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[Bumped up from Friday evening for visibility.]
* Hotshot prognosticator and polling analyst Nate Silver over at the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight site has completed his Congressional district analyses and concluded that two Democratic-held districts in Illinois may very well flip to the Republicans.
The 11th CD, currently held by Democrat Debbie Halvorson, has an 88 percent chance of flipping to the GOP via challenger Adam Kinzinger, according to Silver, who has placed the race on his “Likely Takeover” list.
There’s a 63 percent chance that the 14th District will be captured by the Republicans, Silver writes. Democrat Bill Foster is the incumbent. State Sen. Randy Hultgren is the GOP challenger. The race is on FiveThirtyEight’s “Lean Takeover” list.
* Third-time Democratic candidate Dan Seals has just a 53 percent chance of winning the 10th District open seat contest against Republican Bob Dold, Silver says. The seat is currently held by Republican Mark Kirk. The race is on FiveThirtyEight’s “Even Chance of Takeover” list.
Silver gives Democratic incumbent Phil Hare a 74 percent chance of victory. That belies unreleased polling which definitely puts the race in play, but FiveThirtyEight still has this one on a “Takeover Possible” list.
Democrat Melissa Bean is given a 96 percent chance of keeping her seat against Republican Joe Walsh.
All other incumbents of both parties here are given 100 percent chances of winning.
* Silver is predicting the Republicans have a 2 in 3 chance of taking control of the US House. His predictive model is based on numerous factors, including the generic ballot, the president’s overall and issue-specific approval ratings and lots of other factors to the point where Silver calls it the “kitchen sink” approach…
FiveThirtyEight’s prediction model does not look solely at these national indicators. Instead, it evaluates the outcome in each of the 435 Congressional districts in which voters will cast ballots this fall. Although the generic ballot has some predictive power even at the local level, our analysis has found that it is not any more important – and in many circumstances, less important – than a series of metrics that can be applied to individual districts. For example, race ratings published by expert forecasters – and particularly those produced by Cook Political and CQ Politics – have an outstanding track record and are used extensively in our model. These forecasts generally point to a somewhat milder outcome for Democrats – perhaps a loss of about 40 seats.
The model also makes use of polls of individual House districts, where they are available. Because nonpartisan polls of individual races are relatively rare, this model includes polls commissioned by campaigns, or by other explicitly partisan organizations (although such polls are subject to a significant adjustment that anticipates their potential bias). However, in contrast with our other forecasting products, our House model gives no particular deference to the polls, and instead they are but one of the series of indicators that we evaluate. Polling in individual House races can often be unreliable, as many voters don’t familiarize themselves with the candidates until late in the election cycle, and as the demographics of individual Congressional districts can be idiosyncratic as compared with larger regions like states.
And this year, there are often significant disagreements – sometimes, even double-digit gaps – among pollsters who are surveying the same House races. The polls can nevertheless have some value when analyzed carefully. But, except in the rare case where there are several trustworthy polls available in the same House district, it is best to combine them with other indicators, our analysis finds.
The model also looks at the amount of fund-raising by each candidate – in particular, at the amount raised from individual contributors, which can be a leading indicator of both the enthusiasm for a particular candidate and the strength of his or her organizational infrastructure. This fund-raising data can have quite a lot of predictive power, although it diminishes somewhat as the campaign evolves (if the candidate is not successful at using their monetary resources to persuade individual voters). Democratic candidates for the House had a very slight edge in individual contributions through the Federal Election Commission’s June reporting period, although it may reverse itself when third-quarter fund-raising reports are released this month.
Finally, the model evaluates past voting in the Congressional district, both in presidential campaigns and prior House elections. But such data needs to be interpreted carefully: past voting is much less meaningful once an incumbent retires, for instance, or if the candidate had not faced serious opposition from the other party in the last election. And voting follows slightly different patterns for the presidency and for Congress: poorer districts sometimes split their ticket between a Congressional Democrat and a Republican president, while the reverse is sometimes true for wealthier ones.
Click here for his complete congressional list.
posted by Rich Miller
Sunday, Sep 12, 10 @ 12:01 am
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