Welcome back to House Party and our look at the 12 House races that we think will be at the center of the fight for the House.

I’m watching a stream of white dots go across the top of my screen, fistpumping when I see a blue one break it up, and despairing at each red one.

Like anyone following the race for the House of Representatives I’m obsessed with the New York Times’s live polling results. The paper has picked a variety of battleground races to look at and, as high-quality public polling has declined as media budgets have shrank, it’s a wonderful use of resources. High-quality independent polling of House races is rare; most of what we have to go off of is campaign internals.

The public service isn’t just in the end result, but in giving more transparency to the polling process. People can now see just how much effort (and accordingly, expense) goes into polling. And the Times tries to increase readers' statistical literacy by noting that results really don’t mean anything until they get 150 responses, showing how the toplines change over the course of the poll so people can see how more responses mean more reliable results, and disclosing different weighting methods so people can see how the same raw data can lead to divergent results.

A few more things to keep in mind when looking at these results:

The conventional wisdom is that hitting 50 percent in a poll correlates strongly with victory. Hillary Clinton, for instance, was consistently in the high 40s in many polls but never locked down majority support in the "blue wall" states, especially after the "Comey letter." In hindsight, that was obviously a major problem.

Similarly, if you’re a Republican incumbent being below 50 percent is a bad sign. The whole idea behind incumbency advantage is that the voters know you well enough to give you a built-in edge heading into the election. If you’re polling in the 40s, that means the edge isn’t holding up.

Polling Latino voters is tougher for a variety of reasons so small changes in raw data on them can get polls to jump considerably. So in districts with significant Latino population there’s a lot of risk in reading too much into one poll,

I know it’s fun to start following results as soon as they start flowing in, but you can see from past results how the result at 150 correspondents often diverges from 500.

And the results seem to track with the state of play we outlined in the Initial Decisive Dozen post earlier this month that identified the 12 most important House races. Most of these races are indeed extremely close But there were some notable outcomes that caused a few races to move around in the rankings:

A Race That Republicans May Abandon:

CO-06: Before the Times jumped in, the most recent poll we had here was a Jason Crow internal showing him up only 2 percent before advertising had started. But the Times showed him cracking 50 percent, ten points above incumbent Mike Coffman. Crow isn’t a perfect candidate but the former Army ranger has done a good job of parrying the attacks on his record, and I suspect Republicans would rather not spend $5 million again in 2020 defending Coffman in a seat that continues to trend away from them.

A Race That's Not looking as Important:

WV-03: Richard Ojeda has gotten a fair amount of attention because he’s both progressive and also somewhat sympathetic to Trump, which seems like the combo a Democrat would need to win in bright red West Virginia. But apparently Republicans still have the edge here: The Times showed Ojeda down 8 and his opponent Carol Miller near 50 percent. Now, Ojeda’s a better retail candidate and this race is still essentially a tossup. But the electorate here is volatile enough that it’s hard to say control of the House would really hinge on its outcome.

The Decisive Dozen: Here’s What’s Happening in the Most Important House Races in the Country:

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