So, I'm gonna formally suspend my house model for now, given constant gerrymandering radically changing the congressional map. I don't think my existing model can hold up well and it was a bit...unwieldy anyway. It had 60 swing districts, and at this point many of them are probably more solid while many new ones are swing, and it's too hard to keep up with right now. I'll reinstate a version of it down the line when things settle, and maybe we will finally start seeing real POLLING DATA, but yeah. I don't think that model is gonna hold up under the stress of constant redistricting as it basically relies on "take 2024, shift however many points to the left/right as the generic congressional vote is at." That can't work well if we're not even dealing with the same districts with the same voters. And that's not even including what chatGPT pointed out recently where shifts on district levels may not be uniform, and yeah.
So what I'm gonna do here is just go by the cook PVI.
So...we got 185 Solid D districts, versus 187 Solid R. That was the basis for my original model. I counted everything that wasnt solid and had 60 districts or so. From there, we have 11 likely Ds, and 17 likely Rs, giving us a total of 196 D districts and 204 R districts. This is distinctively weaker for dems than we had before. These districts are unlikely to flip and can serve as baseline.
From there, we have 12 lean D, and 5 lean R. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Given this is gonna be a heavy D environment in 2026, with the generic congressional vote up 5.6%, which represents a roughly 8 point shift from 2024, I would expect most if not all of those lean Ds to be relatively safe. As far as the lean Rs, well, my model has 3 of them registered in it, with 2 of them leaning D and 1 leaning R in my experience. Idk of the other two, those are new. That's what I said my model is a bit outdated. But we can theoretically snipe at least 2 of those seats away from the republicans and looking at the other 2, they already have D's in them and I would expect any existing D to retain their seat. So we might be able to win 4 of them. And if we get the 12 lean D, given the D favored environment, we're up to 212D to 205R.
From there, it's the tossups. My model has most of them, and it has virtually all of them going republican. It only doesnt include one currently, FL25, and that went D in 2024, so it should safely go D in 2026.
With that said, we're standing at 230D-205R. The gerrymandering is taking a bite out of the dem margins as nominally my model as it existed when I suspended it would be at 235D-200R, but yeah. That's where I'm at. ChatGPT would probably revise this projection down to like 226D-209R or something given its own differences after debating it the other day, but yeah. The dems are still expected to win the house. I don't think the GOP has been able to gerrymander away the coming blue wave as of yet, but recent court rulings are taking some wind out of our sails and reducing the margins. 230-205 Dem is basically my current estimate though, based on current conditions. Results can vary because statistics can be tricky, and my model is relatively basic anyway. If I had to guess whether dems under or overperform my expections, more likely under, so that means a result in the upper 220s is very possible for democrats. I doubt they get below 225 or so though.
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