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The Tradesports futures contracts on GOP House control are down to 20% with the election a little more than a week away. Considering that most bottom-up analysis shows the Democrats only taking, say, 22 seats -- which would give them a razor-thin majority of 7 -- it hardly seems right to think that the Dems are now 4 times more likely to win than the GOP. Consider this, from blogger Robert Musil:

I think there is a very good chance that undecided voters will break disproportionately towards the GOP in this race - especially in Congressional races. By common admission, the putative appeal of the Democrats is limited to essentially one issue: Discontent with progress in Iraq. It is worth noting that that discontent has not been enough to beach Senator Lieberman in his deep blue state, but such is supposedly the Democratic advantage.

But problems in Iraq have been absolutely pounded by the media for a long time now. The information is all out, and has been force-fed for weeks to virtually every voter. Anyone who is going to make a decision to vote one way or the other on the basis of that issue has almost certainly done so already. The rest of the major issues favor the GOP: nearly historic low unemployment, historic stock market highs, stabilized low interest rates, historic high home ownership rates, declining gas prices. Then, of course, there is Karl Rove's famous "get-out-the-vote" machine, for which the Democrats have no real counterpart...The first signs of such a GOP slide may already be evident, as in this article from the Washington Post that purports to sound a death knell for the GOP's election prospects, but contains this overlooked pearl:

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows some narrowing in the Democratic advantage in House races. The survey gives the Democrats a six-percentage-point lead nationally among likely voters asked which party they prefer for Congress. It was 14 points two weeks ago, but this remains a larger advantage than they have had in recent midterm elections.

Omitted from the WP "analysis" is the historical fact that when the GOP trails in the generic ballot by 5% or less, the GOP tends to gain seats in the House. So can 6% easilly correspond to a likely Democratic sweep?

Hmmm... at 20%, thos contracts might be worth a flyer.

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