Wave Elections Only Break One Way

[DonViejo]

April 12, 2018 at 12:02 pm EDTBy Taegan Goddard

The Cook Political Report now rates 80 Republican-held House seats that are or have the potential to be competitive compared to just 16 seats for Democrats.



But as Harry Enten notes, the party that eventually picks up seats tends to do a lot better than the seat ratings suggest at this time. This year it’s almost certainly the Democrats.

When a party is going to pick up seats, they usually not only to do a very good job at holding the seats that are rated to go to them but also do a good job at picking up seats that the other side is actually favored to win. Put another way, seat-by-seat estimates at this point tend to underestimate the extent of the wave.

Here are some interesting statistics on how the party that picks up seats on average does compared to the ratings at this point in the campaign cycle:

They win 99.8% of the seats they are solid in and even 1.3% of the seats that are solid for the other party.

They win 99.2% of the seats they are likely to win and 24% of the seats the other party is likely to win.

They win 90% of the seats that lean in their direction and 42% of the seat that lean in the other party’s direction.

Finally, the party that ends up gaining seats in the midterm win on average 68% of the seats rated as tossups at this point.

It’s still early and the ratings will shift in the coming months, but if you apply this math to the current ratings, Democrats would pick up 38 seats — way more than the 23 they need to take control.

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https://politicalwire.com/2018/04/12/wave-elections-only-break-one-way/