2012 House

While there will be major shifts in the House delegations of many states on Election Day, and while more than a handful of incumbents appear likely to lose, the total change in each party’s net total of House seats will probably not be large. That means it’s good to be the Republicans, who already hold a big edge in the House — an edge that we project them to keep. The Crystal Ball can now project that the Republicans will retain their House majority, although we suspect it will be at least a bit smaller than their current 25-seat edge. While we have been saying the Republicans were heavy favorites in the House for months, this is the first time we’ve said definitively that they will keep the majority. Given the topsy-turvy presidential race, it appeared in mid-September that President Obama was building a lead that might actually, through his coattails, put the House in play. But after the presidential race returned to its achingly close state, it’s become clear that while individual races are fluctuating, there’s not a clear wave building for either side. We will continue to update our ratings until the Monday before Election Day, and it

While the nation’s attention is fixated on the presidential and congressional races, it’s important to remember that the vast majority of states this year will also decide their state legislative contests. Walking us through the state legislative picture once again this cycle is Tim Storey, one of the nation’s top experts on state-level politics. Storey is an elections analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures, where he has been researching legislative elections and redistricting for more than 20 years. America’s 50 state legislatures are often called the “laboratories” or “engines” of democracy. That has perhaps never been more true than in the past couple of years when legislatures, some dominated by conservatives, some by liberals and some by moderates from both parties, have enacted numerous bold policy initiatives across the ideological spectrum. Legislators have been particularly active in tackling major issues over the past several years, even as Washington has been gridlocked. States passed groundbreaking, and often controversial, laws on same-sex marriage, immigration, the environment and collective bargaining by public employees, to name a few. And with the economy bumping along, state lawmakers have had to make difficult budgeting decisions. State legislatures allocate and make policy for more than

After shuffling many of our House ratings, it’s pretty obvious that the race for the House remains locked in a battle of trench warfare, with little obvious movement on either side. Given that the Republicans start from a position of great strength — Democrats need to net 25 seats to take control of the House — the GOP remains a heavy favorite to hold the lower chamber of Congress. Our new ratings show 195 safe seats for the Republicans and 156 safe seats for the Democrats, with 14 likely Republican seats and 13 likely Democratic seats. That leaves 23 leaning Republican and 20 leaning Democratic with 14 toss-ups. Only 57 of 435 seats — 13% — are in the leaning or toss-up categories. Our last full House update projected a Democratic gain of six seats; this time, we’re projecting a Democratic gain of four seats. Given the nature of the House — where many races are likely to be close to the end and where reliable polling is relatively scant, compared to Senate or gubernatorial races — our projections are bound to change, perhaps dramatically, in the last seven weeks before the election. But the center of gravity in this

In sports betting parlance, an “over/under” is a bet on whether there will be more or less of a given statistic in a certain game. So, in a football game, say the over/under is 50; gamblers would bet whether the total points scored would be more or less than 50. We include this reference just to make sure readers know what we’re talking about here, and also to include a regular Crystal Ball disclaimer: It’s our policy to never bet money on elections because we do not want to compromise our ratings. That said, if the hypothetical Crystal Ball Casino (that actually sounds like a casino name, right?) were to offer an over/under bet about the number of seats Democrats will win in the 2012 U.S. House elections, the relevant number would not be 218 — a bare House majority — but rather 200. Democrats have little shot at winning the House majority, but they do appear capable of winning some seats. The question is — how many? If we had to call all the races today, we’d estimate a Democratic gain of somewhere between five and 10 seats, with a specific guess of Democrats plus six. That would place

The conventional wisdom in the battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives is that Democrats will pick up at least some seats, perhaps netting somewhere in the high single or low double digits, but won’t pick up enough seats to seriously threaten John Boehner’s speakership. Indeed, if we had to project the House right now, we’d say a net Democratic gain of less than 10 seats. One possible but highly unlikely outcome — at least at this point — is that the Democrats overperform and recapture the House majority by netting 25 or more House seats. And equally unlikely but also possible is this: The Republicans winning their biggest House majority since before the Great Depression. Republicans currently hold 242 House seats, which is their biggest majority since 1946, when a postwar backlash against the Democrats and President Harry Truman gave Republicans 246 House seats. That was the first time Republicans had won the majority since 1928, when, in the election that swept Herbert Hoover into the presidency, Republicans won an impressive 267 seats. Two years later, after the stock market crashed, Democrats narrowly won the House majority and kept it through the Great Depression and World War