| 2010 House Target Districts |
NOTE: The * next to a health care vote means that their yes vote on the Pelosi health care bill caused the National GOP to target the Democrat. The vote in the column represents their vote on the final Obama care bill on 3/21. The # next to the probability figure means that we are using a margin from a year other than 2008. Both 2006 and 2008 were horrible years for Republicans so when a figure from an earlier year appears more predictive of 2010, we use that figure. There is no question about whether the Republicans will pick up seats in 2010 because they will. The only question is how many. Most analysts are predicting from 2 to 18 seats for sure and from 9 to 29 seats as toss-ups. Even giving all of the toss-ups to the Republicans gives them a maximum of a 47 seat pick-up while losing 2 seats. We have developed a formula for rating a House district by the probability of the Republicans taking a Democrat seat. These probabilities are based on what could be expected in a mid-term election where the Democrats have the Presidency but where the generic congressional ballot actually favors the Republicans. This is quite unusual and to understand its significance, see: Will the GOP Regain Control of the House? In addition, we have factored in an adjustment based on the results of the Massachusetts U. S. Senate special election. Using the races where the probability is over 50% would produce a gain of 66 seats. This does give Republicans control of the House even though it is doubtful that Representative Cao (LA-2) will get re-elected or that a Republican will win in Delaware. Right now after the switch of Representative Griffth (AL-5) to the Republican Party, it has 178 seats. Capturing 66 seats while losing 2 leaves the Republican Party a net gain of 64 for a total of 242. Extrapolating from the senatorial election in Massachusetts, there another 25 seats that are quite possible. What makes us so optimistic? Let's take Virginia as an example since we have 2009 results from that state by congressional district. The worst probability is in district 9 which we have rated at a 39.7% chance of the Republicans winning this district. Surely an incumbent who did not even have Republican opposition in 2008, got a 35.59% margin against a Republican in 2006 and has been in office since 1982 has a safe Democrat district. However, McCain-Palin carried the district by 19%. In the race for governor, the Republican got 66.36% of the votes for a 32.81% margin. That leaves Congressman Boucher with a 2.78% margin to spare. Yet we gave this district only a conservative 39.7% chance of going Republican. In the Scott Brown election in Massachusetts, he carried 7 out of the 10 congressional districts (all but 1, 7 and 8). All ten have Democrat incumbents which would indicate that some of them are in trouble. He barely carried district 4 so we can eliminate that one. While he carried district 9 with 56.9% of the votes, Rep. Lynch has always had a lot of support plus he listened to his constituents and voted against the health care bill. Scott Brown got over 56% of the votes in the remaining five districts so all of them are in play with district 2 being the toughest by far. Districts 5, 6, 10 and 3 in that order remain seriously in play with the first two being odds on bets. Since it looks like 2010 will be a repeat of 1994 Republican sweep year at this point, a not gain of 64 seats is not a stretch. There is a chance based on the Massachusetts results that the Republicans could do even better that they did in 1994 which would pick them up some of the 25 seats in the quite possible group for a maximum total of 267 seats so they would have 99 seats to spare. The Republican high point for seats in the House is 232. Both for and against health care votes have now been taken into effect which has caused massive changes in our ratings. Right now a total gain of 64 seats is in the wind. Keep in mind that all politics is local so unexpected developments could change this. Generally such developments affect each party equally give each a seat or two they never expected to win and losing a couple they never expected to lose. Everything depends on what happens from now on but the generic ballot will clue us in on any changes. |
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