What to expect in the national elections next month

This set of predictions from my colleague, Professor Michael Brogan of Rider University's Political Science Department:

As of 9/29/10, this year’s Congressional forecast estimates indicate the Democrats would likely hold control of the Senate and lose the House of Representatives. Forecast estimates for the Senate indicate the Democratic Party would maintain approximately 52 Senate seats (based on a forecast uncertainty estimate of plus or minus 2 seats for this election and an overall historic uncertainty estimate of plus or minus 3.6 seats). Overall, the party has a 70.1% probability of holding the chamber.

For House races, I am predicting the Republican Party would end up with approximately 221 seats (based on a forecast uncertainty estimate of plus or minus 4 seats and an overall historic uncertainty estimate of plus or minus 10 seats). The party has approximately a 60.4% probability of controlling the chamber.

As you can imagine it is very difficult to have my “Blackbox” provide definitive answers as to where we will end up in November. However, if historical structural factors and current political and economic indicators remain similar to today, it is very likely that we will be back in the midst of divided government come January 2011.

No worries for Democrats as to the results of the upcoming 2010 midterm election and what it will mean for 2012 (there is a scant relationship between mid-term elections and presidential elections; in fact I have not found any statistical evidence of a link). For Republicans, here is your moment in the sun (based on anecdotal evidence, I suspect that an ideological shift to the right as a result of new GOP members entering into the caucus, may in fact benefit the president two years from now). In any event, if voters’ economic perceptions remain negative going into 2012, it will be very difficult for the president to win reelection, as well as for his party to retake control of Congress....

If you doubt its validity, please feel free to do so. My philosophy with forecasts is to have a healthy dose of skepticism. The minute predictions are generated they tend to be wrong. Therefore success is not measured by how correctly you predict the future but rather how far off the mark you are from it.