That’s absolutely true and not exactly bucking conventional wisdom. Your listed outcomes encompass about 90% of the probabilities. The last 10% is that they could get 54-55 seats.
The Republicans will likely win the popular vote by 5-6 points. The generic ballot has them up by 2.5 and they usually outperform the generic ballot by 3 points or so. But even if they don’t, it is extremely unlikely that Democrats will win the national popular vote. They lost by 7 in 2010.
Wasn’t there another one in 2012? Seems like I remember something like that. You are always eager with the numbers, got anything on that?
2012 was a different election. But they won the House vote by only 1.2%, yet Democrats seem to think they should have taken over the House with a margin like that, even though that’s never happened before.
Taking the seven models, dropping the highest and lowest, then taking the average of the remainder gives the Republicans a 74.2% chance of Senate takeover. Typically things break for one party or another at this point: this is actually happening less this election than usual, according to 538.
Still we are heavily into lean Republican territory, even if we’re a bit short of likely Republican. And the distribution at 538 is brutal: its mode is in the 52-53 Republican seat range. Currently there’s a 43% chance that will occur.
A total washout would give the Republicans 57 seats, which is still fewer than the Democrats controlled for a while. That would be a mandate. I don’t think that will occur.
On the specifics, Ernst of Iowa’s odds have gone up, which is a shame because well, she’s a loon. She fears Agenda 21, a voluntary UN resolution which for some reason the wingers think threatens the freedom to travel, live in the country or raise your family. She owns a gun, which is a de rigour tribal shout-out among Republicans, and says she does it in case Washington decides to limit her freedom. That’s a strrrange sort of reasoning coming from an electoral hopeful.
Mitch McConnell has a habit of taking obstructionism to new levels. He even filibustered a bill that he had sponsored himself. Of course if he becomes majority leader, his tune will change. I mean the guy penned op eds for campaign finance reform before he was against them. He was big on disclosure requirements, until such proposals were no longer useful as a way of opposing tougher reform. And he loves raising money: he sees it as a way to level the playing field for politicos like himself who are too socially awkward to backslap. Anyway, he is favored.
I think a mandate is more expressed in the popular vote than in the makeup of the Senate. If the GOP were to somehow win 60-40 yet fall short of taking the Senate, I’d consider that more of a GOP mandate than if they won 51-49 and got 57 seats.
As for Ernst, she might be about as far right as someone can be and still get elected to the US Senate, but no one serves 21 years in the National Guard and earns a Bachelors of Science degree while crazy. The term is overused in politics, when the word you’re actually looking for is “out of the mainstream”. Not that there aren’t crazy politicians, but chances are they didn’t serve their country or demonstrate enough rationality to earn a Bachelors of Science. Most of the truly loony politicians never did anything other than get a BA in some pretty nonrigorous major and then never accomplished anything at all outside politics. It’s actually not a bad career path for someone who is both irrational and narcissistic. Ernst is neither of those. She’s served her country and in politics has mostly concentrated on nonglamorous public service, such as being county auditor for eight years. Which is actually a background we need more of in Congress.
Make up your mind, will you? 
As for Agenda 21 and “Second amendment solutions”, the latter was directly endorsed by many of the founders, for obvious reasons. It’s also enshrined in New Hampshire’s state constitution:
NH isn’t the only state with such a clause, either. It’s an integral part of American culture, which is why Democrats have not actually been able to use it as an issue against a Republican, limiting their commentary on it mainly to preaching to their own choir.
As for Agenda 21, it’s non-binding, so in that respect, complaining about it seems like paranoia. On the other, liberals have often cited a lot of non-binding international stuff as law and criticized the US for “breaking international law”, even though nothing is binding on the US unless it’s ratified by the Senate in treaty form. When you have elements of a particular political party behaving this way about non-binding UN agreements and trying to implement them here as if they are binding, without seeking Senate ratification, then members of the other party have a pretty darn good reason to treat it the same way. Agenda 21 is either harmless and non-binding, or we have a moral imperative to implement it. Liberals can’t have it both ways on Agenda 21.
1.2%, or 48.8% of the vote, won’t cause a flip for either party. Historically, flips have only happened when the popular vote was won by a pretty decent margin:
1994- GOP +6
2006- Democrats +8
2010- Republicans +7
The whining Democrats engaged in when they won by 1.2% and the House didn’t flip was just embarrassing. The GOP actually won the 1998 House popular vote by a similar percentage and lost seats.
Sorry adaher, but those like Ernst who advocate arresting federal officials who attempt to implement so-called Obamacare have lost their grip on reality. And talking about defending yourself from an overbearing government with your handgun is either delusional or psychotic. The Ernst team gets this which is why they have essentially muzzled her: Ernst cancelled meetings at the last minute with the Des Moines Register, a paper which endorsed Romney in 2012.
Hey look, Lee Harvey Oswald served in the marines. Ted Kaczynski was a promising mathematician. Michele Bachmann earned a degree in taxation from William and Mary. They were still nuttier than fruitcakes.
Or it’s something that only kooks had heard of before it was given a higher profile by Tea Partying politicians like Ernst of Iowa.
I always figured it was this decade’s equivalent of the Black Helicopters or the Amero. Of course, this is also the Senate that couldn’t ratify a treaty that was basically supporting the implementation of the ADA in other countries (and not requiring the US to actually do anything) even with Bob Dole on the floor asking the Republican Senators to vote for it.
It’s touching to see adaher so dedicated to maintaining his reputation for wrongness that he insists on even being wrong about how often he is wrong.
adaher on the Virginia governor’s race last year:
[QUOTE=adaher]
Then I guess you’ll just have to wait for my 2013 prediction to come true: Republicans win both governors’ races.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=adaher]
Cooch is ahead in the RCP average. By 1 point. And Terry McCauliffe is Mitt Romney, except he made his money off government contacts… This guy is going to be SO easy to destroy.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=adaher]
Virginia has a recent history of good government. I doubt they’ll want to mess that up by electing the nation’s biggest cronyist since the Bushes left politics.
[/QUOTE]
Links:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16194901&postcount=45
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16194993&postcount=48
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16195343&postcount=52
Also… if you have a scientific instrument and it takes 1000 readings, you don’t say the sample size is one. You say the sample size is 1000. So adaher’s presentation of statistics 101 is …wrong.
Which is reassuring, in a way. The objective odds favor the Republicans, but adaher’s wrongness is a force of nature all its own.
But he’s been conceding that there’s a non-zero chance the Democrats could keep the Senate. I suspect that without the hubris adaher had in 2012-13, he no longer has the ability to force reality to contradict him.
So you’re picking the first one, and abandoning your claim about popular votes and mandates meaning anything. Got it. :rolleyes:
Thanks for this reminder – adaher is even wrong about how many times he has been wrong!
I’ve got my popcorn ready.
When Obama starts vetoing bills passed by Congress, will that make him an obstructionist?
Omg, we’ve missed you! Glad to see you back.
What intrigues me about these stats predictors is that they’re so far apart.
The WP has always been an outlier with high odds on Republicans, but (according to Drudge) at this time both the WP and CNN have 96% odds on the Repubs. 538 keeps upping the Republicans, but they’re still at 74.4%, in line with the NYT. Wang is at 60%.
It’s unclear to me what the WP and CNN might be doing that produces these types of results (which frankly strike me as hard to believe).