House 2014 Election Update: The Dems Sure Are in Trouble...They May Even Lose a Seat or Two

The Democrats are going to be crushed in the House midterm elections this fall, right?  After all; the sitting president’s party always loses seats in the midterms, on average 26 lost seats since Truman’s time.  What’s more, this president is Barack Obama, stuck with an approval rating in the low 40’s.  Looks pretty bad, right?

Actually, no.  Barring a meteoric event between now and Election Day in roughly 10 weeks (look at the counter on the right hand side of this page if you want it down to the second), the GOP may pick up a few seats, less than 10 and perhaps none at all.  Granted, the Democrats will not pick up any seats, and thus will remain firmly in the minority, but there will be no bloodbath.

I’ve used three different methodologies to arrive at this prediction and they all are yielding similar results, that Republicans will pick up anywhere from one to four seats.  For those of you who, like me, prefer point estimates to ranges or probabilities, as of now I believe the GOP will pick up only one net House seat, to hold a 235 - 200 advantage in the 114^th Congress.

Why is Obama going to avoid the fate of his second-term predecessors?  Only Bill Clinton in 1998 was able to add seats, and his gain was a measly +5.  The rest suffered losses, usually major ones: -30 for Bush in 2006, -5 for Reagan, -48 for Ford/(if you count his one term as a continuation of Nixon’s second term) in 1974, -48 for LBJ/(JFK) in 1966, another -48 for Ike in 1958 and -28 for Truman/(FDR) in 1950.

There are at least three reasons why the GOP is not going to make this kind of hay:

1.       The Democrats hold only 201 seats (including two vacancies from Democrats who won in 2012 and have since resigned).  That’s a low number.  They lost 63 seats in 2010, so the odds of losing another pile are far lower given the low base.

2.       The gerrymandered house no longer will allow for major swings.  There were only 60 elections decided by less than 10 percentage points in 2012 (versus 111 in 1992) and only 31 of them were by less than 5 points.  Neither party is going to win or lose a boatload for the foreseeable future.

3.       The Republicans are a mighty unpopular party right now.  In four separate polls since May 1, the GOP approval rating averages 32%.  The Democrats are at 41%.  And the “generic” poll is tending to favorite the Democrats recently, albeit marginally

On to the predictions!  My first methodology is a regression equation that uses data from midterms back to 1950 and predicts the outcomes based on five variables:  the party of the president, which term the president is in, which party is in control of the House, how many seats they have, and the status of the “generic ballot,” which is a survey that asks people what party they will vote for in the congressional election with naming a specific candidate.  (Surprisingly, the president’s approval rating is not a strong enough variable to have made the final equation.)  You will note that the only one of those variables that can change before the election is the generic ballot.

For you stat buffs, I’ve put the equation at the end of this post (kudos to my daughter, Allie, who created it; she is pursuing a Masters in statistics en route to a Ph.D. in entomology).  Suffice to say that the equation has an R-squared of 98% (a measure of how strong the equation is), which is excellent, and here is the track record when applied to past elections.  As you can see, it is astonishingly accurate, predicting the change of seats in the President’s party since 1970 correctly within two seats 8 of 11 times, and within six seats every time.

President's Party Seat Change
Year	Prediction	Actual	Diff
2010	-64	-63	-1
2006	-29	-30	1
2002	6	8	-2
1998	6	5	1
1994	-57	-54	-3
1990	-6	-8	2
1986	-11	-5	-6
1982	-24	-26	2
1978	-13	-15	2
1974	-44	-48	4
1970	-10	-12	2
1966	-16	-48	32
1962	1	-4	5
1958	-6	-48	42
1954	-5	-18	13
1950	0	-28	28

By this method, as of today, the GOP will pick up a whopping 4 seats in the House, up to 238.  There have been eight “generic ballot” polls in the last month and the Democrats are just ahead on average, 40.5% to 40.1%.  It sort of makes sense that with this close split, little change should  be expected.

The second methodology is to aggregate the projections of the five services that predict house elections district-by-district:  Cook Report, Crystal Ball, Daily Kos, Real Clear Politics and Rothenburg/Roll Call.  That scorecard shows the GOP coming away from the elections with 235 total seats, a pickup of one.

