The State of the Race: House Races, Part 1

Speaker Pelosi?

Anyone writing on the conventional wisdom of the 2014 House elections will start out with some version of the following sentence: “the Democrats, thanks to Republicans controlling congressional redistricting, have little to no shot at winning back the House.”

And they would be right-unlike the Republicans fight to take back the Senate, which is a fight that they’re underdogs for, but can definitely make a play in, it’s very unlikely that the Democrats will win back the House.  However, because we’ve tackled the governor’s races and the Senate races, I figured we had to do something with the House.  So, for the sake of argument, let’s say the Democrats manage to get some sort of wave or that the Republicans botch the debt ceiling talks or the President rebounds his public image next year (again, all tall orders)-what would a Democratic victory in the House look like?

Unlike the other two write-ups, I’m not going to go race-by-race, as the components of the House races take longer to come-together.  Instead, I’m going to show what sorts of things need to happen to set the Democrats up for success should opportunity begin to strike.

First off, the Democrats need to hold their own seats.  It’s considerably harder to oust an incumbent than to get one re-elected, for the obvious reason that, regardless of the previous cycle’s environment, that congressman has been elected at least once by their constituents.  No one is going to be going in front of their constituents for the first time this cycle, so every member has won with these voters at least once.

Before I dive into the seat-by-seat incumbents that could be in trouble, I wanted to explain the Cook Political Voting Index, which I’m going to use frequently throughout this article, as it’s, well awesome.  The Cook PVI combines the presidential races of a district from the past two cycles (2008 & 2012, both years that the Democrats won the national popular vote), and then says whether a district favors the Democrats more or the Republicans more on a presidential level.  With the increasingly partisan nature of down-ballot races (ticket-splitting gets harder and harder to come by with each passing year), how a district votes for president is more and more indicative of how they will vote in other races, and looking at Republican seats that had a stronger affinity for the Democrats than the Republicans is a great way to start.

The Cook PVI does a little bit of equalizing, however, since of course John McCain and Mitt Romney both lost the popular votes in 2008 and 2012.  The PVI measures the district to the national average.  To explain, let’s say a district went for McCain by 58% and Romney by 60%.  That would give them an average of 59%.  However, since the national average for the Republicans in the past two elections was 49%, they would have a Cook PVI of R+10, rather than R+9.  Therefore, a seat with an R+1-2 would have likely gone for Obama at least once, if not twice in the past two elections, and is also a seat the Democrats should go after (check the Wikipedia link I provided for more information if you’re confused).

So, if we go with seats that have an R+3 or higher (anything lower is pretty darn swingy and probably not as much of an issue for our article, though the Democrats would need to hold these certainly, and they could get competitive), the Democrats have nine seats that have a decent-sized tilt toward the Republicans, thus making them uber-attractive to the NRCC.  They are:

Rep. Ron Barber (D-AZ)

Arizona-2 (R+3): One of the bigger surprises of last cycle was that Rep. Ron Barber, who was injured in the Tucson shootings that caused the resignation of Gabrielle Giffords, won by less than 2000 votes, and we had to wait over a week to figure out the victor.  Barber is running against the same candidate again, U.S. Air Force Col. Martha McSally, and considering the President won’t be out driving up the votes, Barber starts this race as a bit of an underdog.

Florida-18 (R+3): Rep. Patrick Murphy won last time due to the controversial nature of Rep. Allen West, and this is not a district that is super friendly to Democrats.  That said, I don’t quite feel the same way about Barber, who should have won by more considering the specifics around his race, as Murphy, and so while the Republicans have a solid shot here, I wouldn’t say Murphy is an underdog.

Texas-23 (R+3): I’m going to be honest here-considering this was an open seat race in 2012 without a scandalized Republican, I have no idea why Rep. Pete Gallego (D) won here.  It’s possible that Gallego, a longtime member of the Texas House of Representatives, has a good deal of personal goodwill in the district, so I wouldn’t count him out here, as we’ll soon see that personal goodwill is what hold a lot of these crossover Democrats in place.  However, I need another election victory to start putting Gallego in the same class as some of our below congressmen.

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ)

Arizona-1 (R+4): Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick is one of several members of Congress who won back her seat in 2012, having lost her seat after one-term in the 2010 Republican tsunami.  Kirkpatrick, like Barber, is in a tough position with the voters, as turnout from presidential election only voters (don’t be that person!) probably helped her win last time.  She’s a bit more battle-tested than Barber, but she’s still one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the country.

Minnesota-7 (R+6): Our first four are all here in part because of President Obama turning out voters in those districts that don’t normally vote.  The next five, however, are extremely battle-tested.  They all five survived 2010, four survived 2002, and two even survived 1994 (the three most recent elections to put a crunch on House Democrats).  Rep. Collin Peterson is one of those two that survived 1994, having first been elected in 1990, defeating an incumbent after four tries at defeating him (if at first you don’t succeed…).  Since then Peterson has established himself as a titan of this sprawling northwestern district (fun fact: he is the first person I ever voted for for the U.S. House), and his position as Ranking Member of the House Agriculture committee is certainly a part of his good brand in the state.  I would argue that this district is a goner if he ever retires, but the 69-year-old conservative Democrat hasn’t given any signals that he wants to retire anytime soon, so I suspect this is a “maybe someday” sort of seat for the Republicans at this point.

Georgia-12 (R+9): Rep. John Barrow is an incumbent that you would never want to count down, despite his Republican +9 stance in the district.  Barrow managed to beat an incumbent in 2004 to win his seat (which was far more liberal at that time), but still maintained a conservative enough voting record while he was in a liberal district to handle being gerrymandered in 2012.  Barrow, the only white Democrat representing the House in the Deep South, probably was helped by the strong black turnout for President Obama (the district is 36% African-American), so like several other people on the list, he's in a position where he can't run in support of the President (due to the conservative nature of the district), but needs strong turnout from Obama's core supporters in order to retain his seat.  Thus is the balancing act of a red-state Democrat.

North Carolina-7 (R+11): Mike McIntyre won what was the final declared House race of 2012, barely beating State Sen. David Rouzer (only winning by 655 votes).  McIntyre is one of the most conservative Democrats in the House, and has clearly survived tough races, but with an R+11 margin, it seems almost impossible that McIntyre will win without the added help of a presidential election turnout.  Rouzer appears to be his opponent again in 2014.

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV)

West Virginia-3 (R+14): With an R+14 margin in the district, this is never going to be an easy win for the Democrats, but 20-term Rep. Nick Rahall is not your average incumbent, and West Virginia is one of those rare states that defies most conventional wisdom (how else to explain Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin winning by 24-points while Mitt Romney was winning the state by 26-points?).  My gut is saying that Rahall wins this, though that is more based on instinct than the demographic numbers.

Utah-4 (R+16): An R+16 district is the sort of thing that almost no one can overcome (it's one of the 60 most Republican districts in the country).  To give you some perspective, this would be the equivalent of a Republican winning in Vermont.  And yet, somehow, Rep. Jim Matheson managed to win the district last year despite the huge Mormon turnout in the state for Gov. Romney.  This upcoming year Matheson will have a rematch against Mayor Mia Love, but it's hard to imagine a more ideal situation for the GOP than 2012.

In order for the Democrats to win the House, they'd need to keep most of these seats, as well as make sure that none of the more Democratic-seats don't fall due to a scandal or an unexpected retirement.  So as to not have this article take up my entire front page, I'm going to split this write-up into two parts.  In the next segment, we'll discuss the districts most favorable to the Democrats currently held by the GOP, as well as the swing districts the Democrats would need to win in order to emerge victorious.  Stay tuned!