Within the Margin

From time to time we like to take things local here at WTM, and on Election Night I promised to elaborate further on the scope of just what had happened in my home county. I don’t toss around words like “historic” without thought; I have a graduate degree in the field and a deep awareness of the transient nature of electoral success. But as election results came in, it became clear that Democrats in Dutchess County were experiencing something akin to their best-case scenario for the evening. In doing so, the party surpassed all of its previous high-water marks, which are ranked below. But first, let’s examine what happened, starting at the top.

President. Barack Obama carried Dutchess County again. His margin was slightly reduced from 2008, but the erosion was not as much as he experienced nationally (-1.24% versus -2.14%, both numbers being subject to minor revision pending final tallies) and was still enough for a comfortable 6.6% margin of victory in the county As much as Democrats struggled here in 2009 and 2010, causing doubts as to whether Obama could again carry Dutchess, he ended up performing pretty decently here. This is the fourth time that a Democratic presidential candidate won this county – the others being Johnson ’64, Clinton ’96, and Obama ’08.

Senate. As expected, Kirsten Gillibrand obliterated her woeful, extremist opponent statewide and carried Dutchess by a 2:1 margin.

House of Representatives. Dutchess is divided between two Congressional districts. Republican freshman Chris Gibson represents northern and eastern Dutchess and carried the county en route to reelection. Fellow GOP first-termer Nan Hayworth represents southwestern Dutchess and was not so successful: she was defeated decisively by Democratic Sean Maloney in Dutchess and more narrowly district-wide. Maloney becomes the third Democrat to represent Southern Dutchess in Congress, following John Dow in the ’60s and John Hall, who won in 2006 and 2008.

State Assembly. The new Assembly map divides Dutchess into four Assembly districts. The 103rd includes only Rhinebeck and Red Hook and is otherwise an Ulster County district; here, incumbent Democrat Kevin Cahill was unopposed for reelection.

The 104th district includes Poughkeepsie, Beacon and sections of Orange and Ulster. This was won narrowly by Frank Skartados in 2008 over 14-year incumbent Tom Kirwan. The latter would be back to win an even closer rematch in 2010, but he passed away before completing his final term, prompting a March 2012 special election. Skartados won that easily, and crushed his opponent in the general. This seat, safely Republican for so long and marginal recently, has officially become a safely Democratic seat.

The 105 and 106th districts are effectively new entities, drawn out of the old 102nd and 103rd. Democrat Didi Barrett’s special election victory in the old 103rd in March made her the first Democrat ever to hold that seat, now effectively the 106th. In her quest for a full term, Barrett faced new territory and a legitimate challenger in West Point graduate and Milan councilman David Byrne. The Republican had won an Opportunity to Ballot campaign to snag the Independence Line from Barrett in September and the Barrett campaign was taking nothing for granted, even in a district slightly more Democratic than the one in which she triumphed in March. She ended up winning by the almost-comfortable margin of 55%-45% – a remarkable feat in territory so unaccustomed to sending Dems to Albany.

The 105th includes all of Dutchess County’s most Republican towns; it did what southern Dutchess does and elected Republican Kieran Lalor to an open seat by a 56-44 margin. That loss for Dems should not detract from the totality of what they did. In 2010, Dutchess was divided between five districts; only one (featuring exactly one Dutchess town) elected a Democratic Assemblyman. In 2012, three of the county’s four districts elected Dems, and did so by healthy margins.

State Senate. This might have been the biggest win of them all. No Democrat had been elected to the State Senate from Dutchess County since young legislator Franklin Delano Roosevelt won a pair of elections in 1912 and 1914. Roosevelt would fade into obscurity, and Democrats rarely even came close to winning the seat again. Even in the great years of 2006 and 2008, the mighty Steve Saland was just too powerful. But his vote for marriage equality invited a Republican primary challenger who nearly defeated him in September; the same man fought on via the Conservative line in the general election. And ready to twist the knife was Terry Gipson, the Rhinebeck village trustee who spent two full years campaigning for this seat, starting as an underfunded longshot and ultimately ending as the 41st district’s next state senator. In dethroning one of the giants of Dutchess Republicanism, Gipson demonstrated the importance of starting early and sticking with it.

Two Dutchess towns (Beekman and Pawling) remain in the 40th district; they voted heavily for Republican incumbent Greg Ball, who won a second term as his Putnam and Dutchess victories outweighed a narrow Westchester defeat.

State Supreme Court. Dutchess forms part of the 9th Judicial District along with Orange, Putnam, Rockland and Westchester. It’s friendly enough turf for Dems, but Dutchess rarely gets represented in the Democratic nominations since Westchester has the highest population, is the most Democratic, and likes to call the shots. But his year, Maria Rosa of Millbrook was one of the Democrats running for three seats on the court, and emerged victorious to become the first Dutchess Democrat elected to the 9th since 1964.

County Legislature. County elections occur in odd-numbered years, but the appointment of incumbent Republican Gary Cooper to a county administrative post necessitated a special election in the 19th district of northeastern Dutchess. Milan’s Debra Blalock mounted a spirited campaign against appointed replacement David Sherman of North East; she was the underdog but fought to a 17-vote lead on Election Night. That’s close enough that it theoretically could have flipped via absentees, but it has not: Blalock’s lead has increased to 71 votes during the counting of absentee ballots. Blalock thus becomes the first Democratic county legislator in history from her district.

Town Races. Several special elections were held to fill unexpired terms for supervisor, justice and town board in different towns. These were all in places Republicans historically win with ease. But in one of them, young Democrat Tim Tuttle bounced back from a 2011 loss to become the first Democrat on the Fishkill town board in half a century.

So let’s summarize. Dutchess Democrats carried the county for the president and U.S. Senate, picked up long-held GOP seats on the Fishkill Town Board, Dutchess County Legislature, and New York State Senate, retook a Congressional seat, held two Assembly seats that had GOP incumbents this time last year, and elected a fresh, local face to the State Supreme Court. It was more than anyone could have realistically hoped for coming in, and it’s an indication that the party’s relatively new (and smallish) registration advantage is starting to translate into victories up and down the ballot. There will still be challenges: this year was partially enabled by Obama’s presence atop the ticket. Republicans around the country are vastly better than Democrats at turning out their voters in local years, and Dutchess is no different in this respect. But with each win, candidate recruitment gets a little bit easier. And as recruiting improves, more wins occur and the cycle begins anew. The candidates and party leaders who made these wins possible should congratulate themselves not only for what they did this year, but for what this year potentially means going forward in making Dutchess a truly competitive two-party county.