The third methodology is my own projection, which looks at the same factors, presumably, as the services but arrives at slightly different conclusions.  These factors include past elections, 2012 presidential margins, the candidates themselves and recent polling, where it exists.  My projection happens, not surprisingly, to coincide with the experts with a GOP pickup of 1 seat, to 235 total seats, although the make-up of “solid,” “likely/lean” and “tossup” varies by a bit.

Here are the three methods laid out in a chart:

	Current	BTRTN	Services	BTRTN
	House	Model	Aggregated	Forecast
Democrats Total	201	197	200	200
Dem Solid	n/a	n/a	165	170
Dem Likely/Lean	n/a	n/a	25	19
Dem Tossup	n/a	n/a	10	11
Rep Tossup	n/a	n/a	3	6
Rep Likely/Lean	n/a	n/a	28	18
Rep Solid	n/a	n/a	204	211
Republicans Total	234	238	235	235
Note:  Current Democrats’ total includes two vacancies (NJ1 and NC 12)

There are, in my view, 54 seats “in play,” meaning they are competitive races that each side has a chance to win (not “solid” either way per the above chart).  And among them, 13 are toss-ups, too close to call, but some of the experts (including myself) have put them into one camp or the other.

Below are the 51 races to watch, ranked in order of Democratic likelihood to win.  I’ve put the margin of the Democrats’ 2012 victory (or defeat) in a column, as well as President Obama’s 2012 margin.  In addition, I created an average of the experts’ picks and have sorted the races in order of Democrats’ likelihood to win them.

