Even More Bad Numbers for Democrats

Political scientist Alan Abramowitz does not offer encouraging words to Democrats:

According to a statistical model that has proven highly accurate in forecasting the outcomes of congressional elections, Republicans now have a good chance of regaining control of the House of Representatives in November. The model uses four independent variables to predict Republican seat change in congressional elections: the president’s net approval rating in the Gallup Poll, the results of the generic ballot question in the Gallup Poll, a dummy variable for midterm elections that is positive in Democratic midterm years and negative in Republican midterm years, and the number of seats held by Republicans before the election.

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Based on the current values of the four predictors, the model predicts that Republicans will gain 37 seats in the House of Representatives in November—very close to the 40 seats that they need to regain control of the House. This forecast is fairly close to those of a number of prominent political analysts based on more informal judgments about the national political environment and opportunities for seat switches.