Charlie Cook: Democrats Are Going To Get Slaughtered In November
Veteran political analyst Charlie Cook is the first of the top tier pollsters to come out publicly and say that 2010 is going to be a very bad year for Democrats:
Cook has been very conservative in his estimates of Republican pick-ups to date, so to hear him talk about 40-50 seat pick-ups being the minimum and the Senate now being in play is fairly striking.
Stay tuned……
H/T: Hot Air
In other news, dog bites man.
Huh? Cook has NOT been conservative at all when it comes to predictions about the fall elections that are favorable to the GOP. Quite the contrary – he went on the record about 4-5 months ago stating that “the House is lost” for the Dems.
In the interim, he had backed off that point a bit, and now seems to be returning to it.
I seem to recall commenting about this several times….
Meanwhile, Congressional Quarterly, who track all the House races and make predictions about them, has the Dems at 219 seats (a majority), and the GOP at 180, with 36 toss-ups. FWIW
Furthermore, as another example of how Cook has been coloring his own findings with rather strident doom and gloom, one need only compare his analysis in the video clip, with the result of his own firm’s analysis of the individual races.
From his own column of a week or so ago:
“At this point, only 214 House seats are Solid, Likely or Lean Democratic, while 181 seats are Solid, Likely or Lean Republican, and 40 seats are in the Toss Up column.”
“Only 214 House seats” for the Dems??? All you need is 218 for a majority. So the GOP would need to win 37 out of the 40 toss-up seats to win control. Does that seem really likely?
In fact, if the GOP won ALL of the toss-ups, that would equate to a net gain of 42 seats. So where does he get this prediction of up to 50 seat gain (minimum!!), if his own research firm is estimating that a miraculous run of all the toss up races would still only net 42?
Having not watched the vid….this is a dumb question.
Who picked the word “slaughtered?” Republican gains are entirely predictable for a number of reasons (the least of them being the Republican message).
However, “more gains than expected” doesn’t necessarily indicate a “slaughter.”