Silver argues in his latest post that despite the media’s (and ECCIE Obamazombies) breathless, “game changer” coverage of the government shutdown, it’s not likely to change any games or even matter a whole lot to next year’s mid-terms.
http://www.grantland.com/fivethirtye...nment-shutdown
The playing field of vulnerable GOP seats is too narrow for Republicans to lose their majority, baring a massive wave. (Think 1894, when 107 Democrats were swept out of the House.)
Second, major waves historically have not happened concurrent with the “six-year itch” – the election held in the sixth year of a president's tenure, in which the party holding the White House typically loses a substantial number of House and Senate seats.
And remember that, in the 1996 midterm election of the Clinton era, Republicans lost 18 incumbents but kicked the Democrats’ butts in the open-seat races. The Republicans’ losses were mostly “wave seats” that they unexpectedly won two years earlier, during their first sweep back into power after 40 years in the political wilderness.
Coincidentally, all of that occurred in the year of another government shutdown – that one over the funding of Medicare, which is a heck of a lot more popular with voters than Obamacare.
Read more:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...#ixzz2hhWDVoUa
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