Nate Silver: Democrats Could Loose 50 Seats
Posted Apr 13, 2010 at 9:36 AM by Maurice Berger
Nate Silver speculates that Republican advantage now registered by a number of surveys in the generic congressional ballot could result in the Democrats loosing a significant number of House seats this November: "Although analysts debate the precise magnitude of the difference, on average the generic ballot has overestimated the Democrats' performance in the popular vote by 3.4 points since 1992. If the pattern holds, that means that a 2.3-point deficit in generic ballot polls would translate to a 5.7 point deficit in the popular vote -- which works out to a loss of 51 seats, according to our regression model." Still, as PollTrack notes, it's to early to tell if these numbers will hold up. Even Silver hedges his bet: "If Democrats were to lose 50, 60, 70 or even more House seats, it would not totally shock me. Nor would it shock me if they merely lost 15, or 20. But their downside case could be very far down."