The rest of the top five Democratic years in Dutchess County history? We can debate the order, but here’s how I’d rank ’em:

2. 2008
This was the year Democrats passed Republicans in the number of voters registered in Dutchess County, auguring a strong year for the party. Barack Obama was the first Democrat to carry Dutchess in the presidential race since Clinton in ’96 and he blew past Clinton’s 45.6% to win just under 54% in Dutchess. That aided easy wins for each of the county’s incumbent members of Congress, plus several local pickups. In the 100th Assembly district (Poughkeepsie/Beacon/Newburgh and suburbs in Orange and Ulster), Frank Skartados eked out a win over longtime incumbent Tom Kirwan. Joan Posner won a historic victory to take a seat on the county’s Family Court, the first Democratic female to do so in the county’s history. Robert McKeon won a special election to give Democrats the majority on the Red Hook town board. Joanna Shafer won a special town board race in Stanford.

Legitimate disappointments were few. Jonathan Smith’s Assembly campaign against Joel Miller gained traction but didn’t end up quite as close as I thought it would. Anne Rubin’s guerilla campaign against Marc Molinaro will always hold a special place in many of our hearts, though. And…Lumies Huff, anybody? Go Crimson.

3. 1964

In ’64, Lyndon Johnson became the first Democratic presidential candidate in the 20th century to carry Dutchess County – he would be the last to do so until Bill Clinton did so in 1996 with an assist from Ross Perot. As many locals have no doubt heard, even Franklin Delano Roosevelt never carried his home county even while winning nationwide with ease on four occasions. Johnson’s 63%-37% victory was similar to his national margin of victory; he obliterated Republican nominee Barry Goldwater everywhere but the Deep South. That created a coattail affect across the country, and in Dutchess County it was enough to secure victories in Congressional seats that Democrats had not won for a century. The then-27th district, including southern Dutchess, southern Sullivan, Orange, Putnam and part of Rockland, elected John Dow. He would be a liberal’s liberal in Congress, one of the first members to oppose the Vietnam War. Where many of those elected in the Johnson landslide were swept out two years later in a very strong year for Republicans, Dow survived the ’66 election but lost to Martin McKneally, a Nixon law-and-order man, in 1968. McKneally turned out to be a words-not-deeds law n’ order guy, however, and lost a rematch in 1970 amidst revelations that he was a tax evader. Dow’s tenure in Congress finally ended in 1972 when moderate Republican Ben Gilman defeated him and installed a deathgrip on the seat, which eventually became a Rockland/Orange/Westchester seat. The northern Dutchess seat stretched north to Columbia County and west through and beyond the Catskills; it elected Joseph Resnick in 1964. Unlike Dow, Resnick was a strong defender of Johnson’s war policy and cut a more moderate figure on Capitol Hill. He too was reelected in 1966 despite the Republican tide, but gave up his seat in ’68 to run for the Senate (he lost the primay). Resnick was replaced by Hamilton Fish III, who held the seat as it becamse a southern Dutchess/Putnam/Westchester seat.

The other local Democratic wins in 1964 included a Dutchess judge’s election to the state Supreme Court as well as Victor Waryas, who captured an Assembly seat he would hold until 1968 (safe to say ’68 was not a banner year for Dutchess Dems). Locals will recognize the Waryas name from the park on the Poughkeepsie waterfront from which Joe Bertolozzi’s Bridge Music is broadcast in perpetuity.

The Johnson landslide created many wins in terms of quantity, but these proved relatively fleeting. While Obama’s coattails certainly helped this year, Johnson in ’64 was winning by such a large margin that he couldn’t help but bring others into office with him. The test of 2012 will be whether those folks last longer than the local class of ’64.

4. 2007

After four consecutive blowout wins, Republican County Executive Bill Steinhaus finally had a real fight on his hands. Democrats nominated Wappinger Town Supervisor Joe Ruggiero, who amassed a significant warchest previously unseen in local Democratic circles. He fell short by just 2,064 votes, or 3.3%. But with a viable top of the ticket, Democrats won control of the Dutchess County legislature for the first time since 1979. They also won control of the Dover town board, the Beacon mayoralty, and netted gains on the Poughkeepsie city council and East Fishkill, Pawling and Red Hook town boards.

It wasn’t a flawless year for Democrats, however. In addition to Ruggiero falling just short, the incoming legislative majority could have been larger had two Democratic incumbents not lost their seats. Republicans gained control of the Milan and Rhinebeck town boards and captured the mayoralty in Poughkeepsie. They would strike back with a vengeance in 2009 to retake the legislature.

 5. 1977

Yeah, the history of good Democratic years in Dutchess County starts to thin out pretty quickly. 1977 is probably the best contender because it’s the other year – besides 2007 – that Democrats won a county legislature majority, in addition to a decent year at the town and city level. ’77 is particularly important to the county’s political history because of what would transpire in the following months: Republican County Executive Ed Schuler would be indicted and convicted of bribery, leading to his resignation in early 1978. The legislature was empowered to appoint a new executive to serve out Schuler’s term; with the legislature now under Democratic control, it chose Majority Leader Lucille Pattison of Hyde Park to step into the executive’s role. She thus became the only Democratic and only female county exec in Dutchess history and was elected to full terms in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

Honorable Mention: 2005

Dems picked up four seats in the county legislature and were a hair’s breadth from capturing the majority, positioning them to do so in 2007. Diane Jablonski was elected county comptroller – the first Democrat in decades to win that office.  In the Town of Wappinger, Democrats won the supervisor and clerk races as well as maintaining a town board majority.  In Hyde Park, Democrats captured the supervisor seat and the town board majority. Bill Dahncke became the first Democrat elected to the East Fishkill town board since former Town Supervisor Dominick Cannizzaro left office. Dems also held a rare town board seat in Beekman; few incumbent Democrats were defeated anywhere in the county.

We can quibble over details like what constitutes a “legitimate” safety net beyond food or the fact that “some” bridges and roads does not begin to address our national infrastructure woes. But I’ll give Representative Adam Kinzinger a bit of credit for thinking slightly out of the box on the matter of tax rates:

“…I don’t care what tax rates are, they are random number derived from haggling and negotiations. What I want is a small government with a strong and fierce military that can kill our enemies and break their toys, legitimate safety nets that provide food and not a way of life, and some roads and bridges. Put that vision into action and set the tax rates at a percent that covers those costs. And once you have our payment, leave us the hell alone. That my friend, is conservatism.”

However – there’s always a however – that doesn’t explain, Mr. Kinzinger, why you and virtually every other “conservative” in Congress have signed Grover Norquist’s pledge not to raise any tax rates by any amount. If you now believe in honest budgeting, fantastic! I’m glad you feel elections matter. I agree – they do! But it means it’s time for you to renounce Norquist. We can’t budget around the priorities you describe if we have an artificial box around how we balance our numbers. That’s not to say rates absolutely must go up – it’s to say that our approach to budgeting cannot be constrained by external political pressures like a tax pledge that never made sense in the first place.

