Daily Kos Elections House Forecast: Anatomy of a wave (part 2 in a series)
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In last week’s installment of the DKE House forecast, we began to look at the necessary ingredients to generate a wave election in the House. The first ingredient we cited was the ability to put a lot of races on the table, in order to broaden the possiblDaily Kos Elections House Forecast: Anatomy of a wave (part 2 in a series)
In last week’s installment of the DKE House forecast, we began to look at the necessary ingredients to generate a wave election in the House. The first ingredient we cited was the ability to put a lot of races on the table, in order to broaden the possible roster of partisan “flips” on Election Day. On that score, when comparing the 2018 landscape to the most recent major wave election (the quite lamentable 2010 election cycle), we can conclude that the mission was largely accomplished: the number of GOP-held seats that Democrats have managed to put into a competitive range (within 5 points in at least one poll) is only slightly shy of what the GOP managed back in 2010. The second ingredient is having the resources to flip seats. And, on that front, the answer to whether the Democrats met the threshold there has clearly been a resounding “yes.” In fact, a more appropriate answer might be “holy crap, they didn’t clear the bar, they left the freaking atmosphere.” It is rare in politics, even for those of us who have been following the electoral cycles for a quarter century, to say that we have not seen something before. But it can be said with confidence—we have not seen a fundraising windfall anywhere close to what the Democrats accomplished over the last three months. And that, indeed, may have put a number of races currently on the radar onto the map for November. We will delve into that all-important money chase a little bit later. Before we do that, however, let’s update the forecast, where there has been some slight shifts, and one important change in methodology. Read more