2010 House Defense: Can Republicans take control?

With little over a year to go until the 2010 midterm elections I thought it would be interesting to look at recent history to see if it is at all likely that Republicans could take control over the House of Representatives.

In recent weeks several pundits have opined that the decling popularity of the Obama presidency and the Democratic congress makes this a least a possibility. I for one have been skeptical.

The GOP would need to pickup 40 seats to have a majority of 1. We know that in 1994 a large number of the Republican gains were in open seats but at the moment there are only four Democrats vacating. Looking back at the waves of 2006 and 2008 we find that Democrats picked up 30 and 21 seats respectively. In terms of incumbents the numbers are 22 for 2006 and 14 for 2008. What I was interested in looking at was the percentage of the vote each of these incumbents scored in the election before the year of their defeat. In other words in 2004 and 2006.

These are the 22 GOP incumbents defeated in 2006 in descending order of their winning percentage in 2004:

Don Sherwood (PA-10) 93%

Henry Bonilla (TX-23) 69%

Sue Kelly (NY-19) 67%

John Sweeney (NY-20) 66%

Jeb Bradley (NH-01) 63%

Melissa Hart (PA-04) 63%

Clay Shaw (FL-22) 63%

Richard Pombo (CA-11) 61%

Gil Gutknecht (MN-01) 60%

Nancy Johnson (CT-05) 60%

Anne Northup (KY-03) 60%

Jim Leach (IA-02) 59%

JD Hayworth (AZ-05) 59%

Kurt Weldon (PA-07) 59%

Charlie Bass (NH-02) 58%

Jim Ryun (KS-02) 56%

Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-08) 55%

Charles Taylor (NC-11) 55%

Rob Simmons (CT-02) 54%

Chris Chocola (IN-02) 54%

Jim Hostettler (IN-08) 53%

Mike Sodrel (IN-09) 49%

For sake of clarity I am exluding Shelley Sekula-Gibbs from this list despite the fact she won a special election to replace Tom Delay so in theory TX-22 wasn’t an open seat on election day.

The first thing that struck me was the number of incumbents that were defeated having won easily in 2004. But then looking at the seats in detail it is clear that several of those winning with larger margins were to become plauged by scandal by 2006 or in the case of Henry Bonilla see changes to the demographics of their district.

These are the 14 GOP incumbents defeated in 2008 in descending order of their winning percentage in 2006:

Virgil Goode (VA-05) 59%

Tom Feeney (FL-24) 58%

Phil English (PA-03) 54%

Ric Keller (FL-08) 53%

Steve Chabot (OH-01) 52%

Joe Knollenberg (MI-09) 52%

Randy Kuhl (NY-29) 52%

Chris Shays (CT-04) 52%

Thelma Drake (VA-02) 51%

Tim Walberg (MI-07) 50%

Robin Hayes (NC-08) 50%

Bill Sali (ID-01) 50%

Jon Porter (NV-03) 48%

Marylin Musgrave (CO-04) 46%

The average for 2006 was 60% which thrilled me considerably since this is exactly the arbitary cutoff I’ve been using in my mind in trying to judge which Dems are vulnerable next year. The average for 2008 was 52% which is understandable due to the nature of back-to-back waves. Because of this I think the 2006 figure is a more sensible comparison to what me might expect next year in a worst case scenario.

So using this figure which Democratic incumbents are threatened? As you can see the list is worryingly long, much longer than I was expecting. I have split the list into two – seats won in districts won by John McCain (22) which in theory should be most vulnerable and seats won by the president (34) which shouldn’t be considered necessarily safe.

McCain Dems elected with less than 60% in 2008:

Frank Kratovil (MD-01) 49% R+13

Bobby Bright (AL-02) 50% R+16

Tom Perriello (VA-05) 50% R+5

Walt Minnick (ID-01) 51% R+18

Eric Massa (NY-29) 51% R+5

Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-03) 51% R+3

Parker Griffith (AL-05) 52% R+12

Chet Edwards (TX-17) 53% R+20

Harry Mitchell (AZ-05) 53% R+5

Travis Childers (MS-01) 55% R+14

Gabby Giffords (AZ-08) 55% R+4

Jim Boccieri (OH-16) 55% R+4

Chris Carney (PA-10) 56% R+8

Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01) 56% R+6

Jason Altmire (PA-04) 56% R+6

Betsy Markey (CO-04) 56% R+6

Harry Teague (NM-02) 56% R+6

Jim Marshall (GA-08) 57% R+10

Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24) 57% R+4

Baron Hill (IN-09) 58% R+6

John Murtha (PA-12) 58% R+1

Lincoln Davis (TN-04) 59% R+13

Obama Dems elected with less than 60% in 2008:

