Speaker of the House in 2020 Poll

[vcczar 1,224]

This is for my 2020 scenario. Who will be the Speaker

[wolves 29]

It'd be really nice if the Republican party modernized and kept their hard-line issues on some stuff such as abortion whilst not being absolute idiots when it comes to getting elected. They need new speech writers or something because I cannot find a single thing appealing about any of them, though I could say the same about Democrats in a way.

[Sunnymentoaddict 39]

As much as I want the Dems to retake the house, as of right now, I highly doubt they can retake it. The map is far too unfriendly towards them. Sure there is enthusiasm and more candidates are running, but can that compete against well established political parties and millions of campaign donations? 

In my mind, the Dems would be 4-12 seats shy of having the house, forcing the GoP to fall more in line with the Freedom Caucus. 

[Patine 467]

5 hours ago, Sunnymentoaddict said:

As much as I want the Dems to retake the house, as of right now, I highly doubt they can retake it. The map is far too unfriendly towards them. Sure there is enthusiasm and more candidates are running, but can that compete against well established political parties and millions of campaign donations? 

In my mind, the Dems would be 4-12 seats shy of having the house, forcing the GoP to fall more in line with the Freedom Caucus. 

Well, the map is too unfriendly in large part because gerrymandering (the legal power of states by Constitutional omission and failure of an attempted amendment to be ratified to be tailored to the liking in their Congressional to favour the party controlling the State, thus enabling State government to legally and legitimately cheat their voters and tantamount elections for their House delegations, which has now been join in legal electoral corruption in the U.S. by the Citizen's United ruling, and, of course, the anachronism of the Electoral College, all of whose reasons for creation by the actual Founding Fathers have all been obsoleted, but is still clung to like a life preserver at sea by a significant number - "of the people, by the people, for the people," is really looking up, isn't it).

[Lyly 1]

I think if the Democrats retake the House in 2018, Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker. If they don't retake the House until 2020, it's a bigger question.

[Lahbas 4]

For the sake of argument I decided to quickly run through the last House Elections results with margins akin to what happened in 2006; polling has put Democratic support slightly under that though close to it, which would mean a popular vote margin of (~9.1%). This is complicated by the abomination that is California's Top-Two system as Democratic votes were inflated and Republican deflated given a number of Democratic-Democratic races in 2016, but I did my best to work around that. In the case of retiring incumbents I also removed a further (8%) which is traditionally considered the average incumbency bonus for congressmen (~8-10%), meaning in those particular districts the gain would be (~17.1%). Using universal swing, not the most accurate measure but you work with what you can, the following districts flipped:

• Alabama 2
• Arizona 2
• California 10
• California 25
• California 39
• California 49
• Colorado 6
• Florida 27
• Iowa 1
• Michigan 11
• Minnesota 2
• Nebraska 2
• New York 19
• New York 22
• Pennsylvania 8
• Texas 23
• Virginia 10

That would still leave the Republicans with a majority, 224 seats to the Democrats 211, a Democratic gain of 17. "Technically" it is less right now because, again, the polling hasn't put the generic ballot quite at 2006 levels yet, but if they exceed those levels then they can certainly capture the House as a number of districts were on the tilt. The problem though is that the number of attainable districts that aren't strongly Republican begins to drop off at that point, so anything but a narrow majority might be out of reach.

Still a respectable result, but the Democratic base, at least given past reactions I've seen, may see anything less then a capture of the House as a defeat.