I'll be following house races on this blog post. According to my two predictions published today by the Examiner and National Review Online, I'm expecting tough news on this front:

House: This has been a tough race to call for the lower chamber. The Democrats tried to nationalize the election, and they had a lot of success early in the cycle, but they’ve lost their grip on the generic congressional ballot in all of the late polling. Unfortunately, they need only 15 seats, or 3.4 percent of the districts, to switch in order to wrest control from the GOP. Our friends at Real Clear Politics have a chart which shows the disparity between Republican and Democratic seats at risk, and that will make the difference. The House will go from 232-202-1 to 222-213, giving Nancy Pelosi a narrow advantage.

We're going to keep a close eye on this, especially in my home state of Minnesota. I'll be updating shortly...

7:30 - Yes, Mary Katherine and I coordinated our outfits tonight. Republican red -- what did you expect?

7:32 - Just saw some early Indiana returns. The Republicans appear to be doing pretty well; Chocola is holding a slight edge in votes, and he was in a bit of trouble.

8:10 - Just saw some entries for the House. Bad news -- Negron trails by 3 in his bid to "punch Foley for Negron" with 13% of the precincts reporting. Good news -- Dickerson leads Carson in Indiana, a race I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Dickerson is running a fairly independent campaign against an entrenched incumbent; if he can win, it will help the GOP tremendously.

8:15 - Chocola is now losing substantially to Donnelly with 26% reporting in Indiana. So is Hostettler. However, Levya has a slight edge against Visclosky, and if that holds up, Indiana will be a wash.

9:20 - I haven't been updating this because I'm not really seeing any real trends yet. So far, only the real noncompetitive races have reported. I'm looking for more information before I get too far out on a limb.

9:44 - Indiana has reported to a large extent, and it doesn't look all that great for the GOP. They lost IN-02, with Chocola trailing by six now. Dickerson has slipped to six back as well with 66% reporting, but CNN hasn't called that race. Sodrel is in trouble in IN-09, too. Democrats could pick up two seats here in Indiana.

10:19 - Still no indication of a 'wave". CNN has its count up for the overall gain/loss, and it only shows the GOP down 3 so far. We still have half the country to see, but so far it's not a bloodbath.

10:52 - CNN now shows eight losses for the GOP, including Curt Weldon, who had a federal probe launched against him in the final weeks of the campaign. We're well into the Mountain time zone, and while the GOP has lost those seats, I'm not seeing a wave. I think my call of 20 seats may prove correct, and that may be overstated. We'll see.

11:17 - CNN has called the House for the Republicans. With 300 seats reported, Republicans have lost 16. If that trend holds, the GOP will lose around 24 House seats (statistically speaking). We may go on air to discuss this -- they're checking with CNN to see if they want to debate on the news.

12:19 - Jeez, I meant they called the House for the Democrats. Actually, I just wanted to see if y'all were still awake.

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» Election Night: House from Bill's Bites
Election Night: HouseEd Morrissey I'll be following house races on this blog post. According to my two predictions published today by the Examiner and National Review Online, I'm expecting tough news on this front: ...Keep an eye on that post. [Read More]

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