Lean Democratic
01 (GA-08) Marshall
02 (IL-08) Bean
03 (WV-01) Mollohan
04 (VT-AL) Sanders(I)*
05 (GA-12) Barrow
06 (IA-03) Boswell
07 (LA-03) Melancon
08 (OR-05) Hooley
Likely Democratic
09 (IL-17) Evans*
10 (IN-07) Carson
11 (CO-03) Salazar
12 (SC-05) Spratt
13 (TX-17) Edwards
14 (NC-13) Miller
15 (LA-02) Jefferson
16 (KS-02) Moore
If anyone really wants me to I could also post my 14 seat Watch List of GOP-held seats. They are all 'officially' rated Safe and I'm disinclined to post them together with the seats I'm rating as competitive. (I also have a 4 seat Watch List of Dem-held districts, fwiw).
Thanks for the ping to your House race predictions. We need a great GOTV effort to maintain control of the House. There are just too many "bad" contests where there are odd-ball circumstances, and none of them are in Dem seats.
I think we will win GA-08, and GA-12 is a tossup in my analysis. Those two seats would help, and we need Ohio seats to be less of a disaster than they are currently appearing to be.
And I just don't see how the Delay seat could be number 1 most vulnerable, I see how it is in play but #1? Here is a seat where I think we have a chance to win because the problems are not of a political nature, but because of the write-in mechanics.
Thanks for all the work that goes into your predictions.
I think that Ohio District 13 (Senate nominee Sherrod Brown) is still in play. Dem nominee Betty Sutton feels the need to run negative ads against her opponent, which ought to tell you something. And the Republicans have a great candidate, although even he has a tough time in this solidly Democratic district.
From there, I applied your ratings, overriding others where it occured (see Notable Differences below).
For reference, here's my scale. I'm using a progressive scale (from the Republican perspective) where each category is twice better than the prior, where "better" is defined as distance from Toss Up. The scale is as follows:
Toss Up = 50%
Tilt = 6.25% better than Toss Up
Lean = 12.5% better than Toss Up
Strong/Likely = 25% better than Toss Up
Safe = 50% better than Toss Up
The scale ranges from 0% (Safe Democrat) -> 50% (Toss Up) -> 100% (Safe Republican). I've been running 100,000 simulated elections.
Notable Differences (FWIW)
OH-15 -- You have it as Lean Democrat, Barone has it as Lean Republican.
PA-06 -- You have it as Lean Democrat, Barone has it as Lean Republican.
NC-11 -- You have it as Toss Up, Barone has it as Sure Democrat.
OH-18 -- You have it as Toss Up, Barone has it as Sure Democrat.
CT-02 -- You have it as Toss up, Barone has it as Sure Republican.
VA-10 -- Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? sorry, I couldn't resist.
KS-2 -- BUG - you have it as both Likely Republican (Ryun) and Likely Democrat (Moore). Moore is KS-3.
Results
Running 100,000 simulated elections with your predictions and my scale, the expected value of Republican seats is 208.5, a net loss of 23.5 seats. The probability of attaining 218 seats (majority) is 1.6%.
Comments
There are 12 Republican seats with less than 50% probability of retaining, plus another 14 seats that are Toss Up. No Democrat seats are Toss Up or leaning Republican. Does this make sense to you?
If you have other numbers that you want me to factor in, let me know.
-PJ