There is little change in the House forecast from last week. Republicans are assigned a 65 percent chance of taking over the House by our forecasting model, up slightly from 62 percent last week. They are projected to control 224 House seats in the new Congress, up a single seat from 223 last week; this would imply a gain of 45 seats from the 179 they have now (counting one vacant seat most recently held by a Republican member). Substantially larger — or smaller — gains are possible, however.

The Republicans’ lead among likely voters on the generic ballot is down slightly to 6.5 points this week from 7.5 points last week, according to our estimate. However, any potential penalty from this was offset by gains made by Republican candidates in the characterizations of individual races made by some expert forecasters, which are also used in our model. Cook Political, for instance, moved 7 races in the Republicans’ direction, while CQ Politics — which had been more conservative about projecting Republican gains — did so in more than a dozen races.