Nate Silver ~ Democrats Unlikely to Regain House in 2014 [View all]

[boston bean]

Democrats did not have as strong a performance in races for the United States House of Representatives last week as they did in the contests for the Senate and the presidency. Instead, Republicans retained control of the chamber.

But Democrats did regain some ground in the House. Although several races remain uncalled, Democrats would wind up with 201 seats in the House if all races are assigned to the current leader in the vote count – an improvement from the 193 seats Democrats held after the 2010 midterm elections. That would leave Democrats needing to pick up 17 seats to win control of the chamber in 2014.

Although 17 seats is not an extraordinary number, both historical precedent in midterm election years and a deeper examination of this year’s results would argue strongly against Democrats being able to gain that many seats.

There is also reason to suspect that Democrats are unlikely to sustain the sort of losses in the House that they did in 2010. But odds are that the electoral climate in 2014 will be somewhere between neutral and Republican-leaning, rather than favoring Democrats.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/democrats-unlikely-to-regain-house-in-2014/

I hope Nate is wrong here!