There is a returning sense of hope among Democrats, and I am going to try to add to it in this post. As we watch polls come in, keep in mind that Democrats can keep the House of Representatives without winning the popular vote.
Seriously. Here is a projection Nate Silver did back in April on translating the national popular vote in the House to seat totals:
I shaded and circled the area on the graph highlighting where Democrats are projected to keep control of the House despite losing the popular vote. Roughly speaking, it ranges from Democrats losing the popular vote by 0.1% to 2.5%. So, there is a cushion.
In May, Jeff Jones produced a similar projection for Gallup’s pre-election seminar:
The image is hard to make out, by roughly speaking it projects that Republicans need to win 51.7% or 51.8% of the two-party national popular vote in order to take control in the House. The “two-party vote” bit is key, because it means Republicans need to a margin of 2.5% or more only among the votes cast for either Democrats or Republicans. Third party voters don’t matter in this projection.
So, that’s two projections from respected analysts saying that Democrats could very well hold onto the House even if they lose the national popular vote by as much as 2.5%. With that in mind, here is the latest generic ballot trend from Pollster.com, with Zogby interactive polls removed (Zogby interactive is the least accurate poll in the country, and by a long way):
According to Pollster.com, even with Rasmussen included in the averages, Democrats only trail by 2.1% in the generic ballot, and by 2.4% when looking only at the two-party vote. With a cushion of potentially as much as 2.5%, that puts Democrats within the margin of keeping control right now. They are not within the margin by much, but it does show that the Democratic position is far from hopeless.
While I’d rather win both the House and the national popular vote straight-up, there would be a satisfying irony to losing the national popular vote but keeping control of the House anyway. Republicans lost the popular vote for the House in 1996, for President in 2000, and for Senate during the cumulative 2000-2004 elections. But, they assumed office anyway, and were not particularly apologetic, gracious, bipartisan or moderate once they did so.
It sure would be nice to get one of those “losses” back. Maybe it would even get Republicans on board with reforming our screwed up election system.