There’s an interesting post at Larry Satabo’s Crystal Ball by Alan I. Abramowitz, forecasting the outcome of the 2022 mid-terms. Here’s the meat of it:
Despite their extremely narrow majorities, the forecasts in Table 3 show that Democrats have a reasonable chance of keeping control of both chambers in the midterm elections if they maintain at least a narrow lead on the generic ballot. A recent Quinnipiac poll gave Democrats a nine-point lead on the generic ballot. A lead of that magnitude would predict a Republican gain of one seat in the House and a Democratic gain of two seats in the Senate giving Democrats a 221-214 seat majority in the House and a 52-48 seat majority in the Senate. Given the standard error of about 10 seats for the House forecast and three seats for the Senate model, however, the safest conclusion would be that the balance of power in both chambers would probably be very close. A smaller Democratic lead in the generic ballot, or a Republican lead, would predict a Republican edge in the House, and possibly also in the Senate.
One additional factor that is not included in the House forecast is the impact of redistricting, which will take place this cycle based on the results of the 2020 census. Republicans are widely expected to gain at least a few additional House seats in 2022 by virtue of controlling states with far more House districts during the redistricting process. A similar situation occurred in the 2012 election, in which Republicans managed to hold onto their majority despite losing the national popular vote for the House. If we assume that redistricting will be worth an additional 10 House seats to the GOP, Democrats would likely need a lead of at least 10 points on the generic ballot in order to maintain control of the lower chamber.
The emphasis is mine. The analysis the precedes that explicitly ignores redistricting. It reminds me of one of my college profs who said that he ignored any undergraduate paper until the first “however”.
There’s more than one headwind opposing the Democrats, even considering the “generic ballot”, i.e. ignoring individual candidates. Among those challenges are that presidents’ parties have tended to lose House seats going back more than 200 years, redistricting, and the internecine warfare highlighted in the previous post.
