Princeton Election Consortium gives Dems a 74% chance of taking the house...
As seen in recent articles in Politico and U.S. News, few pundits think the Democrats will re-take the House. However, analysis of a leading indicator suggests to me that transfer of control is a distinct possibility. With that, I plunge ahead.
Predicting the House outcome is challenging. First, there is the basic problem that we have to estimate how far opinion will move between now and November. On top of that, there is uncertainty in knowing how the polling measurement – generic Congressional ballot preference – translates to a seat outcome.
Another approach would be to use district-by-district polls and ratings. An estimate like that can be seen from our data partner, Pollster.com. Their House outlook shows retained GOP control, and RealClearPolitics implies the same. However, many of those polls are weeks or months old. My estimate today suggests that in the coming weeks, we might look for district polls to move in the Democrats’ direction. This is also an opportunity for a detailed analytical approach, as taken elsewhere, to shine.
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In post-convention polls, Democrats got a big bounce that peaked at D+6% and now appears to be subsiding. It is a good thing for the Republicans that the election was not last week. The most recent polls (Sept. 7-17) indicate a median lead of D+4.0+/-2.0% (+/- estimated SEM, n=7 different pollsters). (Note that the HuffPost smoothing software uses a different algorithm.) This 11-point swing from 2010, if it were to hold, would lead to big Democratic gains in the House.
read more at...
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/09/20/house-outlook-for-2013-take-2/#more-5616
on edit: This was his response to a question...
Well, hold on. There’s a 26% chance it won’t happen. That’s not small.
Let’s put it this way. I’ve given you probabilities for President (88%), Senate (88%), and House (74%). If these are well-estimated probabilities, there is an approximately 50-50 chance that I will be wrong about one of them. (There are additional issues because the probabilities are non-independent, but forget about that for a moment.)
In regard to voter ID/purge issues, I think that will be small. But it does deserve a quantitative look.
= new reply since forum marked as read
