Nate Silver on Whether Dems Will Take the House

Leah Barkoukis | November 05, 2018 6:08 AM

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver weighed in Sunday on whether Democrats or Republicans will control the House after Tuesday’s midterm elections.

While polling is currently favoring a Democratic takeover of the House, Silver said he believes it could go either way.

"So in the House we have Democrats with about a 4 in 5 chance of winning," he said on ABC's "This Week," but adding that “polls aren’t always right.”

"The range of outcomes in the House is really wide," he continued. "Our range, which covers 80 percent of outcomes goes from, on the low end, about 15 Democratic pickups, all the way to low to mid 50s, 52 or 53."

"Most of those are above 23, which is how many seats they would need to win to take the House," he said. "But no one should be surprised if they only win 19 seats and no one should be surprised if they win 51 seats. Those are both extremely possible, based on how accurate polls are in the real world."

Of course, it's only been two short years since the vast majority of polls predicted Hillary Clinton would become president, so it's no surprise Silver is acknowledging the room for error in their forecasts.

On the same show, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Election Day is going to be a nail-biter--and much like all elections, will come down to turnout.

“It's tight, George, it's tight," she told host George Stephanopoulos. "It's going to depend on voter turnout on Election Day. Democrat enthusiasm is definitely there. We are seeing that in the early voting in all of these key House and Senate races, and Republicans have been matching, so literally Election Day voting is going to determine the balance of the House.”

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel says she is "absolutely not" resigned to Republicans losing the House, "especially with the economic numbers that we saw."

"The economy is a driving force, with the tax cuts and deregulation, people's lives are better," she adds https://t.co/GrO8niGQDf pic.twitter.com/E72CYltkMV
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) November 5, 2018