Monica Potts says that with nearly 200 House seats in play this year, determining races is less about polling and more about national trends.
A finger in the wind? A crystal ball? The short answer is that analysts rely on a lot of information: internal polls, financial data, long-term trends in the district, and the degree to which the national party committees are invested in the race. But the more complicated answer is that we rely a great deal on a handful of experts, like Charlie Cook and Stuart Rothenberg, to predict outcomes for specific races and, during big election years, to predict big-picture outcomes, too. These analysts rely on better information than talking-head pundits, but, for them, forecasting elections is still as much an art as it is a science. “In some of these races, you just have to take their word for it,” says Ruy Teixeira, a political scientist who writes about demographic trends and elections. “It doesn’t mean it’s wrong; it’s just something to put a little asterisk by.”
