Posted on 09/13/2010 12:51:06 PM PDT by 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.
—–
This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.
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.
The GOP has plenty of time to f*** it up.John Business as Usual Boehner is working on that as we speak.
Knock and the door will be opened big time in November when we throw 80 plus out the door including my congressman Alan Grayson.
Patrick Ishmael: Since April, I've been predicting a House GOP pick-up in the low 50s.
ping
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 .
I agree. That is why I asked my questions.
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.
Thanks for the deconstruction.
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