Barron’s Predictions

A lot has been made about Barron’s prediction the GOP will hold the House and Senate in November. While I am not as confident as they are, I think they’re very, very close to dead on. In private conversations with friends, I have expressed my belief that we’ll hold the Senate by one seat and probably lose the House by one or maybe two.

I do not, by any stretch, believe my Democrat friends who claim their internal numbers show them picking up 26-30 seats. It’s just not realistic. That would require a near total sweep of every race that’s anywhere near competitive. For that to happen, the GOP base would have to stay home…. Not part of the GOP base, but the entire GOP base…

Barron’s makes one very good point in all of this.

We studied every single race — all 435 House seats and 33 in the Senate — and based our predictions about the outcome in almost every race on which candidate had the largest campaign war chest, a sign of superior grass-roots support. We ignore the polls. Thus, our conclusions about individual races often differ from the conventional wisdom. Pollsters, for instance, have upstate New York Republican Rep. Tom Reynolds trailing Democratic challenger Jack Davis, who owns a manufacturing plant. But Reynolds raised $3.3 million in campaign contributions versus $1.6 million for Davis, so we score him the winner.

Money in politics is success in almost every case. While there are certainly exceptions to that rule, in the overwhelming majority of races, being out spent 2, 3, 4 or 5 to 1 means you’re losing. It would be a major paradigm shift if the party with a huge financial advantage, and candidates who were better funded almost across the board, lost everything.

So buck up, little campers. This thing is ugly, but it is far from over.

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