A third close FL-22 poll, and our forecast does not budge

An Impact Research survey of likely voters in Florida's 22nd District, sponsored by House Majority PAC and fielded August 24-31, has Democrat Pia Dandiya at 46 percent and Republican Casey Askar at 44 percent. Two points is a close race, not a lead. The poll was conducted for a partisan sponsor, which is part of how we weight it.

Our forecast is unchanged. The model gives Dandiya a 97 in 100 chance in FL-22, with a mean margin of D+17.4 and a 5th-to-95th percentile range of D+1.7 to D+33.1. The run before this one, at 10:32 AM ET today, had the same win probability and the same mean margin, with a range of D+1.9 to D+33.0. The new number moved the bottom of the interval by two tenths of a point and nothing else.

That gap between the polling and the model is now the story of this race rather than a new development. We have written twice already about close FL-22 surveys that left the forecast intact. This is the third, and the pattern holds: the district's fundamentals and a national environment our generic-ballot average puts at D+6.3, across 24 polls in a 45-day window, are doing more work than the district polling. The low end of our range is close to what these polls show, so the model does not treat a two-point race here as impossible — only as unlikely.

Nationally, our model gives Democrats a 94 in 100 chance of winning House control, with a mean of 239.6 seats against the 218 needed. One caveat is ours to own: our simulation correlates error nationally, by census division, by state and by district, but we have no data to correlate demographically similar districts wherever they sit. That makes the House control figure marginally firmer than it should be.