• I’m sorry my liveblog tailed off so early tonight. I left the computer lab to go to the county Dem gathering at Shadows in Poughkeepsie, where the wifi infrastructure is not up to snuff. I had to constantly reconnect and had long lulls with no connection. So getting results and relaying them to the people in the room was hard enough, let alone processing them in a meaningful fashion here. So I had to abandon that effort. For those who were following, thank you. I hope that in the coming days I can provide something worth reading in appreciation for those who drop by this blog to see what I have to say. I am deeply grateful for any and all eyeballs who make their way over here.

• Thank you so much to everyone who put something into the electoral process this year, on any side – whether as a poll worker or a campaign staffer or volunteer. In particular, let me thank two people on the ground. One is my collaborator here, Matt Clausen, who decamped for Ohio in June to reelect the president. The result was that Matt couldn’t post here throughout the season, but he has provided myriad sanity checks and news flashes and a man-on-the-ground sensibility that fueled my race ratings this autumn. And thanks to my brother, Patrick Kelly, who spent the final weeks of this campaign in Colorado helping to turn a tough race – one we weren’t sure we’d pull off – into another victory for Barack Obama in that state. I think I’m capable of separating my forecasting and analysis from my rooting interest; my race ratings, for one, have been incredibly sober. But I do root, and Matt and Pat uprooted for the cause, and I respect and thank them for it.

• Democrats made a lot of history in Dutchess County tonight. I’ll be writing in more depth about that in the coming days. But this was the greatest night in the history of the Dutchess County Democratic Party. Congratulations are in order for all of the party’s candidates and for chairwoman Elisa Sumner.

• After the 2008 election, I was talking with a wise Republican colleague of mine. She noted that her side couldn’t keep picking groups of people and saying, “We don’t want your vote.” Four years later, the situation is little changed. I’m talking here about minorities and immigrants and gays and the non-religious and college students and even a great many women…the list is awfully large, and some notable segments of it are growing quickly. Now, I think Republicans would find that to be an overly-dramatic statement. After all, so many of them are pretty chill – at least in theory – with the groups I just named. But at some point policy matters. Tone matters. The Republican Party, over the last last four years, has demonstrated that it is at worst hostile and at best ill at ease with these groups. Elections aren’t going to get any easier for them if that remains the case. Even if they do win under those circumstances, they’ll find that governing with that hostility or ill-ease is quite difficult. It’s time for an adult discussion about feelings and policy when it comes to many segments of the American public. And look, it cuts both ways occasionally – I think a lot of liberals could do more to understand where the religious are coming from, for example. But let’s not pretend that the shortcomings are equal at this moment in time.

• I have subsisted largely on doughnuts today. I spent six hours driving to Scranton and back, four hours on doors, some time writing, and then it was results time, so dinner didn’t happen. I am looking forward to cooking something fantastic tomorrow.

Here’s where I’ll be tonight. All times eastern. Refresh often.

First thing to note: parts of Indiana and Kentucky close their polls at 6:00 eastern time, which is absurd. But that means we already have some results. With a small number of precincts reporting, Richard Mourdock (R) is leading Joe Donnelly (D) by 4.5 points in the Indiana senate race. Keep in mind this evening that WTM has Donnelly picking this seat up for Democrats, as part of our overall forecast of no net change in the Senate (3 Rep pickups canceled out by 3 Dem pickups).

7:05 We have a long way to go in this Senate race, but we’re up to 4% counted now, and Mourdock’s lead has shrunk to about 2 points (CNN has more results but doesn’t report to a decimal place). Right now Romney is leading Obama 60-38 in Indiana atop the ticket, which is unrealistic: Indiana is not rocketing all the way back to its ’04 numbers. Remember that Obama won this state four years ago. He won’t this time, but that margin’s going to close, and as it does, Donnelly will pull ahead.

7:11 Yeah, I’m feeling pretty good about Donnelly even with so few precincts in. That’s because Mourdock is leading narrowly, and we haven’t seen any of Marion (Indianapolis), St. Joseph (South Bend/Notre Dame) or Lake (Gary) counties yet. Nor Vanderburgh (Evansville) or LaPorte counties). These are Indiana’s most Democratic counties, and they are populous places. Barring the unexpected, we’re headed toward the first senate flip of the night, which is helpful for Dems as they seek to maintain a Senate majority.

7:21 Indiana-8 is a longshot pickup opportunity for Dems. We can start to get a decent read on it, because a lot of the IN precincts which have already reported are in the 8th. Republican incumbent Larry Bucshon leads by 0.9%.

7:24 7% in; Donnelly now up about 2% as votes start to come in from Lake and Marion counties. The city of Gary is ultra-Democratic as are some of the neighboring towns. Marion County is coterminous with Indianapolis; there’s some red suburban territory in there but in federal races Indy is essentially Democratic now (twas not always thus).

7:27 Ben Chandler (Kentucky-6) is a Democratic survivor from the 2010 wipeout, and he’s in a rematch with the man who he narrowly beat: Andy Barr. This is a top target for the Reps, but we have it at Lean Dem. Barr is up by 10 votes right now, but none of Fayette County has reported. Fayette includes Lexington, and is one of the bluer counties in Kentucky.

7:29 In other House news, Wacky Jackie Walorski is favored to pick up IN-2 for the Reps; this is the seat Donnelly has vacated to run for Senate. It was made redder in redistricting. Walorski has a comfortable lead in the early count, but that’s without any of South Bend reporting.

7:42 Not much erosion for Obama in Kentucky relative to 2008. Dave Leip’s site is not loading consistently – he apparently was not equipped for election night traffic – so my access to historical data might be somewhat limited tonight. But most counties look to be coming at roughly same percentages as 2008. Harder to judge turnout this early. I mention this not because Kentucky is a swing state, but specifically because it is not: the disparity in national versus state polling has led us to assume that Obama must be doing worse than before in non-swing states. KY is not an indicator of that.

7:45 Let’s talk about a bigger fish in the presidential race: Florida. Early Obama lead (50%-49%). With the ultra-red panhandle not closing for another 15 minutes and nothing in yet from populous counties like Miami-Dade (good for Dems) or Polk (good for Reps), I don’t have a feel yet for this one. My assumption has been a Romney win in Florida, of course.

7:54 As my good friend Chris Kelly just pointed out, the Florida numbers are bizarre. CNN has 34% reporting…everyone else 4-5%. CNN knows something that no one else does?