Mary Jo Kilroy (OH-15) 46% D+1

Dina Titus (NV-03) 47% D+2

Mark Schauer (MI-07) 49% R+2

Scott Murphy (NY-20) 50% R+2

Jim Himes (CT-04) 51% D+5

Glenn Nye (VA-02) 52% R+5

Alan Grayson (FL-08) 52% R+2

Michael Arcuri (NY-24) 52% R+2

John Adler (NJ-03) 52% R+1

Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01) 52% R+0

Steve Driehaus (OH-01) 52% D+1

Gary Peters (MI-09) 52% D+2

Paul Kanjorski (PA-11) 52% D+4

Steve Kagen (WI-08) 54% D+0

Kurt Schrader (OR-05) 54% D+1

Jerry McNerney (CA-11) 55% R+1

Larry Kissell (NC-08) 55% R+2

Ron Klein (FL-22) 55% D+1

Gerry Connolly (VA-11) 55% D+2

Dan Maffei (NY-25) 55% D+3

Chellie Pingree (ME-01) 55% D+8

Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23) 56% R+4

Dennis Moore (KS-03) 56% R+3

Leonard Boswell (IA-03) 56% D+1

Martin Heinrich (NM-01) 56% D+5

Patrick Murphy (PA-07) 57% D+3

Dave Loebsack (IA-02) 57% D+7

Solomon Ortiz (TX-27) 58% R+2

Debbie Halvorson (IL- 11) 58% R+1

Bill Foster (IL-14) 58% R+1

Tim Bishop (NY-01) 58% R+0

John Hall (NY-19) 59% R+3

Chris Murphy (CT-05) 59% D+2

John Yarmuth (KY-03) 59% D+2

Sobering isn’t it. However, I don’t think it very likely any of the seats with a Dem PVI will be lost except perhaps OH-15 and maybe OH-01, WI-08 and NV-03. That leaves 20 Obama Dems. Obviously there are seats that may look vulnerable outside these, including open seats but my thinking is that those will cancel out the seats in my list that will never materialize as even the slightest bit competitive. What I was interested in initially was to see if there was a total number of seats that make it even possible for the Republicans to take the House. It looks like the answer (42) is yes but only just. I’m sure the way I’ve come to this conclusion will look to many like I’ve pulled the number out my ass but it seems to me as good a way as any and at least it is based on real numbers from the recent past.

76 thoughts on “2010 House Defense: Can Republicans take control?”

  1. This is a somewhat reassuring exercise, though it probably does miss a decent number of vulnerable seats.

    My first big concern is the people who owe their wins by and large to changes in normal turnout patterns that came with 2008 lose with a return to normal patterns, let alone a situation where dispirited Dems fail to turn out. VA-02, VA-05, OH-01, OH-15, FL-24, NC-08, IL-11 all spring to mind.

    Wave elections are funny in that they usually spare a decent number of the obviously vulnerable – either they’re too firmly entrenched or they’ve been taking enough precautionary measures (either distancing themselves from party leaders, aggressive fundraising, stepping up constituent services) as to secure their survival. At the same time, such cycles tend to trip up a fair number of people who thought they were reasonably safe and didn’t notice the ground shift beneath them until it was too late.

    I do wonder when the next one is due, since both 2006/08 and 1994 were also driven in large part by a large of number of “wrong party” seats and there seem to be fewer of those than is usually the case. ’94 cleared out a large number of the Boll Weevil Democrats, either through defeats or retirements. ’06/08 did the same for a lot of Republicans representing metropolitan suburban seats and/or Rust Belt districts. There are a few Dems in the South or para-South who represent red areas, but not nearly as many as there were back in 1993.      

