Looking at Charlie Cook’s Hoiuse ratings, he had Chabot’s OH-01 as a toss-up; Chabot won by 7% (27,500 votes), a larger victory margin in votes than what Democrat Tim Ryan had in the supposedly “safe Democrat” OH-13, which had been drawn by Republicans as a “Democrat vote sink.” Bishop in the supposedly only “lean Republican” NC-09 won by more votes than did former Congressional Black Caucus chairman G.K. Butterfield in the NC-01 (also “safe Democrat”).
GOP candidates already have won one “Likely Democrat” seat and have a shot of winning 2 or 3 others (and several ithers were very close as well). GOP candidates have won or are ahead in 8 of the 18 “Lean Democrat” seats (it was 9 until Spangenberg took the lead in VA-07), and have won or are ahead in 25 of the 27 “tossup” districts (all but UT-04 and CA-25, both of which could end up going our way). Meanwhile, the only “Lean Republican” or “Likely Republican” seats that could give us a victory by less than 5% is CA-50 (Issa, in Hunter’s vacated CD), but he’ll likely win by more than that when all the votes are counted.
I would congratulate the GOP for so greatly exceeding expectations, but that would assume that the Leftist wishful thinking that Charlie Cook spews as “election analysis” comprised reasonable expectations.
A lot to wade through:
Upshot: are these enough numbers to get us to 18?