Posted on 02/26/2010 5:14:57 AM PST by Palmetto Patriot
It has only been a week since the Crystal Ball published our most recent comprehensive view of House races across the country, but political news abhors a vacuum and there already many new developments to report. All nine ratings changes this week benefit Republicans, further evidence of the many advantages they face across the country at this time. The Crystal Ball moves five Democratic seats from a “safe” rating onto our list of competitive races: KY-6 (Ben Chandler), MA-10 (Bill Delahunt), OH-13 (Betty Sutton), SC-5 (John Spratt), and VA-9 (Rick Boucher). In addition, two already competitive races for Democrats look even worse than before—IA-3 (Leonard Boswell) and IN-8 (OPEN, Brad Ellsworth)—and two Republican incumbents have improved their reelection prospects—AL-3 (Mike Rogers) and CA-44 (Ken Calvert).
(Excerpt) Read more at centerforpolitics.org ...
I think the record for house losses by a party in modern times was 70+ in the early 1900’s. Obama and the dems might have the dubious honor of setting a new record...
bump
And yet, the genius Sabato thinks the GOP will only pick up 27 seats.
For example, here where I live in WV-1 he has the incumbent, Mollohan, in a safe seat. That is not even close to the truth. He is an 28 year incumbent who is facing a Democrat primary challenge and we have six challangers on the Republican side. He has voted with Pelosi 98% of the time, against the wishes of his constituency. There is blood in the water here, and I'd like to make a personal side bet with Dr Sabato on the outcome of this one.
By the way, we have another Democrat in trouble in WV-3 (Rahall) whose race will be somewhat closer, but it's still very winnable. He hasn't been able to distance himself from Obama's "Cap & Trade" legislation which would devastate our local economy. Sabato doesn't even list this race on his chart.
If he's trying to gloss over these two races, how many Democrats are there who are in deep & serious trouble?????
We call him “Larry Sabotage” here in VA.
Right now he shows 83 House Dems in competitive races and only 23 Republicans. He uses the standard categorization: Likely D, Leans D, Toss-Up, Leans R and Likely R. That yields this very nice House Summary Chart that right now shows a likely Republican pickup of 27 seats with the Dems holding 19 out of 20 of the Toss-Up seats. Get half of those and it's a pickup of 37 seats.
...
Somehow I don't have that same image of Larry Sabato. He always seemed like a rational guy to me.
But in any case, what really counts is CAN HE PREDICT THE OUTCOME OF ELECTIONS. Well if we trust Wikipedia (yes I know, sometimes that's a stretch) then he has a pretty good track record. Here is the key Wikipedia entry for Sabato's Crystal Ball:
PREDICTIONS
Prior to the 2002 midterm elections, where the Republican Party saw gains in both branches of Congress, Sabato's Crystal Ball website accurately predicted the outcome in 433 of the 435 contests for the House of Representatives and 32 of 34 Senate races.[6]
In 2004, which saw Republicans retain the White House and gain seats in the House and Senate, Sabato's Crystal Ball website correctly predicted (99% accuracy) the outcome of 525 of the 530 political races, missing only one House race, one Senate race, one governor's race and two states in the Electoral College.[7]
In August 2006, Sabato's Crystal Ball predicted that the Democrats would gain 29 seats in the House of Representatives and 6 seats in the Senate, providing them with a majority in both chambers. Sabato's predictions proved correct: each of his 33 Senate predictions were accurate, and in the House, Democrats gained 29 seats on election night, the precise total predicted by the Crystal Ball (Democrats would go on to pick up a 30th seat in the December 12, 2006 run-off in Texas' 23rd district).[8]
In July 2008, Sabato's Crystal Ball correctly projected that Barack Obama would win the presidency in a near-landslide.[9] Sabato predicted a 364-174 margin in the Electoral College, as well as the popular vote percentages.[10] The prediction was merely one point off the mark, with the actual result on November 4, 2008 being Obama 365 and McCain 173. Sabato's Crystal Ball also accurately predicted 100% of all 35 Senate races, and 11 gubernatorial races correctly.[11] In 2006 he was named the most accurate prognosticator by FOX News, MSNBC, CNBC, and Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism. In 2006, Sabato was the only national analyst to correctly predict the exact Democratic gains in Senate and House contests.
I'll concede that he does get more accurate the closer to election day it becomes. Maybe my old age memory problems are kicking in, but I seem to remember him (like a lot of other liberals out there) soft pedaling the bad news in February. Then as we get closer to election day and the outcome is pretty obvious to almost everyone, they get more realistic to maintain any creditability.
That's pretty much true across the board for the pollsters. Of course the Lib pollsters will hold off to the very last minute so we do have to be on guard.
OTOH, Sabato is semi-regular on Fox News so I'm willing to give him a pass at this point. We'll see how it goes. In any case, it's going to be an interesting and fun election season (for a change.)
LOL That's I good one, but I never heard it before. I first heard his name in college. He had written a couple of very liberal leaning text books. Also I think his name came up a couple of times as a possible Clinton appointee. In any case, he see reality through a very think liberal prism.
See this:
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/aia2010022501/
This guy (a statistician and contributor to Sabato's outfit) predicts the same outcome (-37).
His best case for Dems is -20 and their worst case is -54.
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