If these trends continue, Republicans could gain 60 seats in the House

Hotair ^ | 09/13/2010 | Patrick Ishmael

[SeekAndFind]

Since April, I’ve been predicting a House GOP pick-up in the low 50s. Subsequent months of data seemed to strengthen the likelihood of a 52-seat-or-so outcome without greatly expanding the field of Democratic representatives at genuine risk, but only recently has the direness of the party’s electoral predicament really crystallized. In all, a remarkably high number of Democratic seats — 118 to be exact — are now, in one way or another, in play. Forty-four seats are now pure toss-ups or worse.

The last month has been particularly bad for Democrats. From April to August, the average rating (solid/likely/lean/tossup) of Democratic seats steadily moved downward in my survey; even so, August to September turned out to be worse than all previous months combined.

4/19/2010	Δ	5/14/2010	Δ	6/6/2010	Δ	7/12/2010	Δ	8/12/2010	Δ	9/9/2010
0.96	-0.04	0.92	-0.02	0.91	-0.05	0.85	-0.03	0.83	-0.16	0.67

While I don’t think future declines will accelerate exactly quite as much as the August to September period, I do think that Democrat fortunes will continue to fall at a more modest rate for the remaining two months of the campaign season. Thus, assuming declines roughly equal to the declines in those first months and distributing them evenly to all of the races, and Democrats are looking at 52 seats that are just toss-ups or worse on election day. From seat 53 to seat 78, pretty much anything can happen, as all are between the toss-up and lean Democrat categories. Seat 79, currently Dan Maffei’s NY-25, looks to be the high end of GOP gains. However, assuming the GOP wins a third of those intervening seats, the math is pretty straightforward: about 60 new GOP seats.

This all assumes some pretty fierce wave action, which I think is reasonable to believe will happen. Moreover, the 60 most vulnerable seats listed are simply the most likely to me to flip; given the countless factors at the macro and micro levels, the actual list of 60 flipped seats will be different. Regardless of the particular Ws and Ls, the seismic political impact would be the same.

Here’s the data graphically. The first graph is sorted by congressional seat, worst score to best; the second, by monthly raw score, regardless of congressional seat.

Below is the complete list of House seats, most vulnerable to least. Press CTRL-F to search for the seats you’re interested in.

	District	Dem incumbent
1	TN-6	OPEN (Gordon)
2	LA-3	OPEN (Melancon)
3	NY-29	OPEN
4	AR-2	OPEN (Snyder)
5	IN-8	OPEN (Ellsworth)
6	MD-1	Frank Kratovil
7	MS-1	Travis Childers
8	KS-3	OPEN (Moore)
9	TN-8	OPEN (Tanner)
10	AR-1	OPEN (Berry)
11	NM-2	Harry Teague
12	ND-AL	Earl Pomeroy
13	TX-17	Chet Edwards
14	CO-4	Betsy Markey
15	SD-AL	Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
16	FL-24	Suzanne Kosmas
17	IN-9	Baron Hill
18	SC-5	John Spratt
19	WV-1	Alan B. Mollohan
20	FL-2	Allen Boyd
21	OH-1	Steve Driehaus
22	OH-15	Mary Jo Kilroy
23	NH-1	Carol Shea-Porter
24	OH-16	John Boccieri
25	NH-2	OPEN (Hodes)
26	VA-5	Tom Perriello
27	WA-3	OPEN (Baird)
28	FL-8	Alan Grayson
29	NV-3	Dina Titus
30	PA-7	OPEN (Sestak)
31	AL-2	Bobby Bright
32	MI-7	Mark Schauer
33	IL-11	Debbie Halvorson
34	WI-7	OPEN
35	VA-2	Glenn Nye
36	AZ-1	Ann Kirkpatrick
37	MI-1	OPEN (Stupak)
38	PA-11	Paul Kanjorski
39	ID-1	Walter Minnick
40	NY-24	Michael Arcuri
41	IL-14	Bill Foster
42	NC-8	Larry Kissell
43	VA-9	Rick Boucher
44	MO-4	Ike Skelton
45	GA-8	Jim Marshall
46	TN-4	Lincoln Davis
47	PA-3	Kathy Dahlkemper
48	PA-8	Patrick Murphy
49	OH-18	Zack Space
50	TX-23	Ciro Rodriguez
51	PA-10	Chris Carney
52	AZ-5	Harry Mitchell
53	KY-6	Ben Chandler
54	IA-3	Leonard Boswell
55	AZ-8	Gabrielle Giffords
56	CA-11	Jerry McNerney
57	NC-11	Heath Shuler
58	NY-20	Scott Murphy
59	CO-3	John Salazar
60	PA-12	Critz
61	NY-23	Bill Owens
62	WI-8	Steve Kagen
63	NJ-3	John Adler
64	FL-22	Ron Klein
65	IN-2	Joe Donnelly
66	OR-5	Kurt Schrader
67	MA-10	OPEN (Delahunt)
68	NY-13	Mike McMahon
69	NY-19	John Hall
70	NY-1	Tim Bishop
71	OH-13	Betty Sutton
72	NM-1	Martin Heinrich
73	VA-11	Gerald Connolly
74	MI-9	Gary Peters
75	PA-17	Tim Holden
76	PA-4	Jason Altmire
77	WV-3	Nick Rahall
78	CA-47	Loretta Sánchez
79	NY-25	Dan Maffei
80	UT-2	Jim Matheson
81	IL-8	Melissa Bean
82	MS-4	Gene Taylor
83	NC-7	Mike McIntyre
84	GA-2	Sanford Bishop, Jr.
85	IL-17	Phil Hare
86	NC-2	Bob Etheridge
87	CT-5	Christopher Murphy
88	OK-2	Dan Boren
89	MN-1	Tim Walz
90	AR-4	Mike Ross
91	WI-3	Ron Kind
92	WA-2	Rick Larsen
93	CA-18	Dennis Cardoza
94	KY-3	John Yarmuth
95	CT-4	Jim Himes
96	CO-7	Ed Perlmutter
97	NJ-12	Rush Holt
98	GA-12	John Barrow
99	OH-6	Charlie Wilson
100	ME-2	Michaud
101	OR-1	David Wu
102	OR-4	DeFazio
103	CA-20	Jim Costa
104	TN-5	Cooper
105	RI-1	Kennedy
106	IA-1	Bruce Braley
107	IA-2	Loebsack
108	TX-27	Solomon Ortiz
109	MO-3	Russ Carnahan
110	WA-9	Adam Smith
111	NC-4	Price
112	ME-1	Chellie Pingree
113	MA-5	Tsongas
114	MA-6	John F. Tierney
115	NM-3	Ben R. Luján
116	NY-4	McCarthy
117	NJ-6	Pallone
118	CA-39	Sanchez

