50+ Seat Gain for GOP Looking Pretty Solid

Nate Silver has been looking at the numbers:

FiveThirtyEight’s projection for the U.S. House shows little change from last week. Republicans are given a 73 percent chance of taking over the House, up incrementally from 72 percent last week. During an average simulation run, Republicans finished with 227 seats, up from 226 last week; this would suggest a net gain of 48 seats from the 179 they hold currently.

However, there is considerable uncertainty in the forecast because of the unusually large number of House seats now in play. A gain of as large as 70-80 seats is not completely out of the question if everything broke right for Republicans. Conversely, if Democrats managed to see a material rebound in their national standing over the final two weeks of the campaign, they could lose as few as 20-30 seats, as relatively few individual districts are certain pickups for Republicans.

At this point, barring a major news or political event, it's hard to see what could happen in the last two weeks that would swing voters back to Democrats. There isn't any good economic news, people are still mad at how the liberal agenda was rammed down our throats, and the most motivated voters right now are still the Tea Party Republicans and Independents. Obama's not on the ballot so there's little reason to expect a surge among black voters or starry-eyed youth.

I'm still going with my over/under number of 56 and wouldn't be surprised to see 60+.