Over here at Log­a­rchism, we’ve been con­cen­trat­ing on the Pres­i­den­tial race and Sen­ate races. In large part, this is because we’re a data-​​driven group of blog­gers, and there isn’t much polling data on House races.

Today, I’ll take our first look at House races, and if there’s inter­est, we’ll make it a reg­u­lar (per­haps monthly) fea­ture. I’m using the Cook Polit­i­cal Report’s Com­pet­i­tive House Race chart (last updated August 2) as my guide. There are sim­i­lar rat­ings from other polit­i­cal sci­en­tists, for exam­ple Larry Sabato’s Crys­tal Ball (last updated July 11), The New York Times (last updated date unclear) and the National Jour­nal’s Hot­line (updated July 18).

The elec­tions for the 111th Con­gress took place in Novem­ber 2008. The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the 111th Con­gress ended with 255 Democ­rats and 179 Repub­li­cans, with one Repub­li­can vacancy (shown in white on the chart).

The elec­tions for the 112th Con­gress took place in Novem­ber, 2010. In that elec­tion, 193 Democ­rats and 242 Repub­li­cans were elected. Thus, the 2010 elec­tions resulted in a loss of 62 Demo­c­ra­tic seats, with the Repub­li­cans gain­ing by the same amount, of course.

The House now stands at 191 Democ­rats, 240 Repub­li­cans, with four vacant seats (two from each party).

Based on the Cook Polit­i­cal Report rank­ings, here’s a graphic show­ing the recent his­tor­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion of the House, and how the House races are cur­rently rated by Cook:

Cook Polit­i­cal Report rates 91 com­pet­i­tive races: 13 races as “Likely Demo­c­ra­tic” and 12 races as “Lean Demo­c­ra­tic”. They rate 25 more races as “tossup”, 19 as “Lean Repub­li­can” and 22 as “Likely Repub­li­can”. That leaves 156 Demo­c­ra­tic seats that Cook con­sid­ers “safe” (by exclu­sion) and 188 “safe” Repub­li­can seats.

Accord­ing to Cook, a slightly larger pro­por­tion of Repub­li­can as Demo­c­ra­tic seats are rated as “com­pet­i­tive”: 37⁄193 (19 per­cent) of Demo­c­ra­tic seats are rated “com­pet­i­tive” vs. 54⁄242 (22 per­cent) of Repub­li­can seats.

Sabato’s Crys­tal Ball rates 84 com­pet­i­tive races: 10 races are rated as “Likely Demo­c­ra­tic”, 20 as “Lean Demo­c­ra­tic”, 16 as “tossup”, 23 as “Lean Repub­li­can” and 15 as “Likely Republican”.

The New York Times rates 81 com­pet­i­tive races, but does not dis­tin­guish between “Likely” and “Lean”. They list 26 seats as “Demo­c­ra­tic”, 22 as “tossups” and 33 as “Republican”.

Since the Cook Polit­i­cal Report’s rank­ings are slightly more con­ser­v­a­tive than Sabato’s, and more detailed than the New York Times’s, I’ve used the Cook report as my guide.

 

Con­gress approval rat­ing, 1974-​​present. Source: Gallup.

The Democ­rats need a pickup of 25 seats to regain the major­ity. His­tor­i­cally, that’s unlikely. Since the Sec­ond World War, there have been ten elec­tions in which a sit­ting Pres­i­dent was run­ning for reëlec­tion. In 1948, the Democ­rats gained 75 seats; in 1956, Repub­li­cans lost two seats; in 1964, Democ­rats gained 37 (but John­son was still pre­sum­ably ben­e­fit­ing from his post-​​Kennedy assas­si­na­tion pop­u­lar­ity); in 1972, Repub­li­cans gained 12; in 1976, Repub­li­cans lost one and Ford lost his reëlec­tion bid; in 1980, Democ­rats lost 15 and Carter lost the elec­tion; in 1984, Repub­li­cans gained 16; in 1992, Repub­li­cans gained nine and George H.W. Bush lost; in 1996, Democ­rats gained two; and in 2004, Repub­li­cans gained three.

The last year the incum­bent President’s party gained a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of seats in a wave was 1948. (I’m ignor­ing 1964 because John­son in many ways ben­e­fited polit­i­cally from the ral­ly­ing of sup­port after Pres­i­dent John Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion the year before, and because the accom­pa­ny­ing Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was a land­slide.) Inter­est­ingly, that year, Harry Tru­man won a nar­row vic­tory over Thomas Dewey by cam­paign­ing against a “do-​​nothing Con­gress”. We don’t know what Congress’s approval rat­ing was in 1948. We do know that Congress’s approval (as mea­sured by Gallup) fell to a his­tor­i­cal low of ten per­cent in Feb­ru­ary and rebounded (as does a dead cat) to 16 per­cent in July.

In order to pick up 25 seats, Democ­rats would have to win all their cur­rent “Likely” and “Leans” seats (four of which are cur­rently Repub­li­can), win all nine of their cur­rent “tossups”, take all 16 Republican-​​held tossups, and chip off eight Republican-​​held “Leans Repub­li­can” seats just to gain a bare major­ity in the 113th Con­gress. (There are three Democratic-​​held “Likely Repub­li­can” seats: Arkansas’s 4th, and North Carolina’s 11th and 13th, that appear lost to the Democ­rats no mat­ter what.) That means tak­ing seats with a Cook Par­ti­san Vot­ing Index as great as R+4.

That’s a tall order. Accord­ingly, both Intrade and the Iowa Elec­tronic Mar­kets (IEM) rate that out­come as unlikely, although not pro­hib­i­tively so. Both futures mar­kets have the “Democ­rats con­trol House after 2012 elec­tion” con­tract at a 15 per­cent probability.

(Full dis­clo­sure: I cur­rently have 300 shares of the IEM con­tract for Demo­c­ra­tic con­trol of the House. I would per­son­ally put the like­li­hood of the Democ­rats ben­e­fit­ing from a medium wave elec­tion at about 25 per­cent, so I’ve bought the IEM shares I hold because I think the con­tract is undervalued.)

At Sabato’s Crys­tal Ball, edi­tor Kyle Kondik’s best guess is for a Demo­c­ra­tic gain of six seats.

Where would you put the prob­a­bil­ity of a Demo­c­ra­tic House takeover?

If either party gains only a slight major­ity after the elec­tion, would that be a pre­scrip­tion for more gridlock?

Is there any plau­si­ble sce­nario under which Con­gress may actu­ally accom­plish some­thing and raise its abysmal approval rating?

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