Trying To Map The House and Senate

His latest estimate on the Senate is a gain for the Democrats of 7-9 seats.

Rothenberg is mincing words about how he views the electoral landscape right now, outright predicting a big Election Day for Barack Obama and the Democrats.

"While major media outlets are hesitant to pronounce the presidential race over for fear of being harassed by Republicans and conservatives, there isn't much doubt at this late date that it is over," Rothenberg wrote in a recent column.

On the House side, Rothenberg is predicting a gain for Democrats of around 30 seats.

If that happens by the way, that would be the first time in years that a party has won over two dozen seats in two straight elections.  It doesn't happen that often.

A Senate pickup of 7-9 seats would also give Democrats the biggest gains in two straight elections since the GOP took back control of the Senate after making gains in 1978 and then a dozen seat pickup in 1980 on the coattails of Ronald Reagan.

Right now the Senate is split 49-49 and 2 Independents.  The House has 235 Democrats, 199 Republicans and one vacancy that was and probably will be a Democratic seat.

So when you add 30 seats for the Dems, that puts them up in the 265+ range - which would give them a very solid majority to work with.

Consider the fact that during the 12 years that Republicans controlled the House after winning it in 1994, the biggest GOP majority was 233 members.

One thing that I do think will happen is that a few Democratic incumbents will be defeated, and a couple of Republicans that no one thought were in trouble will go down as well.

And if Obama wins easily, it could be more than just a few.  Somewhere, some member of Congress is going to bed tonight thinking that he or she is doing okay.

And they're not.