Thursday, December 30, 2021

Predicting the 2022 Election Results

Sure, it's still early but you can fiddle around with simple models and still get some real signal. That's what Seth Masket does in this post from Mischiefs of Faction. He uses a very standard midterm model of growth in real per capita disposal income/presidential approval/seats held by majority party.
The bottom line, assuming 4 percent real disposable income growth (very good) and a stable Biden approval rating:
"Plugging these values in, we get Democrats losing 25 seats. Given that they only hold 221 right now, that means Republicans taking control by a healthy margin. Of course, there are large error margins around all these estimates, and we really don't know what conditions will look like by next fall....[Looking at] a range of likely election outcomes given different levels of economic growth and presidential approval...Democrats are expected to lose House seats in almost all situations, except for presidential approval over 65% and economic growth over 4%, the combination of which is not particularly likely to show up....
[M]idterm forecast models are inherently noisy, and the one for 2022 may be noisier than usual. It's still too early to make anything like a precise forecast. But the number of possible futures in which Democrats hold onto the House are very, very few"
More impressionistically, Matt Yglesias ventures a 90 percent prediction probability Democrats will lose both the House and Senate. Possibly a touch too gloomy. But not be much.

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