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Final Changes to the Governors Ratings
I’ve made three changes to my gubernatorial ratings in the final days of the campaign, and I want to address each of them very briefly. Updated map to follow at the end.
Read more…Some Final Thoughts on the House Ratings
As is generally well-understood at this point, midterms tend to go poorly for the president’s party. Seat losses typically number in the dozens. Given that the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives cannot survive even a half-dozen seat loss, it is overwhelmingly likely that Republicans will take control. Narratives abound as to why, with lots of the usual gnashing of teeth over Democratic messaging and strategic weaknesses. But the basic fundamentals are that inflation is high and economic concerns loom largest, and that’s usually going to hurt the party in control even before we contemplate the usual dropoff form the president’s party relative to the prior election. All of that is reflected in my projection: a 224-211 majority for the GOP, meaning an eleven-seat gain for them.
Read more…House Race Capsules: Alaska and Hawaii
We finish with the non-contiguous United States, where Democrats currently control all three Congressional seats for the first time since 1972.
Read more…House Race Capsules: California
In a state with 52 districts, you’re bound to have some competitive ones – though in the days before California’s independent redistricting commission, that was usually not that case. But as we enter our second decade of the Commission Era, we have plenty to examine in the Golden State. Dems flipped seven seats here in 2018 and Reps took back three of them two years later. Plenty of those in play once again.
California started out with two members upon achieving statehood in 1850. In every census that followed, the state held steady or more often, gained seats. That ended with the 2020 census, when California lost a Congressional seat for the first time in its history. California’s gold-standard independent commission was tasked with drawing a 52-seat map and the final product yielded plenty of competitive seats. Let’s discuss some notable situations after the map.
House Race Capsules: The Northwest
We have plenty of competitive races in these states, including a new (for this century) seat in Montana and a few in an unexpected place – the great state of Oregon.
Let’s drill down into these states and their varying dynamics.
Read more…House Race Capsules: The Southwest
This is a region replete with competitive and impactful races up and down the ballot, from goverbors to secretaries of state to Congress and the state legislatures.
Let’s break the race for Congress down state by state.
Read more…House Race Capsules: Texas
The Lone Star State brings several competitive races this year, and they’re not where we came to expect them the last two cycles.
Read more…House Race Capsules: Great Plains and Upper Midwest
There’s a handful of competitive races across this sprawling landscape, even with the Dakotas completely falling off the competitive map – at least in terms of major-party tussles – for the time being. Let’s start zoomed-out:
And below we go state-by-state.
Read more…House Race Capsules: Great Lakes
Alright, now we’re back in competitive territory, with some seats changing hands in both directions. Lots to unpack here thanks to an independent commission in Michigan, a court-selected map in Wisconsin, and a trio of partisan maps. First the overview:
And now on to the state-by-state breakdowns.
Read more…House Race Capsules: Border South (KY, MO, WV)
Kentucky, Missouri and West Virginia: a trio of ancestrally Democratic states without competitive Congressional races this cycle, though each got there a little bit differently. Here’s the zoomed-out look…
…and now let’s talk about each of the three states.
Read more…
Within the Margin 