Real Clear Politics Estimated Change in House Races over last week

If the Real Clear Politics breakdown is accurate and if the Republicans split the undecided seats, they will end up with 240 seats after the election. That is far less than the 255 seats currently held by the Democrats, but it will be the largest Republican majority since the 1946 election when Republicans held 246 seats. Democrats have regularly held more than 250 seats when they have been in the majority during the last century, but one has to go back to the 1928 election to find Republicans holding even more seats (267).

As a yardstick for comparison, in 1994 the Republicans picked up 54 seats in the House, eight in the Senate, and twelve governorships. Interestingly in the Senate the Republican wins were actually much easier than they are now because six of the eight Republican wins involved retirements. In this case, Republicans will have to beat many incumbents to pick up that many Democrat seats.

October 30th


October 23rd


By contrast, NPR has Democrats looking very likely to keep control of the House. While RCP already has a majority of seats going to Republicans, NPR claims that Dems only have to pick up a few of the toss-up seats to keep their majority.