After Labor Day

However, the headlines for this election have not yet been written, and there is considerable uncertainty in the outcome.

- Nate Silver predicting a 40 seat gain for Republican in the House

You don’t wear white after Labor Day, and voters don’t begin to focus on elections until then either. The current conventional wisdom is that Democrats will loose control of the House and maybe the Senate.

Two weeks ago the Gallup poll that put the Republicans 10 points ahead of Democrats in the “Generic Ballot”, created a lot of headlines and a lot of panic for the Democrats. Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-O) was picking out drapes for the Speakers office.

Not so fast.

Looking at the Generic Ballot poll over the summer shows how volatile this measure is. Nate Silver wrote on 08/31/10 (The Democrat’s New Normal http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/page/2/) that this lead could be statistical noise, in the same way the Democrats lead had been several weeks before.

Sure enough on 09/07/10 Gallup released the next “Generic Ballot” poll, and the Democrats and Republicans were tied at 46% each. On 09/13/10 Gallup “Generic Ballot” poll has the Republican ahead by five points. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/142982/Generic-Ballot-Splits-GOP-Dems.aspx). There is plenty of movement in these numbers.

There is a correlation between the generic ballot polling results and the number of seats won or lost. Looking at these numbers the Republicans are in for a strong showing this election cycle. There is still room for growth in support for the Democrats. 98% of Republicans support their Party while only 90% of the Democrats support theirs. If Democrats come home the election will tighten.

What really matters is a district by district look at the House races. But, this view has its own problems.

Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com created a stir when he released his model of the House races and predicted a 2 in 3 chance that the Republicans will take the House. (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/).

Silver is a respected statistician with an excellent track record. He did have some caveats for his results. One was the lack of objective non-partisan data. In most districts, there were either no polls to use, or polls that were released by the campaigns themselves and were not reliable. Even then there are 90 districts where either party has a 10% chance or better of prevailing. There is, as Silver himself says a lot of uncertainty out there.

On the same week that Fivethirtyeight.Com released their prediction, Electoral-Vote.com released its prediction on the House races. They predicted the Democrats will retain a slim margin in the House with a Republican pickup of 30 seats. (Post on September 11, 2010, http://www.electoral-vote.com/)

Electoral-Vote.com has been up since 2004 has been fairly accurate in its predictions. It uses a different statistical method than Nate Silver to make its predictions.

Silver runs thousands of simulations to account for random events in the election. Electoral-Vote.com tests races against a set of algorithms and predicts the outcome based on whether the condition passes the test or not. For example they start with the view that historically, 85% of incumbents have been reelected. As a result they rates seats where the incumbent won the last election with more than 55% of the vote as safe and not a toss-up.

This difference in models leads to different results. For example Silver suggest the Democrats have only a 51% chance of flipping LA-2 from Republicans and rates this as a toss-up. Electoral-Vote.com sees this as a solid Democratic seat. It has a PVI of +25% for the Democrats, it is a “Minority Majority” District being nearly all black. A Republican had not won the seat between 1891 and 2007. They only did so when former Rep. Jefferson was caught with $90,000 in his refrigerator.

At this point in the cycle the only people really focusing on they election are hard core activists and political junkies. Many average voters don’t even know an election is taking place.

The activists most motived are the Tea Party and they are a major reason for the “enthusiasm gap,” which favors the Republicans. This number is good indication of which party is most likely to turn out to vote. But, the Democrats have a better field operation and the funds on hand to finance a strong get-out-the-vote effort. This could counteract the Republican “enthusiasm.”

But even with the huge “enthusiasm gap” in favor of Republicans, many key races are very close. Carly Fiorina trails Barbara Boxer by 2 points. Sharon Angle trails Harry Reid by two points. Meg Whitman, after spending a 100 million dollars of her own money, is only 2 points ahead of Jerry Brown for CA Governors race even though he has only just now begun to campaign. Races are close in Illinois, New York State, Kentucky.

The Democrats are still competitive.

Speaker Pelosi has made a wise choice that will pa off to let the election play out district by district, each candidate sating their case to their own constituents.

So It is left to President Obama to make the case nationally, and remind everyone what is at stake if the Republicans gain power. Now is the time. It’s after Labor day - when elections are won or lost.