All the Crystal Balls Say Democrats Will Gain in Midterms
Whatever your prediction method of choice, from this moment the main question is whether Democrats gain 12 seats or closer to 70.
When national Democratic stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are stumping for candidates in Wichita, Kansas, you know it’s going to be an interesting midterm election.
Photographer: J. Pat Carter for the Washington Post, via Getty Images
Here’s the bottom line on how the battle for the House of Representatives looks as we approach the fall campaign season. Every way of forecasting the outcomes now concludes that Democrats are favored to reach at least 218 seats and therefore gain a House majority — but there’s still a substantial chance that Republicans, while losing seats, could retain a slim majority. The plausible range remains very wide. In fact, I wouldn’t be shocked by anything from a dud of a 12-seat gain for the Democrats all the way up to a larger-than-2010 landslide of 70 seats.
There are basically three ways to forecast House elections. One is by looking at polls, using both national polls and individual district polls. That corresponds with the “lite” version of the Nate Silver forecast at FiveThirtyEight, and shows Democrats with an estimated 69 percent chance of reaching 218, with an average gain of 34 seats and an 80 percent range of Democrats gaining from nine to 61 seats. See also G. Elliot Morris’s fairly similar results.