(Will cross-post this on Wantsomewood.blogspot.com)
Like everyone else, I expect the 2010 election to be a lackluster one for Democrats; I have little doubt that Democrats will lose seats in the House and Senate. This is not unusual; the party holding the White House has lost seats in nearly every election since the Roosevelt era. That said, I disagree with the many media pundits and predictors who have decided seven months before Election Day that the year will be ruinous for Democrats, and that Republicans will win back Congress. Given not only polls, but also simple facts on the ground like money and demographics, it is unlikely that the Republicans will win control of even one house of Congress, and two will be nearly impossible.
THE LONG ODDS. Republicans currently have only 41 seats in the Senate; they need ten more seats to have control. Just tying at nine seats isn’t enough, since Democrats would still have Vice President Joe Biden as the deciding vote. To get the ten seats, they have to win everything that is in the slightest doubt, and one or two more seats that aren’t considered in doubt now. True, they have a good shot at defeating Democratic incumbents in Arkansas, Colorado, and Nevada, and excellent shots at picking up open seats in Delaware, Indiana, and North Dakota. But even if they win all six of those seats (a likely, but not guaranteed, possibility), they still need four more. They need to defeat Barbara Boxer in California, a tough campaigner who has already survived one bad year for Democrats in a state that has been moving Democratic for over a decade. They need to win the seat in Pennsylvania, a blue-leaning state where they are running a far-right-wing ideologue–and where a similar right-wing ideologue, Rick Santorum, lost not so long ago. They need to win in Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois. Then, they need to really pull a rabbit out of a hat, either by defeating an established Democratic incumbent–perhaps Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, or Patty Murray in Washington state, neither of whom have strong challengers–or get an unlikely victory in the race for Chris Dodd’s open seat in Connecticut.
What makes this even harder is that they have to do all this while also not losing a single seat that they currently hold, and as of this writing, Democrats are competitive to win Republican-held open seats in Kentucky and Ohio, and possibly even defeat a Republican incumbent in North Carolina. It’s less likely, but not impossible, for Democrats to win in Florida, Missouri, or New Hampshire. I personally doubt that Democrats will win more than one or two of these six races, but obviously, a Democratic victory in any one of them would make the already-long odds for a Republican Senate takeover even longer, and two would make it nearly impossible. If it seems far-fetched for Democrats to win GOP seats this year, consider that it is very rare, even in years in which one party dominates, for the non-dominant party not to win any new seats at all. Even in 2004, the last year that Democrats fared poorly in congressional elections, they still won two open Senate seats the Republicans had previously held. Conversely, in 2000, a good year for Democrats nationally, that party won six new Senate seats, and would have won control of the Senate, but for the two seats that Republicans picked up.
To add even more historical perspective, in the 1994 election, the best one for Republicans in the last quarter-century, the GOP gained a total of seven seats in the Senate, and that was after Democrats failed to pass a health care bill and dealt with very low approval ratings for President Bill Clinton. To do a great deal better than that, in a year when the Democrats have passed health care and the Democratic President’s approval rating isn’t nearly as low, would be highly unlikely. (Since I started writing this article, Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s poll numbers have improved dramatically, making his defeat much less likely, and of course, not winning the seat in Nevada would be yet another obstacle in the way of Republicans winning control of the Senate.)
http://www.uselectionatlas.org/...
Republicans have a better chance in the House, but even there, a takeover is far from guaranteed. As of this writing (May 2010), Congressional Quarterly (CQ) expects Republicans to gain three seats, Democrats to gain two, and lists twenty-eight tossups, of which twenty-seven are currently held, or were last held, by Democrats. (Some of the tossup ratings are questionable--CQ thinks the GOP might win the open seats in Pennsylvania’s 7th District and New Hampshire’s 1st District, districts that were solidly won by both Obama and by the Democrats that vacated them in the last two elections–but we’ll be generous and assume that these seats are competitive for now.) The Republicans could get the three expected additional seats and win all twenty-eight tossups–an extremely optimistic scenario for them–and still be ten seats short of the forty-one seats they need to gain control. The last ten would have to all come from seats that are currently rated "leans Democratic" or "likely Democratic" by CQ, and just as with the Senate, they would have to come without Democrats picking up any new seats beyond the two that CQ now expects them to pick up. The results in the recent special election in Pennsylvania make me more confident in predicting that the Republicans will win many, but not all, of the tossups, and as I explained, they have to win all or almost all of them to have any chance of winning control of the House.
THE HEALTH CARE VOTE: The media pundits have interpreted the effect of Obama’s victory on health care the same way they do so many things–superficially. They have looked at polls saying that a (slim and decreasing) majority of the American public disapprove of the bill, and assumed that that means trouble for Democrats. As usual, their analysis is simple because it ignores the complexity; when asked about things that the bill does individually, a solid majority approves of them, and some of those things go into effect before November, so there is an excellent chance for public approval of the bill getting higher before the election.
That said, some Democrats, notably Congressman Tom Periello in Virginia, will have political problems because of their vote for the measure, but what’s never said is that some Republicans may also have problems because they joined their party’s unanimous vote against it. For example, Congressman Anh Cao of Louisiana, always a long-shot for re-election, undoubtedly sealed his chances by changing his vote to "no," one reason why CQ has his seat as one of two likely to swing to the Democrats.
THE POLLS. In 2002, Democrats had high hopes of holding on to control of the Senate and winning the House, in order to provide the then-very-powerful George W. Bush some counterweight. The result, of course, were disappointing, as the GOP, bouyed by national security concerns after September 11, actually won back the Senate and gained more seats in the House (Democrats did do well in gubernatorial elections that year). The generic-ballot polls that year presented a confusing picture; most of them were close, with some showing a slight preference for one party, and others for the other party, often within the margin of error.
http://www.pollingreport.com/...
You’d never know it from reading or listening to the media, but the polls for the past few months have been quite similar, with no party having a major advantage.
http://www.pollingreport.com/...
By contrast, in 2006, when Democrats won back both houses of Congress, nearly every generic-ballot poll showed a massive advantage for the victorious party for more than a year before the election.
http://www.pollingreport.com/...
THE MONEY ISSUE. The Democratic campaign committees frequently lag behind those of the Republicans, but this year is different; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and its Senate counterpart both have more money than their Republican opposites. True, the GOP has several months to make up this deficit, but to have to make it up between now and November does not help their cause.
THE SOLID SOUTH. Much of the reason that the Republicans gained seats in both houses in 2002 and 2004 was because the South had been moving to the GOP for some time, and long-serving and popular Democratic incumbents that retired were replaced with Republicans, especially in the Senate. This factor has now been largely played out; of the 22 senators from the 11 states of the former Confederacy, 15, or two-thirds of them, are now Republicans. In this election cycle, there is only one possible gain left in the South, the Arkansas Senate seat.
Let me be clear; I am not being naive. I have no doubt that this will not be a great election for Democrats, and that they will lose seats in both seats of Congress. It is far too soon to tell how many, but I have a hard time imagining the loss being less than a double-digit one in the House, and at least four seats in the Senate. That said, I think the chances of Republicans winning one house are very low, and the chance of winning both is close to impossible, for the reasons I outline here. Most of the Washington media pundits, in quite a contrast to 2006 and 2008, when they constantly said "too early to tell" until just a few days before the Democrats’ crushing victories, are confident that this election will be not just disappointing, but an utter disaster for Democrats. They may be in for a surprise this November.