2018 Congressional Generic Ballot and House Polls Megathread - the original

[Virginiá]

My realignment is based on an  RCP article I read. I will try to find.   Clearly since 2010 Arkansas has experienced a total realignment.  So I feel it very acutely.  It is an awesome positive change in my opinion.

The reason some people may look at 2010 differently and as such an election is because it was basically the final closure of Democratic power in the South, which was surprisingly strong way past its due date. If you look at the legislative elections in most Southern states, you'll see Democrats steadily losing seats in almost every single election heading up to 1994 and 2010. Some states like Georgia, Oklahoma and South Carolina switched to Republicans fully in the early-mid 2000s (mid-90s for SC), but other states like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas et al took longer and 2010 was the final blow. But these losses started long before 2010. Look it up.

With many of them, the losses started back in the 80s, and at the presidential level, even longer. Any article calling 2010 a realignment is being farrrrr too superficial in their analysis, although I haven't really seen many people at all seriously argue that 2010 was that kind of election. Not in any convincing way at least.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

The southern realignment didn't actually finish completion until 2012. Many Arkansas dems held on even in 2010.

I guess you could say it didn't end until 2014 if you count John Barrow somehow surviving until then... but I wouldn't.

[BudgieForce]

I wonder if there was this much hand wringing in 2006.

[Kodak]

The southern realignment didn't actually finish completion until 2012. Many Arkansas dems held on even in 2010.

I guess you could say it didn't end until 2014 if you count John Barrow somehow surviving until then... but I wouldn't.

And there are still some spots where the Southern realignment never finished, like MS-AG.

[Torie]

The House is a tossup as to which party controls it after the next election. Beyond that finding that who ends up controlling the House is a coin flip (which does not surprise me - I suspect the odds that the Dems win it are lower than what most around here think), of more interest to me, is what folks think about their methodology.

Their approach involves polling cohorts of voters based on demographics, and then calculates their respective numbers in each of the CD's deemed potentially competitive (about 60 of them), and then using a weighted average appropriate for a given CD of the cohort poll results, comes up the the odds in each CD of one party or the other winning the seat, and then runs Monte Carlo simulations, to come up with the over/under estimated partisan split of the House overall.  I think I have paraphrased that right, more or less, but you can be the judge of that.

[mencken]

Oh no, you and CBS News are concern-trolling hacks like LimoLiberal for even suggesting the House is anything but Likely Dem at this point.

[Politician]

Wrong. Democrats have around an 80% chance of taking the House at this point in time.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

60 percent and OH 12 is Lean R

[mencken]

Oh no, you and CBS News are concern-trolling hacks like LimoLiberal for even suggesting the House is anything but Likely Dem at this point.

Wrong. Democrats have around an 80% chance of taking the House at this point in time.

Poe's law everyone...

[Torie]

Well screw the poll and its fancy metrics. Let's keep the auction going. I hear 80% from the Massachusetts liberal. 80% going once. Ah, 60% from the California Commie. Thank you CC! Anyone here willing to go for 55%? How about 58%? Going once ...

[Gustaf]

Estimating these sort of probabilities is not a particularly exact science.

I don't think sort of modelling approach is very precise, given that you'd expect demographics to vote very differently between different districts (ok not VERY VERY differently, but enough around the margins that it becomes a very noisy predictor).

I'd probably rate Democrats' chances at taking the House as a little better than coin flip but not that much higher. Maybe 60% or so.

[Hindsight was 2020]

I put it at around 60% the house goes dem. SO this isn't too far off

[Torie]

Estimating these sort of probabilities is not a particularly exact science.

I don't think sort of modelling approach is very precise, given that you'd expect demographics to vote very differently between different districts (ok not VERY VERY differently, but enough around the margins that it becomes a very noisy predictor).

I'd probably rate Democrats' chances at taking the House as a little better than coin flip but not that much higher. Maybe 60% or so.

That bid was already taken.

I think the game here is to finesse away the problem with small subsamples, which is what you would have on a CD by CD basis, by using a national sample that is finely grained by cohorts. But as you say, sometimes after correcting for everything else, geography still matters. Heck, there is a lot of chat these days, that folks actually choose to live with folks who politically agree with them. So the Godless gay white man living in a large metro area in a close in elegantly aged leafy upper middle class suburb who is a lawyer with X income aged 67 living in Dallas might have different political views than the otherwise demographic clone of him living in San Francisco. Perhaps they have a trip wire when big geographic discrepancies arise, and then cut the grain finer to try to help close such inconvenient gaps.

[ON Progressive]

Yeah, Dems almost win an R+13 seat in AZ with a some lady and pick up R+11 PA-18 all in the last three months, but sure, the House is merely a tossup.

[KingSweden]

I believe we’ve been discussing this poll in the GCB thread.

[Gass3268]

Yeah, Dems almost win an R+13 seat in AZ with a some lady and pick up R+11 PA-18 all in the last three months, but sure, the House is merely a tossup.

There is still a huge number of folks that are undecided and won't be until October at the earliest. What we've seen in every Congressional special election so far and most state special elections is that Democrats are winning over that undecided vote. The undecideds want a check on Trump. That to me is where the disconnect is.

[Giantsequoia]

I'm really surprised that in this poll Democrats are only flipping the House by such a small margin.

[Yellowhammer]

How dare they think the house isn't titanium D? Republicans are losing at least 100 seats. What hacks.

[Xing]

Of course the House is a Toss-Up, just like it was in 2010! Republicans losing a Senate race in Alabama, a House race in (old) PA-18, and winning AZ-08 by just 5%? Yeah, that sounds like a neutral environment to me.

[Chief Justice Keef]

People who only watch the GCB and pay attention to none of the fundamentals are the worst kind of hacks.

[Politician]

People who only watch the GCB and pay attention to none of the fundamentals are the worst kind of hacks.

Of course the House is a Toss-Up, just like it was in 2010! Republicans losing a Senate race in Alabama, a House race in (old) PA-18, and winning AZ-08 by just 5%? Yeah, that sounds like a neutral environment to me.

[OneJ]

Yeah, Dems almost win an R+13 seat in AZ with a some lady and pick up R+11 PA-18 all in the last three months, but sure, the House is merely a tossup.

There is still a huge number of folks that are undecided and won't be until October at the earliest. What we've seen in every Congressional special election so far and most state special elections is that Democrats are winning over that undecided vote. The undecideds want a check on Trump. That to me is where the disconnect is.

Here’s a secret: ”undecided” voters are predictable.

[Tartarus Sauce]

People who only watch the GCB and pay attention to none of the fundamentals are the worst kind of hacks.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

My prediction: Democrats have a 90% chance at winning the House.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Because of gerrymandering, I don't think they'll win the House, but I think it's almost certain they'll win the Senate.