GOP Poised For Major Gains

It looks like the House should fall for to the GOP. RCP has the GOP at a 163 safe seats, (almost the entire Republican Caucus) with pick ups of almost 37 leaning their way. That puts them within 7 seats of taking the house and there are still 40 toss ups left! By the way one of those toss ups is Charles Djou, who through a divided Democratic party became the Republican rep for Hawaii 1 in a special election. More importantly he is now leading slightly in a District that overwhelming supported Obama in 2008 by the tune of 70% to McCain's 28%. What an extraordinary turn of events made even more amazing by the fact that he is the only member of the GOP in toss up status. The other 39 are all Dems!.


Another tea leaf pointing to significant movement towards the right is the amazing display of electoral prowess by Tom Tancredo who is now within 4 of becoming the governor in Colorado. Denver was the sight of the Dem Convention and epitomized the convergence of success, urban lifestyles, liberal social values, and the progressive agenda. Now its on the cusp of having one of the most right wing governors in the country. As for the Senate, I suspect many of the ties will break for Democrats as the superior organization skills of unions and interest groups overpower the enthusiasm of the right. That is not to say major gains will be made, just not enough to take the Senate.


So what are the chances the GOP takes the house? Well according to Nate Silver pretty good:

FiveThirtyEight’s projection for the U.S. House shows little change from last week. Republicans are given a 73 percent chance of taking over the House, up incrementally from 72 percent last week. During an average simulation run, Republicans finished with 227 seats, up from 226 last week; this would suggest a net gain of 48 seats from the 179 they hold currently.

However, there is considerable uncertainty in the forecast because of the unusually large number of House seats now in play. A gain of as large as 70-80 seats is not completely out of the question if everything broke right for Republicans. Conversely, if Democrats managed to see a material rebound in their national standing over the final two weeks of the campaign, they could lose as few as 20-30 seats, as relatively few individual districts are certain pickups for Republicans.

Its not just that the GOP is poised to make gains, they are making them by shifting the entire political spectrum to the right. If the Republicans do as well as expected, they will be well positioned for 2012 and for the passage of significant reforms in 2013.