8:00 Indiana update: St. Louis County (South Bend, home of the Fighting Irish) has largely reported. That moved Brendan Mullen ahead significantly in IN-2, but let’s see if that holds up. Walorski will fight back in the much redder areas of the district, obviously. Marion is also starting to come in, so statewide numbers are more useful now. Romney is down to a 10-11 point lead in Indiana, depending on which results you look at. That falls in line with my expectation that Indiana ’12 will be a midpoint between Indiana ’04 (big Bush win) and Indiana ’08 (narrow Obama win). Lastly, Donnelly leads by 6.3% in the Senate race. Dems are on top in the first of the Abortion Derbies in the Senate – Mizzou being the other.

8:09 Florida update: Some erosion for Obama relative to ’08 in populous, suburban Polk County. McCain won 52.5-46.3 in 2008; Romney leads 53.4-45.7. That’s a smallish gain, but played out across the state – along with Romney improvements in the super-red panhandle, which we’re seeing so far – might be enough to flip it. Romney absolutely has to have Florida; I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop here.

8:20 Let’s do a House update. Buchson is pulling away in IN-8 (southwest corner). Reps should be OK there. Mullen has a big lead with half of the vote counted in IN-2; he’s going to gain some more ground in LaPorte County so that’s still very much in play as a difficult Dem hold. But it looks like Ben Chandler might be toast in KY-6; Barr is up 5 and much of Fayette County is in, so I don’t see where he makes up ground. He had momentum late; should’ve changed it to Tilt Dem or even Tilt Rep.

8:24 The Florida goofiness continues. CNN shows an Obama lead, with 45% counted. Everyone else shows a narrower Romney lead, with 23-31% reporting. That could mean that on their way to 45%, Obama will retake the lead. Or it means CNN is watching a different game, as they’ve been known to do in Florida sometimes.

8:26 I haven’t mentioned Virginia yet, because we didn’t have anything from Fairfax County. As that starts to roll in, the current ginormous Romney lead will diminish and we’ll get a sense of where things stand there.

8:27 CNN added a bunch of results in Florida – 50% reported, 50-50 tie. Obama up by 6,536 votes statewide.

8:32 Networks are already calling the Connecticut Senate race for Chris Murphy. So Dems replace Joe Lieberman with, you know, an actual Democrat. And Linda McMahon loses again, in a race Republicans spent September thinking they might pick up. She won’t be missed on the American political scene.

8:32 Relocating to Shadows – I’ll be back online within a half hour in a new thread.

Georgia’s 12th District
There’s not a lot of data or reporting to influence this minor change – but the fact that Democrats have produced two polls showing their man John Barrow surviving, while Republican challenger Lee Anderson has been mum, tells me that there is a better shot than I thought of Barrow holding on in a district which is much redder post-redistricting. I still think the Reps pick this seat up, but I’m less confident about that result than I was a week ago.
From Lean Republican to Tilt Republican

Maine’s 2nd District
Republicans bluster every two years about this being in play. It’s not. Shouldn’t have fallen for their game.
From Likely Democratic to Safe Democratic

Massachusetts’ 6th District
Our initial set of House Ratings had this district at Tilt Republican, but that was probably foolish. Democratic incumbent John Tierney has basically acknowledged in a campaign ad that he didn’t do enough to deal with his wife’s  family’s tax-evasion shenanigans, and Richard Tisei’s internal polls include a 17-point lead. Tisei will be the only openly-gay Republican serving in Congress in 2013, and he’ll be the first Republican from Massachusetts to win a House seat since Peter Blute and Peter Torkildsen lost their seats in 1996 – Torkildsen losing to Tierney that year, in fact.
From Tilt Republican to Likely Republican

Minnesota’s 8th District
I’ve always believed that Dems could retake this district, but doubted whether long-ago Congressman Rick Nolan was the man to do it, especially if this overwhelmingly white, working-class territory saw the sort of erosion atop the ticket that we expect for that demographic this year. But almost every poll has Nolan up, and though Obama won’t repeat his 53% from 2008 here, it seems like freshman Chip Cravaack just has too much headwind to work against.
From Tilt Republican to Tilt Democratic

North Carolina’s 8th District
I was working on a North Carolina House Calls piece that would look at this district (and NC’s other competitive races) in depth, but this ain’t my day job, sadly, and time ran out – plus I journeyed to Pennsylvania and back today for GOTV, which is not a quick trip. Anyway, in that piece I would have shifted Larry Kissell’s seat closer to a GOP takeover. We already had the Rep challenger, state senator David Rouzer, winning here – the question is how strongly we feel. The national party gave up on Kissell a while ago in this turf, which was made much redder in redistricting. Kissell doesn’t raise much money and doesn’t campaign all that well; his survival in 2010 was somewhat surprising. Anyway, hedging with a Lean rating is unnecessary.
From Lean Republican to Likely Republican

Note that the Minnesota pickup shifts our overall projection for the House to a +4 net gain for Democrats – leaving the GOP with 238 seats and Democrats with 197. Our revised table of ratings for the competitive races:

Overview
Illinois faces a unique set of circumstances in its Congressional elections this year. Like many states, it saw a wave of House seats fall into Republican hands during the 2010 wave elections. But unlike many of larger states where this occurred, Democrats maintained control of the governorship and the state legislature. This allowed the Dems to undo an incumbent-protection plan from 2002 and draw a friendlier map designed to regain a number of seats lost in 2010.

The Land of Lincoln lost one seat during reapportionment; the 16th district’s veteran Republican incumbent Don Manzullo was drawn into a primary with freshman Adam Kinzinger from the 11th. The younger, more energetic newcomer won the primary and now has what is expected to be a same district for the foreseeable future. So the current 11-8 Republican advantage in the Illinois delegation is effectively 10-8 going into this year’s elections.

If Democrats are to make a dent in the Republican House majority, they need 3-5 pickups in Illiniois, and they need to hold their sole endangered seat (the 12th district).

The Safe Seats:
Seven of Illinois’ seats are based in the City of Chicago; all are safely Democratic. Republicans last won a Congressional district in the city in 1994, when a GOP wave and a scandal-plagued incumbent gave them the Northside’s 5th district for a single term. The 1st, 2nd and 7th districts are majority-African American districts in accordance with the Voting Rights Acts; the 1st and 2nd cover the South Side while the 7th covers the Downtown/Loop and the Near West Side. Eahc includes more suburban territory than their previous incarnations. The 4th is the Hispanic-majority VRA district – earmuff-shaped to join Hispanic neighborhoods on the North and South sides. The 3rd is a majority-white district in Southwest Chicago (plus some suburbs); Republicans lack a bench here but it’s not nearly as Democratic in federal races as the rest of the city. Finally, the 9th district covers the Lakefront and places like Evanston, Skokie and Winnetka and includes one of the larger population of affluent white liberals anywhere in the country.

