Oct

21

RCP's current list of "Swing Districts" totals 49. This includes the following districts held by Republicans: 3 that are "Likely Dem", 11 "Lean Dem" and 31 "Toss Up". It also includes 4 districts held by Democrats: 1, "Toss UP", 2 "Leans GOP" and 1 rated "Likely GOP". So far, I have analyzed 31 districts, including the 5 reviewed today.

The total pick up for the Democrats so far is 6 seats. Adding that to the seats the Democrats now hold (193) gets them to 199 and reduces the Republican majority to 229. If the Democrats win all 15 of seats held by Republicans in the races I have not yet reviewed, the two parties would be EVEN, each with 214. Control would then be determined by the 7 remaining "surprise" districts. Those would be among the 56 districts I had not planned to review: the 18 Democrat seats that are "Likely" or "Lean" Democrat and the 38 Republican seats that are only (sic) "Likely" or "Lean" Republican.

My dedication to sloth leads me to pray that the Democrats will only pick up another half dozen seats from the 18 remaining to be reviewed. That would leave the Republicans with 223 seats - a loss of 18 seats from the results in 2016 - and not require any further labor on my part. The odds are in my favor. There has been only 2 elections since 1952 in which a Republican President had a majority in the House of Representatives during the mid-term elections of his first 4 years in office: (1) Eisenhower in 1954 and (2) Bush II in 2002. In 1954 the Republicans, who had an 8-seat majority, lost 18 seats. In 2002 the Republicans held a 9-seat advantage and gained 8 seats, increasing their majority to 24 seats. For the Democrats, since Eisenhower, their President's first mid-terms with them in charge of the House, have been these: Kennedy in 1962, Johnson in 1966, Clinton in 1994 and Obama in 2010. In 1962 the Democrats lost only 4 seats from their 87 seat majority; in 1966 they lost 47 but that was from a 155 seat majority. Clinton's first mid-term was a complete disaster. For the first time since the 1952 election, the Republicans won the House of Representatives - winning 54 seats and turning an 82-seat minority into a 26 seat majority. Obama's first mid-term was even worse; the Republicans gained 63 seats and a 49 seat-majority, destroying Speaker Pelosi's 2008 moment of glory when the Democrats had won an 87-seat majority. In that election the Republicans outpolled the Democrats by 6 million votes.

It may be that the Democrats' belief in a "wave" this year is a projection of what has recently happened to them. It is certainly not a dispassionate assessment of what happened to Ike and Shrub in their first mid-terms.

The List of Real Clear Politics "Swing" Districts: The 18 districts that remain to be reviewed are identified by *.

PA-1,PA-5, PA-6, PA-7, PA-14, PA-17 D+2  
NJ-2 D+1
CA-49 D+1
IA-1  
MN-3    
AZ-2 D+1
CO-6
KS-3,KS-2
NJ-11
MN-2 
VA-10 D+1 
CA-10
CA-45
FL-26
IL-6
MI-8
MI-11
NC-13*
NM-2*
NY-22*
TX-32*
VA-7*
CA-25*
CA-48*
FL-27
IL-12
KY-6
MI-11*
NJ-3 
IL-6
NV-3*
UT-4*
WA-8*
CA-39*
FL-15*
IA-3*
IL-14*
ME-2*
NC-9   
NJ-7
NY-19
TX-7
VA-5
MN-8*
MN-1* 
 
KS-3,KS-2: KS-3 has Kevin Yoder as the Republican 3-term incumbent; it is Cook R+4. Ms. Clinton carried it by 1 point; but Yoder beat his Democrat opponent by 11. That was a decline from Yoder's successes in 2012 (37 points) and 2014 (20 points); but hardly seems to justify the NY Times calculation that the Democrat challenger Davids is now ahead by 9 points. What does affect Yoder's chances is the 3rd party factor. The Libertarian candidate polled 8% of the total ballot in 2016; and 2018 will be the first of Yoder's races in which there will be both a Democrat and a Libertarian on the ballot. Still, it is hard to see how Emerson comes up with having the Democrat up by 6. It is equally mystifying trying to understand how Emerson manages to put the Democrat up by 4 points in KS-2, a district that is Cook R-10 and also has a Republican incumbent, Lynn Jenkins. Jenkins first won the seat in 2008 defeating the incumbent Democrat Boyda by 4.4 points in a race in which the 3rd party candidates won over 3% of the vote. Since then Jenkins has won 63,57,57 and 61 per cent of the total vote. Yet these two incumbent Republicans are a Toss Up at best in a state where the President is still popular and Trump won by 21 points. That conclusion becomes even weirder when you find that Emerson's affiliation data for its Statewide sample has party registration at R-52, I/O-20, D-28. (For individual Congressional districts they have only done "e-Polls"; and those do not offer sample data or any estimates for 3rd party candidates' likely vote total.) I am afraid that the Emerson poll falls into the PAGI-BWO category (Progressive Academic Garbage In=Blue Wave Out.). Whatever is wrong with Kansas continues to be wrong; Republicans win both races.

FL-26 is a district that, by all 538-style model calculations, should be a lock for the Democrats. It is Cook D+6, Obama carried it by 11 1/2 points and Clinton by 16. Yet, the incumbent Republican Carlos Curbelo managed to win 53% of the total vote against both a Democrat and Independent challenger. The Mason-Dixon poll has Curbelo up 1 point on his Democrat challenger; their sample shows Party Registration as R-33, I/O-30, D-37. Curbelo's incumbency is likely to prevail, especially since his challenger's surname is Mucarsel-Powell is unforgivably diverse in a district where 4 out of 10 likely voters self-identify as Cuban.

IL-6 is Peter Roskam's suburban Chicago district. Roskam matters. He is the Republican Chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Tax Policy. He began in the House in 2006, when he beat Tammy Duckworth by 2 points. Since then, he has never been seriously challenged. His margins of victory have been 18 (2008), 26 (2010), 18 (2012), 26 (2014) and 18 (2016). Even the Times is gracious enough to concede that he is ahead by 1 point in their September poll. Republican wins.

 
MI-8 has a 2-term Republican incumbent Mike Bishop. The district is Cook R+4. Bishop won in 2014 by 12 1/2 points; in 2016 he won by 17 and Trump won by nearly 7. There is no sample data available for any of the polls; but they all (including the NYT) have Bishop defeating Elissa Slotkin the Democrat challenger. I agree.

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