The House is probably not going to flip because of gerrymandering, although you never really know- the Republicans could really blow it in the next two years and send a lot of moderates to the polls to throw the bastards out. They've benefited enormously from gerrymandering, but they've also benefited from low voter turnout, and if people feel 2016 is an election worth fighting there's a chance they'll flip some House seats. (Increases in voter turnout usually go to the Dems. This hasn't always been true, but it's been true since the modern party coalitions took shape in the 1980s and 1990s.)
The Senate is very likely to flip. 2014's Republican wave was a matter of timing more than anything else- Obama's victory in 2008 brought a lot of Democratic Senators riding on his coattails in purple or red states like South Dakota and Arkansas. Because Senators serve six-year terms, these were all up for re-election in 2014, which- no matter how well the economy was doing- is a midterm year with a Democratic-led White House and was thus going to favor the GOP. I'm not saying 2014's results were inevitable, but you'd have to imagine a very different Washington to make another result plausible.
But the flip side of that is that in 2016, all the Senators who were elected in 2010 will have to face the voters- and they're overwhelmingly a Republican group because that was the year the Tea Party took off, so they include Republican Senators in states like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Illinois and Florida. The Dems will need to win 5 Senate seats from the GOP in 2016 to retake the Senate, and of the states that have Republican Senators up for re-election next cycle, seven voted blue in 2012.
As for the White House...if Hillary doesn't run, it's anyone's guess what happens.
Author
Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée (Read 1576200 times)