Illinois’ 6th district covers a sprawling portion of the city’s western suburbs, including Downers Grove, Wheaton, Lake Zurich, Palatine and the northeastern part of Naperville. It has been a Republican district for more than a century. Dems almost picked it up in 2006 when Tammy Duckworth ran for an open seat, but Peter Roskam won, expanded his margin in 2008, and is now utterly safe. The same goes for freshman Randy Hultgren further west in the 14th, which stretches from McHenry and Marengo in the north to Batavia and Geneva further south and to Plainfield beyond that. The 15th district is one of only two that John McCain would have carried in 2008 under the new lines; it covers the southeastern portion of the state, including Danville and Effingham. The other McCain district is the significantly-revised 18th, covering parts of Peoria, Springfield, Bloomington-Normal and smaller towns like Quincy and Jacksonville. Aaron Schock will easily win again there before running for governor in two years. The final safe Republican district was mentioned above – Adam Kinzinger’s new 16th, covering eastern Rockford, DeKalb, Mendota and part of the Illinois River Valley.

The Competitive Seats:

Illinois’ 8th Congressional District – Northwest Chicago suburbs including Elgin, Schaumburg, Elk Grove Village
Last flip: 2010
Joe Walsh was one of the least likely winners of 2010, narrowly defeating a moderate Democrat who had appeared to cement her hold on the district after becoming the first Dem to win it in the modern era in 2004. Walsh is the quintessential Tea Partier in terms of ideology, settled a lawsuit by his ex-wife for failing to pay $115,000 in child support, and making outlandish comments about abortions to protect a mother’s health. With all of that, he surely would have lost his old district this time out. But Democrats made sure of it, redrawing it about six points bluer. On top of all that, he drew a powerhouse challenger in Tammy Duckworth. She’s pulling away in polls, and it’s hard to see how Walsh holds on here.
Rating: Likely Democratic

Illinois’ 10th Congressional District – Northern Chicago suburbs including Waukegan, Buffalo Grove, Highland Park, part of Northbrook
Last flip: 1980
This district elects relatively moderate Republicans to Congress with few exceptions. But as a 61% Obama district, Dems targeted it as one of their few pickup opportunities in 2010 when incumbent Mark Kirk ran for the U.S. Senate. But even with a plausible candidate in friendly territory, Dems couldn’t get it done. Bob Dold was elected, and immediately targeted by redistricters, who increased the Obama percentage to 63%. Moderate Democratic businessman Brad Schneider opened a sizable lead in a recent poll, but we’ve seen Dold come from behind before – granted, not this far. Dold has largely distanced himself from the extremists in the House GOP caucus, and I think that’s enough – just barely enough – to help him survive as the region’s voters applaud him for being reasonable. We set the bar low these days.
Ratings: Tilt Republican

Illinois’ 11th Congressional District – Southwestern Chicago exurbs including Aurora, Bolingbrook, Joliet, southwestern Naperville
Last flip: 2010 (Aurora and Joliet)
Redistricting was not kind to 7-term Republican incumbent Judy Biggert. The Obama percentage rose from 54% to 61% and less than half of the district’s voters come from her current 13th district. She is being challenged by Bill Foster, who served the old 14th district for a term and a half before losing in 2010. A physicist and businessman with considerable personal wealth and moderate sensibilities, Foster is a tough opponent, even for the relatively-moderate Biggert. Like the 10th, this one’s incredibly tight with surprisingly little polling. Republicans sounded the alarm last week though, indicating that Biggert urgently needs funds to survive on Tuesday. She doesn’t seem nimble on the campaign trail, and the sense here is that Foster has the momentum.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

Illinois’ 12th Congressional District – Southwestern Illinois, including East St. Louis, Alton, Mt. Vernon, Carbondale, Cairo
Last flip: 1944
Democrats have held the East St. Louis district since before the end of World War II, but that streak may come to an end this year. Incumbent Jerry Costello is retiring, opening a seat that feels like a danger area for Democrats – white, working-class, mostly rural. It’s a district where Obama won 55% in 2008, but he’ll probably fall a bit short of that this time. Carrying the blue flag here is General Bill Enyart, former head of the Illinois National Guard. Republicans are sending out Jason Plummer, who ran statewide for lieutenant governor two years ago and lost. Enyart seems like the better candidate on paper and leads in a pair of recent polls, but this district seems like it could be headed toward swing territory.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

Illinois’ 13th Congressional District – Central Illinois, including Champaign, Decatur, most of Springfield, parts of Bloomington-Normal
Last flip: 1938
This is effectively the descendant of the current 15th district, but it bears little resemblance to the seat Tim Johnson is vacating. Former Congressional staffer Rodney Davis is hoping to replace him, but he’s fighting on blue turf (55% Obama). Democratic physician David Gill was thought to be a lightweight candidate; national Democrats were disappointed when he won the primary. But Gill has proven to be a competent campaigner, and local Republicans have had  to sort through some angst about the way David was selected (Johnson bailed after winning the primary, so a replacement candidate was chosen by local party leaders). I didn’t expect this one to go Dems’ way, but Gill seems to have the edge.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

Illinois’ 17th Congressional District – Quad Cities, western Rockford, most of Peoria, Galesburg
Last flip: 2010
This race is exceedingly difficult to call. The Quad Cities area sent Democrats to Congress from 1982 to 2010; this was a late-breaking district in that year’s Republican wave and one which I deemed unlikely to flip even in my worst-case scenario for Democrats. But flip it did, a credit to the hard work of local pizzeria owner Bobby Schilling.

So will it flip right back? The district is now three points bluer after redistricting, and Schilling campaigned as a Tea Partier…this district should revert to the mean, no? That’s what I thought coming into the year. But Schilling has adapted somewhat to reality in the House, eschewing some of the Tea Party’s positions and fashioning a record that is occasionally labor-friendly. That should help him out in this blue-collar district with a decent proportion of union households. It should be noted, too, that as much as Schilling only reached the radar screen late in the 2010 campaign, he ended up winning by 10 points – a significant margin for the district and for a lower-tier race.

