Oh Please, Oh Please...

If this happens on election night, I'm going to have to step up from the Cooks' Champagne all the way to Korbel (I have high standards I tell ya'!):

Over at Pollster.com, Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin look over all the available public polling on House races and assign 222 seats to the Democrats with 25 tossups. Let's say the Democrats and Republicans split the tossups (though in a wave election like this one, it's more plausible that these races would break toward the Democrats). That would bring the Democratic total to 234 seats--a gain of 31 seats over where they now stand.

The political scientists' forecasting model prediction of 32 seats doesn't see so far-fetched in light of these data. It's also worth noting that Charlie Cook now predicts Democratic gains of 20-35 seats (with a hedge toward a higher number than 35). Using the midpoint of his range, that would put the Democrat gain at around 28 seats--again, not far off the 32 mark.

Of course, this is still more conservative than my prediction of the Democrats picking up 435 seats; plus 1,000 new Senators.