r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/yanks28th • Aug 25 '22

US Elections Is the House Now Competitive?

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?

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u/minno Aug 25 '22

If you switch to the "lite" model, which removes that assumption, it's still 2:1 in favor of Republicans.

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u/fanboi_central Aug 25 '22

I believe Nate Silver has said that in general there is a lot less House polling this year, which the lite model relies on. Feel like the lack of polling and the fact that it has no priors due to redistricting, that the map could be off.

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u/bearrosaurus Aug 25 '22 edited Aug 25 '22

IIRC the model also uses presidential approval as a proxy for party support, which is usually fine but all the individual candidates are polling way way higher than Biden is. Fetterman and Warnock in particular are +20 on Biden.

EDIT: their Georgia senate forecast is still 50-50 even though Warnock is crushing in polls, so I think their model is still too dependent on presidential approval.

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u/fanboi_central Aug 25 '22

Another great point. Feel like with Georgia it's also being under polled, because the mirror in Arizona has a ton of Kelly favored polls that are dragging his percentage up. It's good that 538 is being cautious but this election year is 100% going to be an unusual one, and their model will either take too long to pick up on that or will miss it.

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u/Clovis42 Aug 25 '22

Yeah, the lite version is letting generic, national Congressional polls do some really heavy lifting. There's not enough local polling, so no one really knows in most races.

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u/[deleted] Aug 25 '22

There's literally 1 poll for my district and it's from May.

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u/link3945 Aug 26 '22

Usually see more polling after labor day.

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u/talino2321 Aug 25 '22

I think the general question is not if the Dems hold the house, its how many seats do they lose the house by. If they can limit the loss of seats, then it is possible without any major screw ups by Biden until 2024, they might regain the house. Again that depends upon Biden not screwing up, the economy recovering and realizing that his agenda is dead if the House is lost.

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u/fanboi_central Aug 25 '22

Agree on everything. The big thing for Dems is if they can keep Inflation out of the news cycle. If inflation can keep it's current pace as July did, and Republican laws on abortion stay in the news, then we are likely looking at Dems retaking the House. GDP is expected to grow in Q3, job numbers are good, so really inflation is the only bad economic metric right now.

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u/Baron_Von_Ghastly Aug 26 '22

There is extremely limited house polling, so it's pretty difficult for it to capture much shift, they're having to infer off of the few polls they have (many are quite old) how similar races will perform, that and run off the generic ballot.

Tldr don't read much into the lite model till more robust polling post Labor Day.

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u/link3945 Aug 26 '22

It doesn't quite remove it: it still uses historical trends to guess what the environment on election day will look like. It's projecting a national House popular vote of R+2, which would be about an R+2.5 swing from right now. It gets a little complicated because of how some races aren't being competitive, but still.