Just think: if the New York Times had been willing to pla...

Just think: if the New York Times had been willing to play ball with Nate Silver, they could have things of this quality���rather than more of their standard politician-celebrity-gossip and "Javanka are going to save us all" that has done so much to empower the Orange-Haired Baboons of the world: Nathaniel Rakich: 538 Election Update: How Our House Forecast Compares With The Experts��� Ratings: "FiveThirtyEight���s forecast is a tad more bullish on Democrats��� chances overall than the three major handicappers...

...If you assign probabilities to their race ratings, Cook���s and Sabato���s ratings both imply a Democratic gain of 29 seats, while Inside Elections���s compute out to a Democratic gain of 23. (Our forecast, remember, currently projects an average Democratic gain of 34 seats.) The Democratic tail is also longer in our Classic forecast ��� that is, the model gives a greater chance than the experts do that a blue wave turns into a tsunami and Democrats pick up a ton of seats, like 60 or 70. That���s because the model rates fewer seats as truly safe for Republicans... than the experts do. By a small margin, our forecast also places more seats in the ���solid Democratic��� category and all the competitive categories combined (between ���likely Republican��� and ���likely Democratic���).

Who will be right? We honestly don���t know! We���re still 11 weeks out from the election, and things are still subject to a lot of change. The long tails in our forecast reflect that, but it���s worth noting that there���s no real way for the qualitative ratings to communicate uncertainty. The bottom line is that, in the big picture, and in terms of average seat gain, all the major forecasters agree: Democrats are mild favorites to take back the House...

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