Don’t confuse independent with moderate.

It’ll have to be for Obama. Since 1980, Bush looks to have the greatest positive variance in total results versus results with independents, at +4%. Bush was able to actually lose indies by 1%, yet barely win with base turnout. Most polls I see have Romney winning with independents, so Obama will probably have to vastly top Bush’s +4% from base turnout.

With good rea­son.

As I said, yes.

Redis­trict­ing will prob­a­bly help Repub­li­cans pick up some seats
they oth­er­wise wouldn’t have got­ten, while a national shift of
sen­ti­ment to the left from 2010 will prob­a­bly help Democ­rats pick
up some seats that Repub­li­cans cap­tured in 2010. Which effect will
dom­i­nate? I think the lat­ter by a hair, but I seri­ously doubt we’ll
be see­ing Nancy Pelosi pick­ing up the gavel in January.

Democrats have to pick up less than half as many seats as Republicans did two years ago in order to win back the House. Even reverting to the mean will give the Democrats a few pickups. If the public is disgusted by the antics of Republicans in the last few years, that may well be enough to overcome Republican gerrymandering. No way to tell yet though, since, as we agree, the polling just isn’t there, and isn’t likely to be.

Polling of national mood may give an indication in general of how House races are likely to go, but since this is the first election after redistricting, that’ll be less clear. But f it looks like there are shifts in the Senate, and if the President gets good margins in the swing states, that might mean something for particular House races.

I haven’t found any­one doing good pro­jec­tions on House races, or on the makeup of state leg­is­la­tures.

With good reason. It costs a lot to run a poll, and there’s an order of magnitude more competitive House seats than Senate seats. The increase in labor costs, coupled with the decrease in audience, keeps those down-ballot elections from penciling out.

But I’d be sur­prised if we don’t see sig­nif­i­cant changes from the 2010 mad­ness, espe­cially if Obama wins and Democ­rats pick up a Sen­ate seat or two.

I doubt anyone but the hardest conservative partisans believe that Republicans will pick up 50+ House seats. Redistricting will probably help Republicans pick up some seats they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten, while a national shift of sentiment to the left from 2010 will probably help Democrats pick up some seats that Republicans captured in 2010. Which effect will dominate? I think the latter by a hair, but I seriously doubt we’ll be seeing Nancy Pelosi picking up the gavel in January.

Are you imply­ing that the two events (Rom­ney wins and GOP takes con­trol of Sen­ate) are not highly correlated?

No, but the correlation is far less than 1. A month ago, the odds of Republicans controlling the Senate were much higher than the odds of Romney winning the election.