Insiders Predict GOP House, Democratic Senate
We asked National Journal's Political Insiders what to expect in the midterms. Republicans are the overwhelming favorites to capture the House but will fail to win the Senate. See what else we asked and try to beat the insiders at their own game of punditry. Play now ยป
If the Democrats lose 50 seats, it will be the biggest swing in House elections since 1994, when they lost 52 seats that year and it would almost completely recoup the combined 51 seats that Republicans lost in the last two national elections; 30 seats in 2006 and 21 seats in 2008.
The fate of the current Democratic House majority was shared by Political Insiders in both parties. While it was not surprising that every one of the 87 GOP Insiders thought their party would win the House, the vast majority of Democrats also said the chamber was all but lost. Four-out-of-five of the 90 Democratic Insiders who responded also said that the Republicans would capture the House.
The average number of seats that the Democratic Insiders predicted that the GOP would pick up was 47. The average number that Republican Insiders thought their party would win was 53.
But the poll also finds that GOP prospects in the Senate are practically a mirror image of what they are in the House. Among all Political Insiders, only six percent believe the Republicans will be able to win the Senate. Here too, the partisan accord was striking: only eight percent of the GOP Insiders felt the Republicans would capture the Senate and only three percent of the Democratic Insiders did as well. On average, Republican Insiders thought their party would net eight Senate seats, while Democratic Insiders put the number at seven. Overall, the average Senate seat change forecast by the Political Insiders was also seven.
A swing of seven Senate seats is not as rare as a swing of 50 House seats. Democrats picked up eight Senate seats in both the1986 and the 2008 elections, and Republicans captured eight Senate seats in the 1994 contests. Democrats also won six Senate seats in 2006.
But a seven seat Senate shift in the Republicans' favor would cap a remarkable period of volatility in Senate races, after Democrats gained a combined 14 seats in the previous two elections. The last time there was that kind of upheaval in the Senate was in the politically tumultuous Truman years when Republicans gained 13 Senate seats in the 1946 elections, lost nine in the 1948 election, and gained four in 1950.
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