Republicans Have a Decent Shot at Holding on to the House

A couple of years ago when I was sitting in church I noticed that according to my phone's weather app, there was a 30% chance that it would rain that afternoon. We tend not to think of 30% as a lot, but imagine that you have a six-shooter, and you place bullets in two of the six chambers. After spinning it, how many of you would be willing to place the gun to your head and pull the trigger? I suspect not too many even though there's ONLY a 33% chance that you'll "lose," so to speak. It did rain that afternoon, by the way.

Thinking probabilistically is not one of our strong points, however. If we see that an event has a 60% chance of happening, most of us automatically assume there's a 100% chance it will happen. That's not what a 60% chance means, though. What it means is that given the current conditions (related to whatever event you're considering), 60% of the time the event will occur. However, it also means that 40% of the time it won't.

So now consider FiveThirtyEight's model predicting how Republicans and Democrats will do in the November election (Forecasting the House Race). Currently (August 19th), it predicts that Democrats have (approximately) between a 70 and 75 percent chance of gaining control of the house. Put somewhat differently, Republicans have between a 25 and 30 percent chance of retaining control of the House, a probability that is in line with the 25 to 30 percent chance similar models gave Donald Trump of winning the presidency back in 2016. In other words, although the current conditions favor Democrats gaining control, it won't take much for things to shift so that Republicans hold on (and President Trump will be safe, at least for a couple of years, from being impeached). Thus, Democrats shouldn't become complacent (not that they would after 2016, but you never know), and Republicans shouldn't abandon hope (not that they should after 2016); maybe there will be that "Red Wave" that Fox News keeps talking about.

It should be an interesting two and a half months.