Rs Have 82 Chance of Taking Senate Back Model Says

Midterm Election Indicators Daunting for Democrats Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. Of the two Republican seats seen as potential pickups for Democrats Republicans have a 94.37 chance of holding onto the open Georgia seat and upwards of a 97 chance of keeping the Kentucky seat. On the other hand there are currently eight Democratic-held seats where the Election Lab a new model built for The Washington Post gives Republicans a better than 50 chance of winning. In order they are:  

1. South Dakota - 99.14 of GOP takeover
2. West Virginia - 94.58 of GOP takeover
3. Montana - 73.05 of GOP takeover
4. Louisiana - 72.48 of GOP takeover
5. Iowa - 64.97 of GOP takeover
6. Michigan - 57.7 of GOP takeover
7. Arkansas - 55.94 of GOP takeover
8. Alaska - 50.49 of GOP takeover

According to a new Election Lab Model built for The Washington Post by political scientist and Monkey Cage blog author John Sides Republicans have an 82 chance of claiming the six seats they need to move back into the majority. Explains Sides amongst other things:

The main problem for Democrats is that its a midterm year and the presidents party almost always loses seats in the midterm. Moreover conditions make it difficult for Democrats to overcome this tendency: The economy is not growing that strongly and partly as a consequence President Obama is not that popular. As many have noted many seats that the Democrats must defend this year are in Republican-leaning states. Given these conditions the political science literature suggests that quality Republican candidates should emerge. This is because quality candidates are strategic: They tend to run when their chances of winning are higher. Thus many Republican candidates have significant political experience in state legislatures the U.S. House of Representatives and in other offices.

And in yet another indication of the Democratic Partys predicament a just released national survey by the Pew Research Center and USA TODAY conducted April 23-27 among 1501 adults (including 1162 registered voters) finds that 47 of registered voters support the Republican candidate in their district or lean Republican while just 43 favor the Democratic candidate or lean Democratic.

The new Pew Research/USA Today Poll hit its highest tilt in two decades indicating that Democrats have lost ground over the past six months in the so-called generic ballot.

The two outliers on the Republicans Pick-Up List at least at first glance appear to be Michigan and Iowa  both of which look better in the model for Republicans than conventional wisdom dictates. Ben Highton a political science professor at UC-Davis wrote last month about the models projections in each state.

• Iowa: Here if we had to guess wed say the model is overly bullish for the Republicans. The reason is that the Democrats have a good candidate in Rep. Bruce Braley and the Republicans may not be able to recruit a top-tier candidate.  But our model does not have this information about whats going on with the Republicans in Iowa.  It assumes that the Republicans will have a typical candidate in terms of quality for an open-seat race which does not appear very likely right now.
• Michigan: While the Democratic nominee will likely be Rep. Gary Peters the Republicans also have an apparently strong candidate with former secretary of state Terri Lynn Land.  In combination with the seat being open and the state being only modestly more Democratic in presidential voting than the nation overall our model currently gives the Republicans a 58 chance of winning this seat.

Its also worth remembering that the model gets better as more information  on candidate quality fundraising overall national political mood etc.  becomes available. So the Election Lab model will be better in a month than it is today. And better in two months than that. Still while the model might be somewhat bullish on Republican prospects at the moment it is in keeping with the general sense that the GOP is quite well positioned  both in terms of the seats up and the number of Democratic seats in jeopardy  to retake the majority. To find out more on how The Election Lab Model uses the past to predict the future click here.