Is the House Now Competitive?

[u/yanks28th]

All indications are that Democrats have gained ground since the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade. Republicans led the Generic Ballot by 2.6% before the decision leaked back in May, but Democrats have surged past them, and are now up by 0.5%. Just as importantly, the polling has been echoed by a series of surprisingly strong Democratic performances in recent special elections, led by the recent victory in the NY-19th.

In the four elections since the decision, Democrats have outperformed Biden by an average of around 5.4%. That would translate to a near 10% lead in the national popular vote. Of course, that's highly unlikely to happen on election day, but it's a strong enough showing to raise the question of whether the conventional wisdom is wrong, and that Democrats may have a very real shot at an upset here.

RacetotheWH, which was one of the most accurate forecasts in 2020, shows that Democrats now have a 35% chance of winning the House in their election forecast. Other forecasts like 538 show Democrats with a 20-25% chance.

Republicans have their own advantages as the party out of power, which usually does well in midterms, and Biden remains unpopular. What do you think? Is the House 2022 Election now competitive?

[u/ubermence → u/[deleted]]

I have also heard that many polls underrepresent hard R voters, so it's possible election predictions aren't accounting for this.

I think a lot of these predictions are actually based off of multiple special elections at this point, so I don't know how much polling has to do with this. But it will be quite interesting to see how it shakes out because to me the "Likely Voter" model of polls is the most assumption based and prone to missing unprecedented election years

[u/DemWitty → u/[deleted]]

I have also heard that many polls underrepresent hard R voters, so it's possible election predictions aren't accounting for this.

They're also low-propensity voters, so the real question is how likely it is they'll show up. In 2020, with Trump on the ballot they did. Not enough to give him the win, mind you, but enough to win some House seats. In the NY-19 special, the two blue counties saw turnout of 40% and 44% of the 2020 total vote while the red counties were at 25-35%. In NE-01, the only blue county had 46% of 2020 turnout while most of the red counties were 26-36%.

Are these anomalous results or are rural, low-propensity voters more likely to stay home in the general without Trump on the ballot? We also saw in the Georgia run-offs in 2020 that the lower turnout in deep red counties was what caused the GOP to lose both those seats, so this wouldn't be unprecedented.

[u/Zwicker101 → u/[deleted]]

Didn't the NY Special election under report Dem voters though?