Schilling faces East Moline alderwoman Cheri Bustos, winner of a difficult Democratic pimary. Polling is tight but has been moving in Bustos’ direction. Both sides have poured money into the race; it’s near the top of Democratic takeover lists and presents something of a “Well, if not here, then where?” dilemma for the party. Presidential coattails will be present but seem unlikely to be enormous; Obama is not polling nearly as well in Illinois as he did four years ago. It is truly too close to call with any confidence, but we’re picking Bustos. The rationale: The Quad Cities media market crosses into Iowa – a presidential battleground state. Obama spent the first half of the year tied or trailing in Iowa; more recently he has opened up a lead in one of his most important states. Part of what has enabled this is the spring and summer advertising push – a push which has necessarily played out in this part of Illinois due to the market overlap. If Iowans are increasingly in the president’s camp, I suspect this district will drop off less for Obama than others in Illinois. That should be enough to get Bustos just barely over the top.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

Summary: +4 pickups for Dems, but all on a knife’s edge: they could get a fifth, or they could come away with only one (Walsh) if the Republican incumbents can finish strong.

Over the final days, we’ll be elaborating on our House of Representatives ratings by offering district-by-district rundowns of key races. We’ll open with a statewide analysis of the place we know best: our native New York.

Current state delegation: 21 Democrats, 8 Republicans
Reapportionment changes: -2 seats (for a total of 27 seats)
Competitive Races: 1st, 11th, 18th, 19th, 21st, 24th, 25th, 27th

Following the 2000 elections, Democrats held 19 seats and Republicans 12. The 2002 redistricting eliminated one of each and in that November Dems began a steady increase in their domination of the New York delegation. Tim Bishop picked up the eastern Long Island seat (1st district) to put Dems up 19-10. In 2004, Brian Higgins picked up the Buffalo-based 27th make it 20-9. The 2006 wave saw Dems pick up three more – the mid-Hudson Valley’s 19th, the Upper Hudson Valley/Catskills/Adirondacks 20th, and the 24th in central New York. It was a 26-3 delegation following the 2008 elections, when Dems added the Staten Island/southern Brooklyn 13th, the Syracuse-based 25th, and the Southern Tier’s 29th. A special election in 2009 saw Democrats win the North Country’s 23rd for the first time since before the Civil War, leaving the delegation at a preposterous 27-2 Democratic edge.  That meant that Republicans had oodles of targets in the Empire State for the 2010 midterms. They won back the 13th, 19th, 20th, 24th, 25th and 29th and fell achingly short in the 1st.

And that’s about when New York congresscritters started snapping semi-nude photos of themselves and sending them to potential admirers. First Republican Chris Lee resigned, opening his 26th district in western NY’s GLOW region and Buffalo suburbs. Democrats hadn’t won an election there in quite some time, but they won the special – meaning they had held 28 of New York’s 29 districts at some point in the previous two years. But then Anthony Weiner resigned, opening his 9th district in a politically-marginal patch of Queens and southeast Brooklyn. No one could stop talking about how Democratic the district was and how it couldn’t possibly fall to the GOP, but – I’m going to sing my own praises here – I knew better from the start. Registration numbers don’t tell the whole story; a lot of of those Democrats were older and socially conservative. Throw in a Hasidic bloc vote that had steadily abandoned Democrats over same-sex marriage in recent years, add a stumbling economy, and you have a recipe for Bob Turner to capture the 9th for the GOP.

So that’s where we stand now: 21 Democrats, 8 Republicans, and many, many seats that have changed hands once and often twice in the last decade. The state legislature, divided between a Democratic Asssembly and a Republican Senate, couldn’t agree on a map, so a judge stepped in and drew one herself. It’s a fairly sensible map – some bizarre edges here and there, like the 4 or 5 houses in East Fishkill that are unnecessarily carved out of the new 18th and into the new 19th – that largely maintains communities of interest and which maintains a high number of competitive seats – all of which are described below. The judge had to eliminate two districts, one from upstate and one from downstate. Upstate, she carved up the old 22nd, where Democrat Maurice Hinchey was retiring anyway. In New York City, she eliminated the 9th – won by Turner in 2011. That prompted Turner to run in the U.S. Senate primary, which he lost.

The loss of two seats in redistricting means that the partisan breakdown heading into this election is effectively 20 Democrats and 7 Republicans.

New York’s 1st District – Eastern Long Island including Smithtown, Port Jefferson and the Hamptons
Last flip: 2002
As Suffolk County’s population exploded in the postwar period, the 1st district changed hands a few times before bowtie-sporting Democrat Otis Pike won it in 1960 and held it for eighteen years. Republicans picked it up in the friendly year of 1978 when Pike retired; registered Conservative William Carney came along at just the right time, as Long Island turned sharply to the right. But Carney was done in by local issues, nearly losing to Assemblyman George Hockbrueckner in 1984 and choosing to retire two years later. Hockbrueckner ran again and won, holding the seat until the Republican wave of 1994. Michael Forbes found himself at odds with the national Republican party and became a Democrat in 1999…at which time he found himself at odds with the state’s Democratic party. Forbes lost the 2000 primary to a 71-year old library, allowing fireworks magnate Felix Grucci to recapture the seat for Republicans. Grucci choked down the stretch in his 2002 reelection bid, and Democrat Tim Bishop took advantage to win the seat.

Bishop won without much difficulty for the next few cycles, but drew a heavily-funded challenger in Randy Altschuler for the 2010 election. Altschuler pushed Bishop to the limit; after a lengthy recount, Bishop won by fewer than 600 votes. The challenger is back for another round and Bishop has taken some heat for an episode involving a fireworks permit and a campaign donation. The cynic can read between the lines and see a pay-to-play scenario, but there’s no smoking gun to prove it. Regardless of who one believes on the fireworks tale, Bishop’s internal polling has shown large leads throughout the cycle, as did the only public poll of the race – Siena’s in early September. But Altschuler has released two polls since then showing low-single digits leads. We could really use a return trip by Siena to see if the race has swung all the way to Altschuler’s favor; personally I can’t readily trust McLaughlin, a GOP pollster that shows a ridiculously close race in Queens’ 6th district, where Dems are going to win easily.  But for all that Altschuler has been hit repeatedly over outsourcing, the Bishop fireworks fiasco is the more recent big news in the district, and means that if Bishop is ahead, as we think he is, it’s only by a narrow margin.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

New York’s 2nd District – Southern Long Island including Levittown, Massapequa, Babylon, Brentwood, Islip, Ronkonkoma
Last flip: 1970 – but that’s for the SE Nassau portion; there’s not a clear line of descent connecting this district to its “ancestors.”
This is the closest thing to Peter King’s current 3rd district; it takes in the southeastern corner of Nassau County and the southwestern corner of Suffolk. It’s somewhat more Democratic than King’s current district, having voted 51%-48% for Obama four years ago. But Democrats failed to find a strong challenger for the popular King, a somewhat moderate and occasionally labor-friendly Republican who has always outperformed the national and state GOP ticket anyway.
Rating: Safe Republican

New York’s 3rd District – Northern Long Island including Commack, Huntington, Hicksville, Oyster Bay, Glen Cove, Port Washington, Whitestone
Last flip: 2000
This is effectively the successor to Democrat Steve Israel’s current 2nd district; Israel is running for reelection here, in a district slightly less blue than his current. Israel won his seat prior to the last redistricting, replacing Rick Lazio when he ran for the Senate in 2000.

