Here is the problem with the house. There are 11 to 12 seats that are goners. We only have 2 semi realistic pick up opportunities.
Realistically, we are down 11 seats. Then we have the toss ups. They would have to all break GOP to not lose the house. That just isn't realistic. Tom Delay, Mark Foley, Don Sherwood, Curt Weldon's seats all should have been safe, but are probably lost. Without the scandals, the GOP would have kept the house. It's not about the GOP, it's individual members in districts either retiring, or being mired in scandal.
Montana wouldn't have been close if Conrad Burns wasn't so tied to Abramoff. Sherwood was safe. Foley was safe. Delay was safe. Those are heavily Republican areas. If you don't even make the dims compete in safe areas because of scandal, they can spend money elsewhere.
We will keep CD22.
According to analysis that all is based on polling data that over weighted their sample 5% or more to Dems.
What happens to all these forecasts if the polling sample was off just 2% D over R?.
Then we have 5 possible pickups.
So supposed the game falls on the positive end because the Repb GOTV is so good.
If the polls are off as little as 2% that 14-24 range RCP is giving changes to a 8-18. Then the 5 and your are looking at a possible for the Dems to pick up as few as 3 Seats! It is absurd for Freepers to run around here making factual pronouncements based wholly on garbage data.
The real answer is "We don't know". The Dems will gain seats. Question is how many? Odd is it not that NONE of the analysis was moved at ALL by the late breaking polling data showing the evaporating support for the Dems in the Generic sample? How they manage to miss that?
Two of those four will break Republican... bank on it!
LLS
Let's say there are 14 tossups (some ananlysts have as many as 20). We've lost the 11 you mention and we take 80% of the tossups (especially the incumbents, remember they high re-election rates) the Dems fail to take the majority by one vote. I still think we might get the seats held by Foley and Delay. Early returns from Conn., NY, Penn. and Indiana will tell the story.