicago, San Francisco, NYC, Seattle, Detroit etc.), whereas swings will more likely be concentrated in districts that are Republican.

I believe that dems have a 50/50 chance of taking the house if they're winning the generic ballot by 5%, and about a 75-80% chance of taking the house if they're winning the generic ballot by 6%.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

I'm feeling notably more cautious in the past couple of weeks:

Senate: 52R/48D (Dems flip AZ and NV, GOP flips MO, WV, and one other Romney/Trump state)
House: 222D/213R (Control undecided until CA finishes counting in mid December, lots of lawsuits but Dems eventually have 218 without the disputed seats)

The House is not happening. You're still too optimistic. The Korea bounce is too strong and it's gonna take a Mueller-inspired fallout to change the numbers to last month's levels or lower. You better start wishing for Korea to fall apart.

No no no....Trump's judges, tax cuts, immigration policies....Korea will save him says increasingly nervous man 190th time this year

Ehhh the tax cuts really could be keeping just enough white college grads in the suburbs on board.  That is worth taking seriously.  

Also, note that while the economy is great today, it will be historically unprecedented if we don't have a recession by the end of 2020.  Ironically, a Dem congress would insulate Trump from the fallout over that.

Dems controlled both chambers of Congress when the Great Recession happened, and it didn’t stop people from blaming GOPers, leading to the 2008 landslide.

2008 was actually a significant historical underperformance given how bad things were.  It should have been more like D+15-20% at all levels than D+5-10%.  But Obama turned around and did significantly better than the economy would suggest in 2012, so whatever limited Dem performance in 2008 wasn't about him.

To be fair, Nov 2008 wasn't even the peak of the crisis. The crisis peaked in the summer of 2009. If the election was 6 months later, D's probably would have won the PV by 15%.