Israel, whose focus this term has been more national ins scope as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, should win without a problem here against Army veteran, reservist and financial planner Stephen LaBate with a somewhat generic platform. But a word about Labate is called for: with his impressive resume, I anticipate he’ll be back to run for something else, presumably the state legislature when an opportunity appears. Long Island Republicans ran Lee Zeldin in a longshot Congressional bid in 2008; he fared acceptably in a very Democratic year and parlayed that into a relatively-easy state senate win two years later.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 4th District – Southwest Nassau County including Hempstead, Westbury, Long Beach, Wantagh
Last flip: 1996
Carolyn McCarthy rode a single issue – gun control, following the Long Island Railroad Massacre that killed her husband –  to Congress in 1996 and has won ever since, usually with little difficulty. Nassau County legislator Fran Becker kept it close (54%046%) two years ago and has opted for a rematch, but his campaign shows no signs of momentum, even with a district that on paper is friendlier to Republicans than the current version.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 5th District – Southeast Queens and western Nassau, including JFK Airport, the Rockaways, Richmond Hill, Ozone Park, Jamaica, Valley Stream
Last flip: 1960
There has long been a district in the southeastern portion of Queens, and it has long been Democratic. It was a more conservative strain of Democratic when it was still a white-majority district; by the 1980s it had an African-American majority and is now a very liberal district. The latest round of redistricting changed its number from the 6th to the 4th and is expanding it into Nassau County, but it remains a safely Democratic seat – one that voted 86% for Barack Obama in 2008. Gregory Meeks will continue to win easily here.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 6th District – Central Queens including Ridgewood, Middle Village, Elmhurst, Rego Park, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Flushing
Last flip: 1952
This was numbered as the 5th district for the last couple of decades, and consistently elected Democrat Gary Ackerman. The houseboat-dwelling Ackerman is retiring, and the district is set to elect a woman who embodies its fast-growing Asian plurality – Assemblywoman Grace Meng of Flushing.

Republicans have their most plausible candidate in decades here in NYC councilman Dan Halloran. A Theodist, he’d be the first Wiccan of any kind in Congress…but he’s not going to be in Congress. Winning a city council race with Mike Bloomberg atop the ticket is one thing; winning a Congressional race in a 63% Obama district is quite another. McLaughlin has a ridiculous poll here showing Meng up 36-33 with a preposterous 31% undecided. While areas like Middle Village lean Republican and there is a long history of elected Republicans from this area in the city council and state legislature, that simply never translated to the federal level, and it won’t this year, either.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 7th District – Lower East Side including Chinatown; southern Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, western Park Slope, Red Hook, Sunset Park; Bushwick, Cypress Hills, Woodhaven
Numbered as the 12th district under the current map, this is the triborough Hispanic-majority district in accordance with the Voting Rights Act. It has elected Nydia Velazquez since it was created in 1992 and it will do so again this year. Velazquez fought off a primary challenge from the Brooklyn Democratic machine and will face James Murray on the Conservative line next week, but no Republican opponent. Velazquez and Obama will break 80% here with ease.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 8th District – Parts of Brooklyn and Queens, including Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Canarsie, Mill Basin, Coney Island; Howard Beach
The Bed-Stuy district used to reach the waterfront in downtown Brooklyn and Red Hook, but was redrawn as an African-American majority Voting Rights Act district in 1982 and has easily elected Ed Towns ever since. But the increasingly inert Towns finally opted to retire this year, opening the door for Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries to win the nomination (after beating lunatic city councilman Charles Barron in the primary). The young, charismatic Jeffries will win the general with ease in this ultra-safe district and seems like a good bet to become an energetic and creative congressman. Having seen him speak in person at the DNC this summer, I’m  looking forward to watching his career unfold.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 9th District – Central Brooklyn including eastern Park Slope, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Brownsville, Gerritsen Beach
Last flip: 1922 (Flatbush portion)
Like the 8th, this district (which until now has been numbered as the 11th) is an African-American majority district and utterly safe for Democrats. Three-term incumbent Yvette Clarke is not the most brilliant Congresswoman currently serving, but she easily fended off a primary challenge and will dispose of general election candidate with no difficulty.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 10th District – Parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, including the Upper West Side, Chelsea, West Village, Financial District; Borough Park, Bensonhurst, Midwood
This is a district of two disparate parts: the chic and liberal West Side of Manhattan, and several traditionalistic and conservative Brooklyn neighborhoods. On balance, however, this is a safely Democratic seat. 10-term incumbent Jerrold Nadler does just fine here every two years in what until now has been numbered the 8th district; he’ll easily dispose of NYU economics professor Michael Chan this time around.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 11th District – Staten Island; Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, Gravesend
Last flip: 2010
Previously numbered the 13th, this is becoming one of New York’s more colorful districts. In 1980, longtime Democratic incumbent John Murphy was indicted in the Abscam scandal; he lost relection. Republicans Guy Molinaro and later his daughter Susan Molinaro held the seat without controversy, eventually passing it on to Vito Fossella, a young Republican on the rise. Fossella had held off a decent challenge in 2006 and seemed reasonably positioned to continue serving in the House indefinitely…until his 2008 DUI arrest in Virginia. That incident set into motion a series of events which revealed Fossella to have two families: one back home in Staten Island, and another in Virginia, where he had fathered a child out of wedlock. This wasn’t viable behavior for a Congressman; Fossella retired. That opened the seat up for Democratic city councilman Michael McMahon, who obliterated his GOP and Conservative opposition on his way to winning 61% of the vote. It was one of the Dems’ easiest pickups in 2008.

But it wouldn’t last. FBI agent and Gulf War veteran Michael Grimm challenged McMahon in 2010 and won a narrow victory, 51%-48%. Staten Island had reasserted its conservatism; this is the GOP’s most durable stronghold in New York City, after all. But it’s still a swing seat, and Grimm seemed to realize that: he kicked off his Congressional career by downplaying the importance of the conservative label and opted to join the moderate Main Street Partnership rather than the Tea Party Caucus. He cast the occasional labor-friendly vote in keeping with his representation of a district with plenty of working- and middle-class residents.

