I posted a thread much like this a good while back- and some people actually responded with hostility. There was this concept that talking about house or senate seat loses some how made you an enemy, that you didn't belong here- funny, considering this is a board about politics. But it's a good health discussion to have, so we as volunteers and party workers can get ready for the work to come.
That being said, put your House and Senate predictions here. How do you think we'll do? Will we loose the House, will John Boehner become Speaker, or will we loose many seats but not the 39+ needed to change party control.(This went from 40 to 39 due to the Hawaii special election that went Republican, a district they are not considered in any way likely to hold)
There are some good websites for race by race predictions,
http://www.swingstateproject.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6592http://www.electionprojection.comhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabato%27s_Crystal_BallI've seen race predictions that say Democrats will go down to 50 seats in the Senate- it seems likely we'll loose a good few seats there, but unlikely we'll switch control. Many of the race predictions for the House say it will flip 21 seats, 24 seats, 25, 27, and even 31. The numbers seem all over the place!
What is clear though is that the contentious House seats are on our soil- we'd have to hold every single seat that is considered a contender for change in order to maintain our numbers now. That's realistically unlikely.
However, predictions as fun as they might be to make can often times be a bit of a waste of time- the races haven't started yet. I'm from Kansas and the 3rd Congressional district has always been held for years by a conservative Democrat- he's retiring and his wife is the likely contender for the nomination. She's a very center right candidate- which is fine by me, that's what we'd need to win- but many are writing this race off as a Republican win. I know the area she's running in and I think that's a little quick to call that race. Often times the 3rd congressional district has been considered a close race but Democrats have typically carried it well enough.
Now, my personal prediction- we may loose between 20 and 30 seats. I think more in the mid 20's. Once the races are started and we can really gauge the voters we'll have a better idea. Before former Rep. Murphy's seat was filled my predictions were pretty gloomy- seeing a Democrat, a conservative one at that, win that race in a special election where the other side is supposed to be more motivated to come and vote, where the media was telling us that every initiative we passed that the voters supported in 2008 that they suddenly no longer supported... Well, that race went far against the general thinking- it has changed the immediate political spectrum. The possibility of us loosing the House has gone from unimaginable, to realistically possible, and now to most likely not going to happen.
What do you folks think? Dazzle me! ^_^