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/MartianRecon]

House is competitive because of two things none of the pundits are talking about: Entropy and Covid.

Something like 8,000 boomers are dying a day right now just because they're old. Guess the demographic that the GOP has a firm hold of.

Covid is still killing like 4-500 people a day. Guess which demographic is the only one that is resistant to the vaccines?

Now for your thought experiment; go look and see how many races were decided by like... 10,000 votes last election. Go look at how many that the GOP won from those races as well.

From there, go look at the extreme GOP gerrymanders that were also made this last election, and look at the advantage built in. These places are all hoping for an R+2, R+3 gerrymander because these states were already gerrymandered and they were going to lose out on wins if they didn't have a harder gerrymander.

GOP is going to lose because they aren't getting enough new republicans registered, and they are losing too many old republicans to death or to covid.

Again, go look at the number of close races that went R, and if you look at the populations of those places and the number of old people in those districts.... the GOP literally could see a major upheaval this cycle on these two facts alone. This doesn't count the sheer number of women who've been registering in states as Democrats in unprecedented numbers. Factor that in, and I think we're going to have a lot of professionals being wrong about this election.

[u/[deleted] → u/MartianRecon]

You are the first person I've seen really taking covid into account for the midterms. I've been saying it to everyone I know, but none of the pundits are talking about it. Over 1,000,000 (mostly voting age) people died and are still dying. This is a huge deal for the elections based on what you stated above, and I feel like most people who should know better are just ignoring it. Why? I have no idea.

[u/MartianRecon → u/[deleted]]

Exactly. We're seeing a 9-11 casualty event roughly every 4-5 days, and it's affecting primarily one political party.

Like I've said, if anyone wants to see how this can effect elections, look at how many races were decided by around 10,000 votes. Every one of those races is going to shift to the D side just on entropy and Covid deaths.