Yesterday, I pointed out that Democratic chances of winning the House--21% at the time, according to both Pollster.com and 538--were better than the odds of rolling doubles in Monopoly (17%). Today, Pollster.com shows Democrats with a 22% chance, and Nate Silver comes in at 20%.. Effectively, the situation remains the same.
It's really close:
Now suppose that the forecast understates Democratic support by 2 points. There are 8 seats in which we project the Republican candidate to win by a margin of between 1 and 2 points; now these would also be wiped off the board. Now the Republican gains would be reduced to just 38 seats — and the Democrats would hold the House, 218-217!
Read that again: it means that if our forecasts turn out to be biased against Democrats by just 2 points overall, the party becomes about an even-money bet to hold the House.
A 2-point shift is not all that much. It also isn’t exactly determined by luck.
Polls could be biased against Democrats by 2% due to factors out of our control such as cell-phone bias, flawed likely voter models, and Republican-funded pollsters flooding the zone. Or, we could get that 2% through factors entirely in our control--namely, the blood, sweat and tears of a big final push of small donations and GOTV.
Either way, the only control you have over the situation is to continue to take part in GOTV efforts like Call Out the Vote, and to continue to make small donations to the great candidates on Orange to Blue.
We do need to roll doubles, but we do it by working our asses off, not by getting lucky. Contribute to Orange to Blue candidates, and sign up to Call Out The Vote.