Gibbs: Yep, Dems Could Lose the House in November

I think there’s no doubt that there are a lot of seats that will be up, a lot of contested seats.  I think people are going to have a choice to make in the fall.  But I think there’s no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control.  There’s no doubt about that. This will depend on strong campaigns by Democrats.

“Some years you ride the wave, and other years you paddle your canoe,” Democratic strategist Paul Begala said. “Democrats, they’ve got to paddle like hell. So what you do when you’re paddling is, as the Republicans seek to nationalize, you localize and personalize.”

In an attempt to ascertain who really is most likely to vote, pollsters asked registered voters, on a scale of 1 to 10, how interested they were in the November elections. Those who said either 9 or 10 added up to just over half of the registered voters, coming in at 51 percent.
Hart and McInturff then looked at the change among the most-interested voters from the same survey in 2008. Although 2010 is a “down-shifting” election, from a high-turnout presidential year to a lower-turnout midterm year, one group was more interested in November than it was in 2008: those who had voted for Republican John McCain for president. And the groups that showed the largest decline in interest? Those who voted for Barack Obama — liberals, African-Americans, self-described Democrats, moderates, those living in either the Northeast or West, and younger voters 18 to 34 years of age. These are the “Holy Mackerel” numbers.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is literally laughing off the suggestion House Democrats could lose their majority in the midterm elections. In an interview with Roll Call Tuesday, the top House Democrat said her party would “definitely” retain control of the chamber and emerge from the November balloting with “much more than a simple majority.”