At Tuesday afternoon’s all staff meeting, NAPH staff was asked to play a little game – winner gets a $10 Starbucks gift card. Without forewarning, or the ability to go back to their desks and check what the “experts” were saying, they were asked to predict the outcome of the election next week. Specifically, they were asked to forecast the makeup of the House and the Senate in the 112th Congress. As a tiebreaker, they were asked to predict the outcome (to a tenth of a percent) of the contest between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and his Republican opponent, Sharron Angle.
In all, 16 staff members with varying degrees of political awareness – Senior VP Lynne Fagnani and I did not participate since we designed and administered the game – made predictions. Despite some pretty wild outliers, from the GOP picking up more than 20 Senate seats to Democrats only losing 11 seats in the House to Angle beating Reid by more than 20 points, the average of all predictions is striking. In the aggregate, NAPH staff made the following predictions:
- Republicans will regain the House, holding 230 seats to the Democrats’ 205. This represents a 50 seat loss for House Democrats.
- Democrats will retain the Senate, holding a slim 51-49 majority. This represents an eight seat loss for Senate Democrats.
- Sharron Angle will defeat Harry Reid by 2.2 percentage points.
Again, staff were not coached ahead of time, nor given an opportunity to double check reliable sources. Nevertheless, the aggregate prediction is strikingly close to those conventional wisdom of non-partisan pundits. To wit:
- The University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato predicts a 55 seat Republican gain the House, and an eight seat GOP gain in the Senate and lists the Reid-Angle race as “Leans Republican.”
- The New York Times’ Nate Silver predicts a 52 seat GOP gain in the House and a seven seat Republican gain in the Senate. His model predicts Angle will win by 3 percentage points.
- Independent analyst Charlie Cook projects a House Democratic loss of 48-60 seats and a 7-9 seat loss for Democrats in the Senate. He lists the Reid-Angle race as a “toss up.”
Since we’re apparently pretty good at this, perhaps we’ve identified a future revenue stream for NAPH?