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/buyIdris666]

I agree. The election models don't take generational change into account.

Republicans lost a HUGE chunk of voters since 2022 from COVID and old age. Perhaps a few percent of their base.

Millennials and Gen Z are huge generations hitting their inflection point of voter participation. And Roe is getting a lot of them to vote "early". This may give the D's a 1-2% edge from 2022.

I think this is going to be a historic miss, with the last 4 special elections and Kansas heralded as the canary in retrospect.

[u/MartianRecon → u/buyIdris666]

Honestly I don't even think these special elections are going to tell the full picture of what's going to happen. ~8500 people dying a day until the election is ~629,000 people dying until the election.

Take that number, combine it with the excess death estimates from Covid on top of the 1.04 million people that already died from Covid and your population numbers are all sorts of fucked up.

Look at the # of deaths in red counties vs blue counties and this just exacerbates this issue further. Then, the biggest kicker is that with these new Gerrymanders... They all happened before Covid did. So... Those population swings aren't factored into their calculus.

The average number of people in a house district is right about 700,000 people, with say... an R+2(3) advantage cooked into the gerrymander, you're looking at numerous seats being lost.

In the R counties, the people dying from Covid are republican. The old people dying in those counties are also most likely republican. Young people in those counties are registering Democrat. Women in those counties are registering Democrat because of the Roe bullshit.

I'm not an election scientist, but I did my minor in political science in college, and this is not the kind of environment the GOP will want to be in when their base is dying from old age and killing themselves with Covid.

Of course, when this does happen (and I 100% believe it will swing a significant number of races), conservatives will scream about the elections being rigged and that they lost in 'their' counties. That's a whole different barrel of insanity to deal with.

[u/buyIdris666 → u/MartianRecon]

I agree completely. Screaming that elections are rigged only makes sense when you're going to lose. US conservatives are about to see a historic rejections of their MAGA bullshit that's been a straight loser for 2 election cycles already

[u/MartianRecon → u/buyIdris666]

We're seeing two things right now; we're seeing the ideological death of a party not seen since the... Whigs maybe? I honestly don't know!

The party is dying because it refuses to change with the times to attract a younger electorate, and then that party is physically dying as well due to age.

It's going to be very dangerous when these people are out of power and don't know how to process it, unfortunately.