CQ's House Prediction And A "November Surprise"

by Steve

Congressional Quarterly released its final assessment of the House and Senate races this afternoon, and despite Karl’s “math”, they looked at all 435 House races and all Senate races individually with the most recent polls for each race. What did they come up with for the House?

As of Oct. 27, CQ’s individual assessments of all 435 House races showed Democrats seriously contesting Republican holds on 72 seats (31 percent of the party’s current total) with seven of those races already leaning toward a Democratic takeover and 18 more considered genuine tossups — the result of a combination of Republican political weaknesses and the Emanuel team’s success at growing the roster of competitive Democratic challengers, many in districts that the party had not contested in years. By contrast, only 21 Democratic seats were in play, and only a handful appeared seriously at risk. The bottom line is that the Republicans are now ahead at least marginally in only 207 races, meaning that even if they hold on to all of those (which won’t happen) they must win 11 of the 18 tossups to retain power. The Democrats are now ahead in 210 races — nine more than the number of seats they have now — so if they hold all those leads they will need to win just eight of the tossups to gain control.

There is a growing meme developing in the center-left blogosphere over the last several days that goes something like this:

Despite the pre-election polls and expert analysis by folks like those at Congressional Quarterly, the GOP steals enough close races through electronic voting fraud to keep the House and Senate. To deal with the immediate backlash from Democrats and the media stemming from these discrepancies and the charges of another stolen election, Bush springs a November surprise to distract the public through an attack on Iran. To suppress the reaction to this Wag the Dog maneuver here at home, he uses newly-granted and just-discovered powers to mobilize the National Guard here at home to implement martial law under the pretense of national security while we are at war with Iran. So Bush steals the election and then ensures that no one can do anything about it.

For now, until I do some more research on a few items, I’ll leave it to you to comment on this theory.