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.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Master List for House fundraising for all 435 House races in 2008 presented without any analysis (I'll post an analysis of the data a bit later).
In addition to having all House races here, I also took the liberty of dividing races into different classifications, including races that were contested by the losing Party, ones where the losing Party spent money, and the ones where the losing candidate spent at least $100,000. The formatting should be self explanatory, but if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments section. Oh and before I forget, all these numbers were compiled from Open Secrets (major kudos to the operators!)
Dr. Bill Durston, a progressive Democrat running for Congress in California's 3rd Congressional District has just released a poll that shows that he is in a dead heat against the Republican incumbent, Dan Lungren.
We've just received great news from a poll of 500 likely voters conducted by the respected polling firm, Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, and Associates. Dr. Bill Durston is in a statistical dead heat with Dan Lungren in California's 3rd Congressional District!
When voters were asked who they would vote for if they were to vote today, 33% chose Lungren, 30%, chose Bill, 7% chose another candidate, and 30% were undecided. With a margin of error of 4%, the differences between Bill and Lungren were not statistically significant.
After hearing a positive profile about both Lungren and Bill, the tallies were even closer - 39% for Lungren and 38% for Bill. After hearing about some of Lungren's many shortcomings, including his Hawaii vacation paid for by special interests, his allegiance to the Bush-Cheney administration, and his fondness for taking money from Big Oil, voters chose Bill over Lungren by a margin of 43% to 34%, a difference which is highly statistically significant.
This news should bring more attention to the race for this seat. David Dayen from the Calitics blog wrote:
This could be a good time for outside groups to jump in. CA-03 is one of those under-the-radar seats nationwide that is very, very winnable, and a late push could easily put Durston over the top. Furthermore, he's a solid progressive Democrat who supports single-payer.
Once the voters of the 3rd Congressional District learn that Dr. Bill Durston is a decorated Marine combat Vietnam veteran and an emergency room physician, who has served both the country and his community, they will vote for him. They are even more likely to vote for Bill when they learn that their current Representative, career politician and carpet-bagger Dan Lungren, cares more about the big money corporate special interests than he does about the people of his district.
Hopefully, once the voters hear about some of Lungren's shortcomings, Durston will take the lead.
With your help, we will prove the politicos wrong and put Bill Durston into office!
(From the diaries with minor edits - promoted by DavidNYC)
Below is a handy table of all the verifiable House polls I could find for the current election cycle. Special election polls are only included for upcoming elections, not for those that are already over. Every poll contains a link and an exact date range. Polling for candidates who have dropped out or decided against running is not included.
Based on the polling above, Democrats are likely to pick up at least 5-10 seats, and that's with many competitive races yet unpolled and many campaigns just starting to rev up. Although there are a few seats held by Democrats that are in danger, none yet polled show us losing to the GOP.
Keep an eye on EI for House and Senate polls updated daily.
OR-5 is one of the most vulnerable Democratic-held seats this cycle, as the current Democratic incumbent Darlene Hooley has decided to resign. Rep. Hooley won this swing-district, which actually has a Republican registration plurality, by typically about 10% based on her moderate voting record, and as an open seat it is being hotly contested in the Republican primary.
Today, the strongest and most well-known Republican candidate, Kevin Mannix, made his official declaration, setting off what will likely be a bloody primary on the Repubilcan side.
Update: The MSM is finally starting to report this: blog.oregonlive.com/politics/2008/03/mannix_makes_it_official_hes_r.html
OR-5 is one of the few Democratic House vacancies this cycle that will be closely contested by Republicans, as the Democratic incumbent who is retiring, Darlene Hooley, has typically won about 55-45 or tighter since she first won the seat in 1996.
With Darlene's abrupt announcement of her retirement this month and the primary on May 20, the clock has been ticking on who will be the Democratic candidate to declare for the race, until now: State Sen. Kurt Schrader.
This news comes as a bit of a downer for us. Apparently, the GOP arm-twisted John Shadegg into un-retiring, according to this article from the Arizona Republic.
Too bad. On the up-side, I guess we'll be able to portray him as someone who is not committed to serving in Congress, since he had to be begged to stay on.
Chalk up another Republican retirement! John Shadegg, the congressman from Arizona's 3rd District and a former contender for the position of Republican House leader, announced today that he will retire. The good news just keeps on coming!
My first diary here at Swing State Project. I hadn't seen this mentioned, but Doc's Political Parlor (which covers Alabama politics) is reporting that Montgomery, AL, Mayor Bobby Bright has apparently decided to run as a Democrat for the open seat in Alabama's 2nd Congressional District (currently held by Terry Everett).
With Domenici's retirement the entire congressional election (save Bingaman) has turned this state from a single competitive congressional district and presidential swing-state, to being a key battleground in the House, Senate, and Presidential arena giving us a unique opportunity to turn everything on the state and national level in New Mexico blue.
First things first, with Tom Udall the presumptive nominee for the Democrats and Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce competiting in what will likely be a bruising primary things look very good for our prospects in taking Domenici's senate seat. But what about the house seats? Without knowing who will ultimately be the nominees from each party, it become difficult to predict, so I want to speak to the likely impact the Senate race will have (and on who the nominees are). Udall's presence on the Senate race will easily provide a boost for Democrats in all the congressional districts (especially in NM-01 and NM-03), though it might motivate some Republicans in NM-02.
Keeping this in mind, if Pearce and Wilson go nuclear against each other in the primaries, Republicans might be so disgusted with whoever the winner is that they decide not to turn out. Again, depending on who the nominees are in each district, and depending on who the presidential nominees are (many of you already know my presidential preference, so I won't comment on how this works out, but any commenters who want to go into some details on that should feel free to post it). I think the best shot at winning everything in New Mexico is for a bruised and battered Heather Wilson to take on Tom Udall. One of Heather Wilson's strengths in elections has always been her ability to appear to be moderate on a few issues. If Pearce challenges her too much, she'll have to convince the Republican base that she is every bit as much a wing-nut as Pearce, damaging her reputation (which will have consequences in swing cities like Albuquerque. This might also lower Republican turnout in NM-02, which can give an opening to whoever the Democrat is there. Even if we don't win in NM-02, we can force the NRCC to waste what little money they have in a normally safe district for them.