  2. Much as everyone seems to think that being an incumbent is horrible, even in a year that was a disaster for Republican incumbents (2006), they still only lost 11% of their incumbents running in the general (the Republicans lost 22 incumbents out of 204 running their respective general elections). In 2008 (which, while not as bad as 2006 was for them, was still a really bad year) they lost about 5% of their incumbents (the Democrats lost about 2% of theirs). If another wave hit in the Republicans direction in 2010 (something I doubt), even then I’d still say that the absolute worst the Democrats will do is to lose 20-30 seats. In a neutral year, I doubt the Democrats lose more than 15, and probably fewer than 10, unless there are a rash of open seats on the Democratic side (in relatively competitive districts, of course).

  3. Will also play a role.  Democrats will be competitive in the IL-10, PA-06, PA-15, WA-08, LA-02, and a gaggle of California seats.  Usually in a wave year it is almost impossible for the opposition party to win back any seats unless there are extenuating circumstances (ie bad incumbents – Boyda, Mahoney, and Jefferson I’m looking at you).  But in this case it wouldn’t be surprising for Team Blue to pick up a number of seats to offset their losses elsewhere, which will minimize the damage.  Using those numbers, the GOP will have to win probably 45 or more seats to truly guarantee they’d have a majority.

    The lack of retirements for the Democrats will probably save us a few seats that would have flipped otherwise as well.  In truth, we don’t need to have positive gains in 2010, just to keep the losses at a minimum and make it a push.  I’ve said this before, but if we’re assuming the bottom doesn’t fall out on Obama and he wins in 2012, than 2014 will likely be the year Republicans can make a legitimate push to retake both chambers of Congress.

  4. Does the economy show real signs of recovery in mid-2010?

    Give me the answer to those two questions, and I will give you the answer to your question.

    If the answer to my questions are yes, then I would give the GOP a 0% chance of picking up more than 15 seats.

  5. If Democrats lose the House in 2010, they probably wont be getting it back for another decade.  The reason is that redistricting is going to be shifting a lot of seats from Democratic leaning Northeastern and Midwestern states to Republican states in the Southwest and South.  Another big problem is that Republicans are likely to control redistricting in most states and that will further lock Democrats out of a majority and probably for the next decade and likely longer.

    This is probably a do or die election for Democrats.  Whoever wins control of the House and most state legislatures/governorships is likely to be in control of Congress for the next generation.  

  6. What you’re leaving out (but everyone does) are the partisan effects of elderly voters dying and younger ones replacing them.  Along with similar effects due to in- and outmigration.

    There will be two more years of deaths and new voters signing up by November 2010, with turnover of nearly 5% of the electorate overall resulting.  The net effect in recent years is of 1% liberal/Democratic gain per year in baseline (and overall) partisan lean.  In your average House district with the standard 10% population growth per decade which happens to be moderately or highly competitive you can just about count on 2% better national Democratic performance every two years.

    That math of small but constant Democratic baseline gains doesn’t hold up well in (a) Appalachia, (b) the Rust Belt/middle and eastern Great Lakes.

    In short, I don’t think the House Reps in D-leaning districts are in serious trouble yet.  Mary Jo Kilroy is apparently screwing up her relationship with her constituents, that would be the one to keep an eye on.  Kanjorski’s district is trending Republican, I think- he’s looking at squeakers until he retires.  Schauer, Nye, Grayson, and Kissell are vulnerable too due to their districts.  But the rest of those folks on the Obama district list strike me as safe.

    I don’t see the three Arizona House Reps on the McCain district list as actually vulnerable.  There’s Democratic trend all over the state (though the breakthrough election always seems like the next one) and the Republican bench in the state, though they’ve done great in the state legislature, is seemingly marked with fail at any higher level than that.

  7. My number was previously 40, but you make a solid argument with 42.  One of the seats that I’m not too worried about is WI-08, but you never know.

    So, if we have 42 seats to play “D” on, I imagine that we will be able to save at least half, probably even more.  We may lose around 16 of the seats, plus another 4 to 8 that were off the radar are because they were open seats.  However, we will probably pick up a half a dozen seats from the GOP due to retirements, Cao, etc.

    On the positive front, the economy is showing signs of improvement.  If we get some meaningful healthcare legislation passed, our ability to play some more “O” will be helped out.

    I think we will lose around (net) 12-15 seats in 2010.  Too early to tell, but I don’t think the GOP has got their act together to exploit many of the vulnerable Dems.

  8. Although it may be a bit off topic, but if Democrats dont get healthcare reform passed, all bets are off for 2010.  We could see them lose 70 seats if that were to happen.  

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