		2012	2012
		D - R	O - R			Dem.	Rep.	BRTTN	Expert
State	Dist.	Margin	Margin	Incumb.	Party	Candidate	Candidate	Projection	Avg.
Connecticut	5	3%	8%	Esty	D	Esty	Greenberg	DEM L	1.8
Nevada	4	8%	11%	Horsford	D	Horsford	Hardy	DEM L	1.8
Iowa	1	15%	13%	Braley	D	Murphy	Blum	DEM L	2.0
New York	24	5%	16%	Maffei	D	Maffei	Maffei	DEM L	2.0
Minnesota	7	26%	-10%	Peterson	D	Peterson	Westrom	DEM L	2.6
Arizona	9	3%	5%	Sinema	D	Sinema	TBD	DEM L	2.8
California	31	-100%	17%	Miller	R	Aguilar	Chabot	DEM L	2.8
Illinois	17	7%	17%	Bustos	D	Bustos	Schilling	DEM L	2.8
New Hamp.	2	5%	8%	Kuster	D	Kuster	Garcia	DEM L	2.8
Texas	23	5%	-3%	Gallego	D	Gallego	Canseco	DEM L	2.8
Maine	2	16%	20%	Michaud	D	Cain	Polinquin	DEM L	2.9
California	26	4%	10%	Brownley	D	Brownley	Gorell	DEM L	3.0
Georgia	12	7%	-11%	Barrow	D	Barrow	Allen	DEM L	3.0
Florida	18	1%	-4%	Murphy	D	Murphy	TBD	DEM L	3.1
New York	11	-7%	4%	Grimm	R	Recchia	Grimm	DEM L	3.3
California	36	4%	3%	Ruiz	D	Ruiz	Nestande	DEM L	3.4
Minnesota	8	9%	6%	Nolan	D	Nolan	Mills	DEM L	3.4
California	7	1%	4%	Bera	D	Bera	Ose	DEM L	3.5
New York	1	4%	1%	Bishop	D	Bishop	Zeldin	DEM L	3.6
New York	18	3%	4%	Maloney	D	Maloney	Heyworth	DEM TU	2.6
Illinois	12	9%	2%	Enyart	D	Enyart	Bost	DEM TU	3.2
Mass.	6	1%	11%	Tierney	D	Tierney	Tisei	DEM TU	3.2
Arizona	1	3%	-3%	Kirkpatrick	D	Kirkpatrick	TBD	DEM TU	4.0
Florida	26	11%	7%	Garcia	D	Garcia	TBD	DEM TU	4.0
New Hamp.	1	4%	2%	Shea-Porter	D	Shea-Porter	Guinta	DEM TU	4.0
Arizona	2	0%	-2%	Barber	D	Barber	McSally	DEM TU	4.3
California	52	1%	6%	Peters	D	Peters	DeMaio	DEM TU	4.3
Illinois	10	1%	16%	Schneider	D	Schneider	Dold	DEM TU	4.3
New York	21	2%	6%	Owens	D	Woolf	Stefanik	DEM TU	4.3
West Virginia	3	8%	-32%	Rahall	D	Rahall	Jenkins	DEM TU	4.3
Colorado	6	-4%	5%	Coffman	R	Romanoff	Coffman	REP TU	4.7
Iowa	3	-9%	4%	Latham	R	Appel	TBD	REP TU	4.7
Florida	2	-5%	-6%	Southerland	R	TBD	Southerland	REP TU	5.6
Illinois	13	0%	-0.3%	Davis	R	Callis	Davis	REP TU	5.7
Nebraska	2	-2%	-7%	Terry	R	Ashford	Terry	REP TU	5.7
Arkansas	2	-16%	-12%	Griffin	R	Hays	Hill	REP TU	6.0
New Jersey	3	-9%	5%	Runyan	R	Belgard	MacArthur	REP L	6.0
Virginia	10	-20%	-1%	Wolf	R	Foust	Comstock	REP L	6.0
California	21	-20%	11%	Valadao	R	Renteria	Valadao	REP L	6.2
Michigan	1	-1%	-8%	Benishek	R	Cannon	Benishek	REP L	6.2
Michigan	8	-21%	-3%	Rogers	R	Schertzing	Bishop	REP L	6.2
New York	23	-4%	-1%	Reed	R	Robertson	Reed	REP L	6.2
West Virginia	2	-40%	-22%	Capito	R	Casey	Mooney	REP L	6.2
Penn.	6	-14%	-3%	Gerlach	R	Trivedi	Costello	REP L	6.4
Michigan	7	-10%	-3%	Walberg	R	Byrnes	Walberg	REP L	6.6
Nevada	3	-8%	-42%	Heck	R	Bilbray-Cohn	Heck	REP L	6.6
Ohio	14	-16%	-3%	Joyce	R	Wager	Joyce	REP L	6.8
Penn.	8	-13%	-0.1%	Fitzpatrick	R	Strouse	Fitzpatrick	REP L	6.8
Indiana	2	-1%	-14%	Walorski	R	Bock	Walorski	REP L	7.0
Montana	AL	-10%	-13%	Daines	R	Lewis	Zynke	REP L	7.0
Ohio	6	-7%	-12%	Johnson	R	Garrison	Johnson	REP L	7.0
Wisconsin	6	-24%	-7%	Petri	R	Harris	TBD	REP L	7.0
California	10	-6%	4%	Denham	R	Eggman	Denham	REP L	7.2
Michigan	11	-6%	-2%	Bentivolio	R	McKenzie	Trott	REP L	7.2

So no bloodbath for Obama in 2014.  He will be stuck with a cranky GOP majority in the House – as will John Boehner.  Whether there will be any break in the gridlock remains to be seen, but I am not optimistic in the least.  A Tea Party-driven House and a lame-duck president who barely works with his own party is not a formula for the breakthroughs we need on immigration reform, gun control and many other key issues crying out for bold action.

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For the stat heads out there, here are the relevant statistics encompassing the regression equation:

Variable	Parameter	Standard	Type II SS	F Value	Pr > F
	Estimate	Error
Intercept	66.57315	15.74877	396.35903	17.87	0.0134
party	-14.40944	4.69733	208.72598	9.41	0.0374
pres_term	15.41379	4.18056	301.53172	13.59	0.0211
pres_seats	-0.43989	0.06192	1119.5085	50.47	0.0021
gen_ballot	3.50275	0.29246	3181.782	143.45	0.0003
majority	13.29661	5.07375	152.33774	6.87	0.0588