Both Fivethirtyeight and Fairvote Models Flip the House Again Today

The generic congressional ballot has widened again in the last two weeks, showing Democrats with a 9.2 point lead over Republicans on the question of which party the voter would support for Congress.  Democrats are still 1.2% shy of hitting the 50% mark, but Republicans are 10.6 points short of hitting 50%.  

 

Fivethirtyeight's 2018 Projection for the House this morning gives Dems an 83.3% chance of winning back the House this year in their "classic" model, and a 78.5% chance of winning in their "deluxe" model, which includes opinions from experts on the ground in each district.

The Fairvote.org model, which does not rely on any polling, but looks at the relationship between a district's competitiveness (past elections, party registration, gerrymandering, incumbency bump, etc.) and the national generic congressional ballot, shows the House flipping with a Democratic Party winning margin on 5 seats based on today's values on the generic congressional ballot.  But it still shows the CD2 seat a a "safe seat" for Republican candidate Yvette Harrell.

Polls this year as well as these models have consistently shown a preference on the part of voters for a sizeable shift in partisan leadership in the House.  But gerrymandering and the power of incumbency have made the will of the national electorate much less important in determining the outcome of a congressional seat.  These rigging processes have been going on for a long time, but in recent years, with better data and more sophisticated models, they have become much more reliable in squelching the will of the people.  

 

And they go a long way toward explaining why, when polls show an overwhelming majority of voters want universal health care and reasonable drug prices, reasonable measures to keep guns out the hands of crazies, more investment in infrastructure and schools, and some curtailment of the runaway salaries of corporate CEOs, none of these have materialized.  Our political system no longer maintains the kinds of checks and balances on power, wherever it lies, as envisioned in our constitution.  Congress, for example, this year, has completely abdicated its constitutional role as a major check on executive power.  And our least democratic institution, the US Supreme Court, is now being rigged again in favor on those anti-democratic forces that have done so much to subvert the will of the people.  These are not partisan issues; the damage was done with strong bipartisan support under Democratic as well as Republican presidents and Congresses.  We are in a constitutional melt-down.