Over the coming days I’m going to stick my neck out and try to predict how the elections will come out.

I’m starting today with the easiest prediction of the three, the House of Representatives.

In any election I am reluctant to use the word certain or to say something has a 100% chance of happening as you never know what might happen. But with the House it’s pretty darn close. It is theoretically possible for the Democrats to take back the House if there is a hidden pro Obama/Democrat wave just as it is theoretically possible for Romney to carry California if there is a hidden pro Romney/Republican wave, but neither is particularly likely.

So I will say there is a 99% chance the GOP will retain the House and perhaps a 33% chance they could pick up a seat or 2.

This does not mean that the Democrats will not make any gains, but they are likely to be in single digits. Indeed there is that chance that the Republicans could pick up a couple seats though I would say the odds are that the Democrats will pick up 4-6 seats nationwide.

This view seems to be shared by most of the experts (Roll Call, Real Clear Politics, Charlie Cook etc) who all are calling for single digit Democratic gains, which would give us a House with roughly 235 Republicans to 200 Democrats.

In reviewing these races I found it interesting that your view of the House can be shaped by where you live. For example in my own area there are 3 seats which could switch (2 from Dem to GOP and 1 from GOP to Dem). So if I assume that the rest of the country is like my area I might think big Democratic gains are possible. But in most states there just isn’t much movement.

Indeed even if I did assume California as a whole was reflective of the nation as a whole, the best case for Democrats would be a 3-4 seat gain. If you project that on the whole country it would result in a Democratic gain of 20-30 seats, which could give them the barest of control, but it could leave the GOP in the majority and of course that discounts the fact that in most areas incumbents of both parties are quite secure.

If you’d like to do a little forecasting of your own there is a good feature at Roll Call.`