2016 USA House Elections

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/obamacare-gop-campaign-trail-226939

The fact that reliable anaylsts are discussing the possibility of the House going Democratic makes me think it is more likely to happen now than even one month ago.

What would it take for the House to flip?

As I wrote recently, the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan (R), has raised the possibility that his party could lose its majority in November. This fear can account for a variety of recent political events, including the entry into the presidential race of a total unknown who just happens to be the policy director of the House Republican caucus.

To take control of the House, Democrats need to gain at least 30 seats over their current 188 seats. This is a tall order, but not impossible. A change of this size has happened in two out of the last five Congressional elections: a 31-seat gain for Democrats in 2006, and a 63-seat gain by Republicans in 2010. In the modern era of polarization, 1994-2014, a change of that size has happened in 3 out of 11 elections. Since 1946, it has happened in 10 out of 35 elections.

What would it take for the House to change hands?

One of the best ways to answer this question is not yet fully available. That best way is to look at district-by-district ratings by prognosticators such as David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report or Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and ask what the average seat gain will be. I have written about this kind of information in the past (for example, it was dead-on in 2008). Those sites both currently give maximum plausible Democratic outcomes (i.e. certain/probable Democratic plus toss-ups) as 209 seats, short of the necessary 218 seats. However, the ratings take some time to be updated in response to events in the districts; after all, there are 435 of them, and it takes time for Wasserman/Kondik/their collaborators to collect and interpret incoming information. As accurate as this approach is, it gives a slow-moving picture that will surely change in the coming three months.

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http://election.princeton.edu/2016/08/12/what-would-it-take-for-the-hous...

Democrats are kidding themselves: The House is out of reach, period

The left will not take the House in November, and it's not shocking. Here's why

The reason why is simple, structural and too often absent from the conversation: It’s the radical GOP gerrymander imposed after the 2010 census on purplish states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina — all of which are likely to go for Clinton, while also electing a bright-red Republican delegation to Congress. Even if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in a landslide, there are simply not enough competitive districts remaining to give the Democrats any chance at winning the House.

For all of the misleading nonsense about “rigged elections” coming from the Trump camp this summer, we haven’t talked enough about the way our electoral map really was rigged by Republicans after the 2010 census. These tilted maps make it possible for the Republicans to govern with a supermajority in Ohio, North Carolina and Wisconsin — despite getting less votes overall. And they’ve created a firewall in the House of Representatives that’s built to withstand a Clinton landslide upward of 10 percent.

http://www.salon.com/2016/08/23/democrats-are-kidding-themselves-the-hou...

http://election.princeton.edu/2016/10/07/how-powerful-is-gerrymandering-...

is Paul Ryan committing hari kari for Republican control of the House now?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/10/10/paul_ryan_still_suppor...