An Early Throw At The Dartboard

Dartmouth's Harry Enten takes a top-down approach to the Senate numbers next year and makes the case that given the economy, the number of Senate seats that the Democrats have to defend in 2012, and the history of the last 15 Senate elections, that they will almost certainly lose control of the Senate.

Employing this data, we can estimate that at this point the model projects the Democrats will only win about 49%, or about 16, of the Senate seats up this cycle. If correct, this loss of seven seats would flip the Senate to the Republicans. The loss would parallel the Republican loss in 2008 of 8 seats.
But should the model’s results be believed?

On the one hand, the model does explain a relatively high percentage (87%) of the variation between Senate results since 1952. Within the model’s dataset, the margin of error with 95% confidence is only about three seats. If the model were instituted before the 2008 election, it would have correctly projected an eight-seat Republican loss. And although a seven-seat loss would be on the high end of the spectrum of the very early seat-by-seat analyses, it is not a great outlier.

On the other hand, the model only takes into account data from 15 elections. It is quite possible that the 2012 election ends up being unique in some unforeseen way. The Democrats may recruit unusually strong Senate candidates that stem the national tide. President Obama may win a large victory and have abnormally long coattails. The model cannot account for any of these possibilities.

Another possibility is that the real DPI forecast is too pessimistic. If, somehow, Obama experienced Reagan-like growth in the final seven quarters of his first term, the model would predict Democrats to win about 57%, or 19, of the Senate seats up this cycle. While that would still leave them short of a majority, they would be close enough to be well within the model’s in-dataset margin of error. For this reason alone, the model will need updating as we get actual (not forecasted) economic data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

It's that last paragraph that's a bit of an eye opener.  Even if the economy completely turned around, the model suggests that the Dems would still lose the Senate 51-49 to the GOP.  Given that's simply not going to happen, it may be a very long slog for the Dems over the next 18 months.  If the economy gets worse, there's a decent chance that the Republicans could end up with control of the whole ball of wax.  Like it or not, bin Laden's death isn't going to help the Dems much (it may help Obama, but not Congressional Dems.)

Having said that, both parties understand that the economy will be the key to 2012.  And as long as the GOP does everything they can to assure the economy will not improve for 95% of America, they will benefit from blaming Obama and Harry Reid.

That is unless the Dems somehow start doing a much better job of pointing out the GOP is trying to skunk the economy in order to win.  So far?  Not happening.