In our series of SSP Cash Power Rankings, we previously looked at House challengers running against incumbents and the most competitive Senate races. Now it's time to close the triangle and look at the cash-on-hand competitiveness of candidates running in open seat House races.
The one race that we've left out is MO-09. Due to a large primary field without a clear front-runner on both sides, that race would be difficult to place on our chart. In other races with undecided primaries, we've either included multiple candidates (e.g. WY-AL, NY-26, LA-04), or have decided to go with the clear front-runner only. The top-ranked race here is a special case, as Jamshad Wyne is the only GOP candidate to file a fundraising report in NY-13 so far -- we don't consider him to be the front-runner of anything (except for the loser's sweepstakes, perhaps), but he was our only choice.
Just as we did for the House race scene (and as we did last quarter), we present our rankings according to the SSP Cash Power Index for competitive senate races. The main difference is that we include open seats in this chart; where there is no incumbent senator, the incumbent party candidate is used as a stand-in.
Note that the number of races on this list is a lot smaller than last time; that's because some folks have lost primaries, and also because we've left off the races which, at this point, are not competitive. So while it might look like Rick Noriega, say, has jumped a bunch, that's at least in part because the likes of Greg Fischer and Tony Raimondo aren't around anymore. Also, Tom Udall was previously ranked twice because he faced two primary opponents at the time.
UPDATE: Chart updated to reflect inclusion of KS-Sen.
It's time. Just as we did after the first quarter, we've rounded up and ranked the top 75 non-open seat House races according to the SSP Cash Power Index -- a metric designed to measure cash-on-hand competitiveness. We divide a challenger's cash-on-hand by the size of the incumbent's war chest to gauge the financial gap between candidates.
Let's have a look at where we stand after the second quarter. You'll notice that eight of the top ten challengers are Democrats, and the top-ranked Republican is Deborah "The Defrauder" Honeycutt. 47 of the top 75 challengers are Democrats while 27 are Republicans. A lone independent makes the chart for the first time:
This is it -- our final 2Q teaser round-up before the main event. Tomorrow night at midnight is the deadline for candidates to file their fundraising reports with the FEC, and we'll round-up all the interesting numbers in our epic quarterly chart. Also on tap for this week are SSP's 2Q Cash Power Rankings for all the most competitive House and Senate races as well as our updated race ratings. Stay tuned.
If true, that's an absolutely stunning haul for Madia. When we get confirmation, we'll post it.
UPDATE: I just received the press release, and Madia had a stunningly successful quarter with nearly 700K raised. I've updated the link above to direct to the actual filing.
PA-04:
Jason Altmire (D-inc): $456K raised; $1.57M CoH
Dole's cash-on-hand has actually decreased since her pre-primary filing in mid-April, when she had $3.2M in the bank. A couple of statewide ads later, and now she's down to $2.7M. Democrat Kay Hagan has $1.2M in the bank, so the financial edge here is not that fearsome.
LA-Sen:
Mary Landrieu (D-inc): >$1.5M raised; $5.4M CoH
The John Kennedy campaign is now claiming that they outraised Landrieu by a hair ($1.51M), after previously claiming to have brought in $1.48M in the second quarter.
GA-12:
Regina Thomas (D): $42K raised; $25K CoH (est.)
Thomas still hasn't filed her pre-primary financial report with the FEC (which was due on the 3rd), so these estimates came straight from the candidate. Considering that Thomas' $42K figure tracks very closely to her current total on Actblue, it's very clear that blogs like Democrats.com and the Blue America crew are doing most of the heavy lifting for her in terms of fundraising. Not a great sign, but it wouldn't be wise to write off her chances in next week's primary.