Update: Numbers guy Nate Silver weighs in today with what I believe is his first House prediction. Worth a read, but to sum his findings: it’s very likely that the GOP will take the House, and there’s a one-in-four chance that it takes 60+ seats. My obvious suspicion is that his “60+” probability will be revised up later, but we shall see.

—–

(I’m on Twitter.)

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.

[FrdmLvr]

If we take that many seats, we better damn well set this country straight, or we’re losing them come 2012. People are not going to settle for a do-nothing Congress or an 0bama rubber stamp. They better STAND UP and TAKE BACK America! Repeal National Healthcare, end the Cap and Tax nonsense, cut taxes for all to restart the economy, end the moratorium on drilling and open up oil fields, end the Amnisty for Illegals nonsense, and build the fence. That’s a good start.

[counterpunch]

The GOP has plenty of time to f*** it up.

John “Business as Usual” Boehner is working on that as we speak.
 

[vicar7]

Knock and the door will be opened big time in November when we throw 80 plus out the door including my congressman Alan Grayson.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks SeekAndFind.

Patrick Ishmael: Since April, I've been predicting a House GOP pick-up in the low 50s.

[Liz]

ping

[InterceptPoint]

An interesting bit of history. The author of this article, Patrick Ishmael, uses a very similar system to the one used by KHR to average the rankings of our 6 "Experts". He developed his method pretty much in the same timeframe as we did but totally independently of ours and he published his approach in an earlier Hot Air article. That article is referenced on the "Expert's Page" at KHR as an acknowledgment of that fact.

He is using a different set of "Experts" than we do and his index numbers are, it seems, scaled differently but the method is the same and he comes up with a Vulnerable Democrat ranking list that is very close, but not identical, to one we have. Our list also includes some slightly vulnerable Republicans since there are at least 2-3 seats that the Republicans are likely to lose and a dozen or so where the Dems have at least a long shot at picking up the seat.

The KHR list is that is our equivalent of the Ishmael list is our Master List Rankings .

[K-oneTexas]

I agree. That is why I asked my questions.

[randita]

You have 10 seats in PA on the Key House Races list. One of those seats, PA-06-Gerlach (R) is looking to be a GOP hold, and another 5-6 are polling decently for the GOP and may switch over from the Dark Side. I see 4 PA seats which will be a challenge for the GOP and they’ll need a good turnout to capture - PA 4, PA 17, PA 10 and PA 12 (Murtha’s seat-may be beyond redemption).

A very positive situation in PA is that Corbett (R-Governor) and Toomey (R-Senate) are polling very well and SHOULD have comfortable victories. They will help the ticket down the line. There may be some people who will split their tickets, but I think it’s more likely that if Republicans and Indies are enthused to come out and vote, they’re going to go GOP. I don’t see a big groundswell for either Onorato (D-Governor) or Sestak (yawn-D-Senate) in PA. The Phila. and Pitts. 100+% voting levels are not likely to occur this November. Neither Onorato or Sestak will excited the constituents in those urban regions. Unions will do their darndest to get the folks out, but that might not be enough this year.

The situation at the gubernatorial and senatorial levels will likely impact turnout for the House races in many states. One example would be NV-03 (Heck (R) against Titus (D). The Reid-Angle matchup should bring out a good crowd of voters. Angle’s voters are energetic and that should help Heck.

[Liz]

Thanks for the deconstruction.