There’s a pretty good chance Democrats will take back the House of Representatives in 11 months.
Conventional political wisdom maintains that the party in the White House will necessarily suffer during the midterms. The current political climate more than supports that prediction. As a result, the forecast from the team at Sabato’s Crystal Ball is particularly bleak.
A year out, Kyle Kondik, editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, predicts that “the battle for control of the House looks something like a coin flip.” Democrats only need to switch 24 seats on net to wrestle the gavel away from Paul Ryan and banish him from the Speaker’s lobby. That’s looking more and more probable.
Consider the following: President Trump’s approval ratings haven’t broken above 40 percent. Veteran Republican members are dropping like flies — more than a dozen have called it quits already — and the GOP has to fight like jackals to win special elections in previously safe districts.
Crunching the numbers in light of those bleak factors, Kondik rates 224 seats “safe, likely, or leaning to the Republicans,” another 191 “safe, likely, or leaning to the Democrats,” and at least “20 toss ups.”
If only seven of those “leaning GOP” seats lean a tiny bit the other way, the House could flip.
Granted, polls change as often as pundits change their minds, and analytics often measure the wrong thing. Everyone was surprised, for instance, by Hillary Clinton’s colossal meltdown. No one, however, should be too surprised to see Speaker Nancy Pelosi 2.0
