The Key House Races 2010 - Updated

We've made a much requested change to the Master List format. We now show an "Incumbent or Open" column that will make it much easier to see which races are in districts where the seat is OPEN and whether it is a Republican seat or a Democrat seat. For those cases where there is an incumbent we now indicate whether the incumbent is a Republican or a Democrat.

And just a reminder: The Master List has 91 seats and 79 of those are Dem Seats. These are the vulnerable Democrats. We need to generate a net 39 seat pickup from those 79 Dems and right now the KHR projection is for a net pickup of 30 seats.

Other changes: Martha Roby won the runoff in AL-02 and she will be on the Republican ticket running against the Incumbent Dem Bobby Bright.

There were 10 changes in our "Expert" ratings by Election Projection and one from Real Clear Politics. All were favorable to the Republicans. So it was a shutout week for the Dems. Nice.

Here's the summary of the changes to our Experts' ratings:

There were a total of 11 updates this week to the 91 Congressional races that we believe are truly in play this year.
11 were favorable to the Republicans
None were favorable to the Democrats

Those change leave our index at -.353. That looks less favorable than last week because of some errors that were discovered in the RCP entries that have been corrected. In any case, this was a good week for the Republicans.

Note that you can always see the latest changes and the current state of the "Expert" evaluations of all of the races on our Master List and an explanation of our methodology on the KeyHouseRaces Experts Page.

Note: On July 20th Georgia will be holding their primary. We have Georgia's District 8 on our Key House Races list so we will be watching that one for sure.

August 10: Colorado, Conecticut, Minnesota and a Georgia Runoff if necessary

WE WILL TAKE 100 SEATS

Remember that all democrats are socialists. Most are communists because they are anti-constitutionalists. Communists are very clever in their methods of diversion and falsifying votes. By the time November gets here the full force of King Obama and his communists Administration will let go with a full blast. Many uneducated Americans will fall for the same crap they did when King Obama ran. Wish I felt better about Americans but remember over 40% still think King Obama is the best President America has ever had.

NH-01 is a Lean R. No question.
Incumbent Carol Che-Porter is down in every poll.

Also, Sean Mahoney is running even with Guinta in GOP primary and he’s not listed. The other two you have listed (Ashooh, Bestani) are non factors.

We'll look into that.

I’m surprised to see the HI race listed as a tossup. I suspected Djou profited from the Dems infighting and would go down easily.

While he did benefit from 2 Dems splitting the vote, he is now an incumbent with a lead in cash on hand. It also remains to be seen how long it takes for the old wounds to heal among Hawaii Dems.

You’d think similarly about Joseph Cao in LA-2. He won the special election for William Jefferson’s (of freezer cash fame) old seat. It’s a district that went about 75% for Obama. But current polls show Cao comfortably ahead of any Dem. primary candidate. Incumbency does has its perks and Cao is in a high profile situation because of the oil spill so he’s in the local press a lot.

Looking at this, it is hard to imagine a sea change type of election like we saw in 1994. Perhaps the pollsters are undersampling the amount of anger out there or perhaps the “expert” predictions of taking over the House are overblown (so the media can then use the results as a repudiation of the Tea Party and an endorsement of Obama and his policies.

Hopefully, when September arrives and school is back and people are back from summer vacations (those that can afford them), conservatives can amp up the energy again. It’s hard to sustain anger for 18 months so some lulls can be expected but another push is going to need to come.

Using the expert ratings above, the results of 32,000 simulated elections are listed in the table below. The definitions of the columns are:

"GOP House Seats P10” – the value where the probability of the actual number being lower is 10%.
”GOP House Seats EV” – the expected value (mean) or probability-weighted average of the simulation.
”GOP House Seats P90” – the value where the probability of the actual number being lower is 90%. Or, it is the value where the probability of the actual number being higher is 10%.
”Probability of 218” – The probability associated with value 218 (the House majority goal).
”GOP Gain” – The difference between the GOP EV and the current number of seats (179), rounded down.

Week	GOP House Seats P10	GOP House Seats EV	GOP House Seats P90	Probability of 218	GOP Gain
09-Apr-10	199	204.77	210	0.18%	25
16-Apr-10	199	205.09	211	0.22%	26
22-Apr-10	200	205.28	211	0.37%	26
01-May-10	201	206.22	212	0.73%	27
08-May-10	201	206.33	212	0.66%	27
19-Jun-10	203	208.44	214	2.29%	29
10-Jul-10	203	208.49	214	2.43%	29
17-Jul-10	203	208.49	214	2.34%	29

The cumulative probability distribution looks like this:

100%																					*
95%															*	*	*	*	*	*
90%														*
85%
80%													*
75%
70%
65%												*
60%
55%											*
50%
45%
40%										*
35%
30%
25%									*
20%
15%
10%								*
5%							*
0%	*	*	*	*	*	*
	191	193	195	196	198	200	202	204	205	207	209	211	213	214	216	218	220	222	223	225	227

-PJ

We’ve been pretty static the past month, but there were only a few primaries in June. May was a big month for primaries and after those primaries were held, there was a 2 seat bump up.

We’ll probably hold steady until the August primaries. After those, we should see another bump. Same with Sept.

The generic congressional polls have been pretty encouraging.

Am I the only one here beginning to think that the best possible outcome might be what this analysis appears to indicate: the Dems retaining a very slight majority in both houses?

Here’s my rationale....even if the GOP gains control of one or even both houses, it won’t be able to enact any legislation with Obummer at the helm and slim majorities. By the same token, Zero will be neutered. With 48 or 49 in the senate and a solid 210 to 215, say, in the house, there’s no way he’s getting cap-and-tax or any of his other BS enacted.

Then in 2012 the GOP can campaign that the Dems have had Congress for 6 years and the White House for 4. If, as I expect, the economy is in even worse shape then, we could have a GOP tsunami that will make 1994 look like a mild tremor.

Hank

Looking at this, it is hard to imagine a sea change type of election like we saw in 1994.

A couple of points:

We are only half way through the Primary season so we have a situation where for about 1/2 the races we don't know who the candidates are. You really cannot accurately poll those districts and nobody is doing so. We are running blind at this point and so are the "Experts" - they are just giving it their best shot based on past history and whatever gossip they pick up. When we start getting serious polls in September/October then we will see whether we can repeat 1994 again. I think we can but we aren't there yet.

At this point your projection is the most likely outcome. But we are early in the game and the trends are slowly but surely moving in our direction. So we do have a good shot at taking back the House.

The potential downside of a Republican takeover of the House is that Obama would, as you point out, actually be handcuffed in terms of his radical agenda and objections to his re-election would naturally diminish. Ref: Bill Clinton in 1996.

But despite the Clinton History Repeats risk I want the House back in the hands of the adults.

Well, I know it will be won by a Republican. I just hope it is Dahm rather than Sullivan. Sullivan is a party man and has been in office too long. With the power of incumbency, he could probably get another DUI and still be re-elected. *sigh*

Thanks for adding me to the list.

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