CNN data analyst Harry Enten reported Wednesday that Democrats are not matching their polling performance from the 2018 midterm elections, when they won control of the House.
Harry Enten running the numbers on this one and sneaking in at the last minute, just as usual.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: I’ve learned that way around. I’ve learned that.
BOLDUAN: That was good. That was a good maneuver.
ENTEN: Thank you.
BOLDUAN: People should — I wish people could see it.
ENTEN: I have — I have fantastic moves. It’s the new shoes, as we spoke about yesterday.
BOLDUAN: OK. Moving on.
And you’re — OK, you’re tracking the odds. What is the change that you’re seeing?
ENTEN: Yes. OK. So, you know, if you go back six months ago, you go back to April, Kate Bolduan, what were we looking at? Well, we were looking at the Democrats with a very clear shot of taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives according to the Kalshi Predication Market Odds. We saw them at an 83 percent chance.
But those odds have gone plummeting down. Now we’re talking about just a 63 percent chance, while the GOP’s chances up like a rocket, up like gold, up from 17 percent to now a 37 percent chance. So, it will look like a pretty clear Democratic — likely Democratic win in the House come next year has become much closer to a toss-up at this point, although still slightly leaning Democratic.
BOLDUAN: What’s changed? What are you seeing?
ENTEN: OK, what has changed? Well, why don’t we just take a look at the national picture first, take a look at voters and how they’re feeling about things. And we can take a look at the generic congressional ballot. And I want to take a look and compare it to 2017, 2018, right, because that’s sort of the baseline. That was, of course, the first Trump term. That was where Democrats were sort of keeping pace.
You go back to April, look at the generic congressional ballot. What’d you see? You see plus three Democrats in 2025 in April. You see plus three Democrats back in April of 2017. Now, jump over to this side of the screen. What happens? Well, the Democrats are no longer keeping pace with the pace that they were setting back in 2017, 2018. You look back in 2017, you saw that the Democrats had leaped up to an eight-point advantage. I remember covering this. I remember a lot of folks, including myself, saying, you know what, Republicans look pretty decent right now in terms of the fact that they had the House, they had the Senate, they had the presidency, but things were likely going to flip. And I was looking for the same signs this year.
The bottom line is, it hasn’t happened, Kate Bolduan. It hasn’t happened. Democrats have stayed basically steady. They have fallen off the pace. Democrats were way out ahead back in 2017 on the generic congressional ballot. And now we’re basically looking at Democrats ahead. But again, they are so far in back of the pace that they set back there. And so, I think what a lot of folks are seeing, folks like myself, are saying, wait a minute, given what we might be seeing in redistricting, is this plus three going to be enough, Kate Bolduan?
