2020 Generic Ballot / Recruitment / Fundraising / Ratings Megathread v2

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Generic ballot - USC/Dornsife

Democrat 50.7% (nc)
Republican 44.9% (+0.3)

https://election.usc.edu/

Given the intense polarization and the ensuing party-line voting we've had up to now, it's hard to believe this of all elections would have that level of ticket splitting.

The national House vote will likely end up the same margin as the Presidential popular vote.

I doubt it, in the 3 past elections there has been a 3% spread between the House and presidential vote, in 2008, the presidential vote was D+7.2, the house was D+10.6, s 3.4% difference. In 2012, the presidential vote was D+3.9, the house was D+1.2, a 2.7% difference, in 2016, the presidential vote was D+2.1, the house was R+1.1, a 3.2% difference.

I think there will be a 3% difference this time, the only question is which way it goes.

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Democrats lead in the 538 generic ballot is down to 6.2%, if Republicans can run say 3% ahead of their 2018 house vote number they will flip a moderate number of seats. The only way Republicans wouldn’t gain seats if they did a few points better then 2018 in the house vote is if they just gain in safe Republican and Democratic seats and not in the 50/50 seats which is unlikely.

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Democrats lead in the 538 generic ballot is down to 6.2%, if Republicans can run say 3% ahead of their 2018 house vote number they will flip a moderate number of seats. The only way Republicans wouldn’t gain seats if they did a few points better then 2018 in the house vote is if they just gain in safe Republican and Democratic seats and not in the 50/50 seats which is unlikely.

That's discounting double incumbency (loss of the Republican incumbent vote + gain of a incumbent vote for Democrats),

Incumbency didn’t seem to let Republicans outperform the generic ballot in 2018 though, the Republicans held more seats but they didn’t outperform the generic ballot due to an incumbency advantage.

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The House models were a disaster this year, the Economist had the GOP house seat range with their 99% confidence interval between 171-208 seats, the GOP could get up to 214 seats when all is said and done, the GOP had an under 1% chance of winning 213 or 214 seats with the dem chances being over 99%.

In the 538 model, error margins were wider, this helped their model be more accurate but still the GOP winning 214 seats was on the 5th percentile of outcomes, and 213 seats was the 6th percentile.

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One positive about all the Republican house members retiring in 2018 and 2020 is there is now a lot of fresh blood in the House GOP, a lot of older, lower quality members have left, 76 Republican house members left voluntarily, were primaried or died in either the 2018 or 2020 cycles vs 35 democrats.

A further 30 Republican incumbents were taken out in 2018 for a net loss of 106 among Republican house members since 2016, of course some of the incumbents who lost in 2018 won this year, nonetheless we still have around a 100 new members or 40% renewal of the House GOP over just a 4 year period.

It is kind of amazing how much turnover there has been in just 4 years in the House GOP, I think it is a positive as a lot of the newer members are more effective and more in touch with where the party needs to go than many of the older member were, also it helps prevent a geriatric leadership class from developing like the House Democrats have.

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I was looking at the 538 house model and saw they had the GOP favoured in GA 7, it is hilarious how the 1 seats the dems flipped outside redistricting, 538 had the GOP winning and all the seats the GOP flipped, 538 had the dems winning. Their house model was really bad, wonder whether Nate Silver will ever talk about it publicly.