2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumCrystal Ball vs. Princeton Election Consortium (Different House predictions)
Please state which of these predictions you believe will turn out to be accurate.
1)
Crystal Ball, June 14th, 2012 (column written by Kyle Kondik): Needless to say, there is no indication at this point that the Democrats can net the 25 seats that would give them a House majority; in fact, if Mitt Romney wins the presidency, Republicans could actually add seats to their already substantial caucus.http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/house-update-democrats-stuck-in-neutral/
2)
Princeton Election Consortium: House: The generic Congressional ballot, which is fairly reliable, favors D by +3.0 +/- 2.2 % (seven polls in June, each pollster counted once). An election based on this sample would give a Democratic takeover with 91% probability (i.e. 1.4 sigma).http://election.princeton.edu/
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)That's a mighty big IF.
Having seen what happened in WI, I can't get overly rosy in my predictions about November; I think the Republicans could carry the field if they can manage to crash the economy & use their Citizens United money to convince the electorate it's all Obama's fault.
I think, though, Obama will have some pretty big corporate $$ behind him in November, and will be able to hold his own in that regard.
Cosmocat
(14,583 posts)that being said, I think what we are likely to see is BO with a comfortable win, but the House being yet another Lucy pulling the ball out from Charlie Brown and falling a handful of seats shy of swinging back to D - not that the Ds having a very small majority in the House would do much for getting anything done, but it would still leave the fricken 10 year olds who run there House for the Rs the bully pulpit and functional ability to be a MAJOR pain the president's arse for most, if not all of a second term.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)KharmaTrain
(31,706 posts)Most of those competitive races usually don't start coming together in the final weeks of the campaign. A good example is '06 where the Foley scandal broke in August that would become a major issue that did help the Democrats sweep out rushpublicans that November.
The polling in these races usually are done by local TV, papers (what few are left) or smaller pollsters that will poll more frequently after Labor Day. It's hard to guage at this point two factors. The first being the state of the economy or whatever the big issue will be come November and the coat-tails either President Obama or Rmoney will have down ticket. If Willard's campaign falls apart similar to what we saw with McCain that would have a positive effect for Democrats...