Mike Huckabee

With just eight days to go until the election, poll analyst Stuart Rothenberg has made his predictions: he predicts that Obama has a 50-50 chance of reelection, the House will stay Republican with a handful of gains for Democrats, and the Senate will stay Democrat. The New York Times prediction blog FiveThirtyEight agrees. Back in August, they had the odds of Republicans retaking the Senate at 62 percent, but it dropped to 16 percent after Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock made their controversial comments.

But the House is a different story. Across America, GOP state legislatures have shored up safe districts to the point that Democrats are expected to gain no more than seven seats. The big question is whether that will spell the end of Nancy Pelosi. Usually, after a crushing defeat, like in 2010, the party leader steps aside. But Nancy Pelosi clung on as minority leader, insisting that the Democrats’ loss was just a bump in the road and they’d roar back into power in 2012. Voters seem to disagree. Now, even some of Ms Pelosi’s staunchest supporters are starting to think, “Maybe it’s her.”

Of course, all of these predictions are based on turnout models from previous elections. If Republicans get out and vote in much heavier numbers than usual, they could all be proven wrong. And there’s no lack of enthusiasm. Republicans in San Francisco who’ve given up on their own state even volunteered to drive all the way to Nevada to work for Romney. And reports from heavy Republican districts are that the lines are already as long as the lines at Chick-Fil-A. If Republicans would wait in line for an hour for a chicken sandwich, surely they’d stand in an even longer line for the country.

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