With one week and one day to go until the congressional midterms, the political prognosticators largely seem to agree: Republicans are likely to regain control of the House while the fate of the Senate could still go either way.
CBS News and YouGov’s Battleground Tracker projects that Republicans will win 228 House seats — 10 more than is needed to take the majority. That would mean the GOP gaining 15 seats.
That projection is largely in line with others.
What You Need To Know
- With one week and one day to go until the congressional midterms, the political prognosticators largely seem to agree: Republicans are likely to regain control of the House while the fate of the Senate could still go either way
- CBS News and YouGov’s Battleground Tracker projects that Republicans will win 228 House seats — 10 more than is needed to take the majority
- The Senate, however, is more of a wild card, with FiveThirtyEight, CBS News and Politico all rating it a “toss-up"
- Republicans saw their support taper off after the Supreme Court in June overturned Roe v. Wade, but the GOP has rallied in the polls over the past couple of weeks
The data site FiveThirtyEight gives Republicans a four-in-five chance to win back the House. Meanwhile, in Politico chief election reporter Steve Shepard’s forecast, he rates the House as going “likely Republican.”
“Republicans don't need a wave to win back control of the House,” Shepard writes. “The GOP is effectively only four seats away from the majority: Republicans currently hold 212 seats, and there are two vacancies in seats where GOP candidates are favored to win in November.
“That leaves the party just shy of the 218 seats needed to flip the House, a feat they could accomplish even without the kind of broad electoral mandate once seen as likely.”
CBS News, however, says House control could hinge on voter turnout. If a large number of young voters and voters of colors head to the polls, Democrats could hold the majority by a single seat, 218-217, according to the Battleground Tracker.
But if there’s a strong turnout among white voters without college degrees, Republicans could win as many as 238 seats, gaining 25 seats, according to the tracker.
The Senate, however, is more of a wild card, with FiveThirtyEight, CBS News and Politico all rating it a “toss-up.”
FiveThirtyEight says Democrats are “ever so slightly ahead,” giving the party a 52% chance of retaining control.
Shepard says that the party that wins three of five toss-up races “is almost certainly going to win the majority.” Those hotly contested elections are in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In the Georgia race, a Siena College/New York Times poll last week had incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock ahead by three percentage points, while an InsiderAdvantage/Fox 5 Atlanta poll put his challenger, former NFL star Herschel Walker, up by three points.
Siena College and The New York Times had Nevada’s race between Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez-Masto and former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican, dead even last week.
In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, led former TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, in the Siena/New York Times poll by five points last week. Oz, however, had a three-point advantage over Fetterman in a recent InsiderAdvantage survey.
Arizona incumbent Mark Kelly, a Democrat, has led Republican businessman Blake Masters in virtually all recent polls not funded by a party. But it’s tight — as little as 2 percentage points.
And a recent CNN poll illustrates just how much of a toss-up the Wisconsin race between Republican incumbent Ron Johnson and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is: Among registered voters, Barnes led by three points, but among likely voters Johnson had a one-point advantage.
The party of the new president historically tends to struggle in the first midterms after his election. Republicans saw their support taper off after the Supreme Court in June overturned Roe v. Wade, which protected the national right to abortion. The GOP, however, has rallied in the polls over the past couple of weeks. In early September, FiveThirtyEight gave Democrats about a 70% chance of holding onto the Senate, but that advantage has evaporated over the past couple of weeks.
FiveThirtyEight always had the Republican way ahead in the race for the House. The GOP’s chances of controlling the chamber fell from 88% to 68%, but has since rebounded to around 80% today.