Distorting Silver, Corsi suggested Dems will lose House if Obama falls below 65%

In a May 18 post on the conservative website WorldNetDaily.com, Jerome Corsi incorrectly characterized a March 30 Esquire piece by FiveThirtyEight.com founder Nate Silver, claiming that Silver "forecast that Obama will need to sustain a 65-percent approval rating to avoid losing the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections" [emphasis added]. But Silver claimed nothing of the sort; in fact, he wrote: "My statistical model shows that Obama will need to sustain an approval rating in the range of 65 percent to avoid losing any ground in the House" [emphasis added].

According to Silver's analysis, if Obama's approval falls below "the range of 65 percent," Democrats will lose at least one House seat. Democrats, who currently control 256 of 435 House seats, would need to lose 39 seats to lose control of the House. That calculation assumes that Republicans would win all of the seats that Democrats would lose (and not a third party), would retain all 178 of the seats they currently control, and would win the currently vacant seat -- for a total of 218 Republican seats as compared to 217 Democratic seats.

From Corsi's post:

If unemployment numbers in the blue states do not begin improving soon, the Democratic Party may start expressing concerns about 2010 mid-term election losses in both governor races and in Congress, many political observers say.

The baseball statistician and political predictor at FiveThirtyEight.com already has forecast that Obama will need to sustain a 65-percent approval rating to avoid losing the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections in which voters traditionally weigh economic issues particularly strong.