Jim Geraghty: I Predict +70 Seats, And I'm Being Conservative;
Jay Cost: Gamma Rays Are Pushing Me Into Hulk Mode And I'm Citing (Without Endorsing) a Prediction of +76

Geraghty's come up with a prediction he calls conservative, calling for Republicans to flip 76 seats and Democrats to flip 6 (!!?!), for a net of +70.

I'm not really sure why he thinks the Democrats will flip six. Three, maybe? But he is, as he says, erring on the side of caution. Update: Here's the actual list of every House prediction. All 435.

Jay Cost again makes the point that Gallup's congressional generic has been very accurate since 1994 (more accurate than any other poll) and furthermore has no real partisan skew. (In three of four years, it has actually skewed Republican by about a point.)

[T]here has really only been one pollster in 15 years that has not exhibited a systematic partiality, and that is the Gallup poll. This was my point last week, that the Gallup final likely voter generic ballot number is extremely accurate. And as you can see it is more accurate, on average, than any other poll. In fact, it’s even substantially more accurate than an average of all the other final likely voter polls. In three out of four years, tossing out all the other polls and following only Gallup would have gotten you closer to the actual result.

This suggests, in turn, that our best approach to minimizing error when it comes to predicting the final popular vote spread is to favor heavily Gallup’s final likely vote projection.

Indeed, a regression analysis conducted by Emory University’s Alan Abramowitz suggests an extremely close fit between what Gallup predicts and what the final result will be.

...

A victory of 15 points suggests Republican gains well in excess of my previous estimate of 61 seats. The Abramowitz model suggests a pickup of about 76 seats, but I wouldn’t take that at face value.

His caution is that this is unprecedented so it is outside the usual parameters of modeling. He'll be making his actual prediction tomorrow (before voting begins, I trust!).

Abramowitz (the analyst he cites) offers a chart which tops out at a +68 seat gain, if Republicans have +12 in the national popular vote.

FWIW, and it's not worth much, my own current prediction is 70+, emphasis on the plus.

The Plural of Anecdote is Not Data But It Still Is Information: Geraghty
notes an AoS reader's report from last night about the serious electricity in the Patrick Murray camp in VA-8 and confirms, there are barely any Jim Moran signs in this heavily Democratic DC suburban area.

Then he starts singing show tunes.

Geraghty also smells desperation in CA-51, where incumbent Filner has launched a completely-disproven (and immediately so) negative attack against Nick Popaditch. Why would he do that, if he weren't in trouble? The negative charge was kinda lame to begin with (Popaditch hasn't voted in 11 years!), plus Popaditch had a pretty good excuse (Hey, sorry, when I was recovering from my grievous injuries sustained while defending the country I didn't manage to vote), and wasn't even true-- Popaditch immediately proved he had voted in every election, even when he was in combat or convalescing from injuries sustained thereby.

So what is this? Why would Filner toss such a lame grenade right into his own tent?

posted by Ace at 01:36 PM

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