Except it’s rarely that easy in this seat. Grimm is the subject of a grand jury investigation into alleged campaign finance abuses – including funneling contributions from non-citizens into his campaign account through a rabbi’s aide who has since been arrested. It’s looking somewhat…well, grim…on the legal front.

And yet, Democratic developer Mark Murphy can’t seem to break through. Perhaps that’s because some district voters remember how his father John Murphy – yup, the Abscam guy described above – left office three decades ago. It’s not that Staten Island and southwest Brooklyn are any more Republican than four years ago; polls have shown Obama ahead in a district that McCain narrowly carried in 2008. It seems absurd that a candidate who has spent much of the year in legal trouble could survive, but two things have happened since our initial House ratings, when we put this at Tilt Republican. One, yet another poll has come out in recent days showing Grimm ahead by double-digits. Second, the hurricane and its aftermath has probably frozen local campaigns in place. Staten Island was ravaged by Sandy, with many flooding-related deaths. It no longer seems like this could be a late-breaking pickup for Dems; it appears Grimm will hold on.
Rating: Likely Republican (changed from Tilt Republican)

New York’s 12th District – Upper East Side, Roosevelt Island; East Village; Astoria, Long Island City; northern Williamsburg
Last flip: 1992
The “Silk Stocking” District on Manhattan’s East Side was historically a place moderate-to-liberal Republicans could win, unlike the rest of Manhattan. This was John Lindsay’s district before he became mayor of New York City; he was succeeded by Democrat Ed Koch, but the district went back to the GOP when Koch in turn was elected mayor in 1977. Republican Bill Green held the seat until 1992 – ironically, he was hurt by the addition that year of a part of Queens that was unfamiliar with him and which preferred fiscal liberalism but more conservative social stances. Green offered the opposite – the only formula that could work for a Republican on the East Side – and was defeated by Councilwoman Carolyn Maloney.

Over the course of Maloney’s time in Congress, the East Side has lost all of its Republican representation: State Senator Roy Goodman left his office in 2002 and was succeeded by a Democrat. Assemblyman John Ravitz retired from the Assembly the same year, failing to win Goodman’s Senate seat, and was succeeded by a Democrat. Charles Millard won a city council seat in 1991, lost a Congressional race to Maloney in 1994, and left the council in early 1996 – replaced by a Democrat. And City Councilman Andrew Eristoff won his seat in 1993 but left the council six years later, replaced by a Democrat. Republicans haven’t come particularly close to winning any of these seats since then – a long-winded way of saying that Maloney is quite safe here.

I don’t want to give short shrift to the eastern section of the district, however: Maloney has been well-received in the fascinatingly-diverse Astoria over the years and will likely adapt well to her new constituents in the northern part of Williamsburg, too.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New  York’s 13th District – Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood; Kingsbridge, Jerome Park, Norwood
Last flip: 1950 (East Harlem), 1954 (northwest Manhattan neighborhoods)
This area used to comprise several swingy districts. The northwestern portion of Manhattan was still electing the occasional Republican in the early 1950s; East Harlem was a three-way battle between Democrats, Republicans and the American Labor Party in the first half of the 20th century. These days, we’re looking at a district which gave Obama 93% of its votes in 2008. The action here is in the Democratic primary, where every two years someone tries to depose Charlie Rangel, whose campaign finance violations nearly cost him his seat this time around. But state senator Adriano Espaillat fell short, so Rangel gets another term. This seat will likely elect a Dominican soon…but for now, the one-time center of African-American culture in New York continues to elect one of the more storied African-American members of Congress.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 14th District – East Bronx and northern Queens, including City Island, Morris Park, Parkchester, Throggs Neck; College Point, LGA, Ditmars-Steinway, Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, Corona
Last Flip: 1968 (East Bronx portion)
Previously the 7th, this district is quite diverse, crossing two boroughs and comprising a mix of white, Hispanic, African-American, and Asian neighborhoods. Joe Crowley is running for his 8th term and he’ll win it easily in a district that gave Obama 76%. Crowley is an effective enough Congressman but is probably known more for his local operations as Queens Democratic chairman.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 15th District – South Bronx, including Fordham, High Bridge, Mott Haven, Hunts Point, Castle Hill, Tremont
The South Bronx has long comprised the poorest Congressional district in the county. It was also Barack Obama’s strongest district in 2008, as he beat John McCain 95%-5% here; many precincts failed to give McCain a single vote. Jose Serrano and his moustache have always topped 90%; 2012 will be no different.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 16th District – Northern Bronx and Lower Westchester, including Riverdale, Woodlaw, Williamsbridge, Wakefield, Eastchester, Baychester; Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Scarsdale, Mamaroneck
Last flip: 1988 (lower Westchester portion)
Lower Westchester still has its Republican strongholds – eastern Yonkers and Eastchester in particular, and many of the suburbs in this part of the county voted for Republican Rob Astorino when he won the county executive seat in 2009. The north Bronx section includes Woodlawn, which was fond of John McCain in 2008. But on balance, this district is very Democratic, supporting Obama with 73% in 2008 and consistently electing Democrats to federal and state offices.

Eliot Engel is forever dealing with significant changes to his district’s boundaries; for the last 10 years his 17th district included most of Rockland. But he has won each permutation with little difficulty; his only really competitive general election came in 2002 when he received Rockland and faced its county executive  Scott Vanderhoef. But even then, Engel won 63%-34%. He’s utterly safe.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 17th District – Central/northwest Westchester and Rockland, including Peekskill, Croton-on-Hudson, Ossining, Mount Kisco, Chappaqua, Tarrytown, White Plains
Last flip: 1988 (central Westchester portion), 2010 (northern Rockland/Westchester portion)
A collection of classic New York City suburbs, this would have been solidly Republican 20-30 years ago. Nowadays, Republicans still win plenty of local elections, but they struggle in state and federal contests. The fast-growing Hasidic bloc vote in central Rockland is ever more influential in local contests but is not going to affect a Congressional race, especially one where both candidate are socially liberal. 

This is a rather different district than those Nita Lowey has represented for the last 24 years; just under half comes from her current 18th district. But Lowey is exceedingly popular in the areas should already represents, and will adapt easily enough to the northern towns which have been added – some of which are very Democratic. On balance, this is still a Democratic district (58% for Obama) but it’s a few points redder than the one Lowey is currently has. For the first time in ages, she drew a respectable Republican challenger in Rye Town Supervisor Joe Carvin, a moderate who says he voted for Obama in 2008.

We initially rated this Likely Dem, given the geographic changes and Carvin’s ability to spend loads of money (he’s a hedge fund manager). But he never seemed to make headway, and Sandy has shifted attention away from the campaign – Metro-North is still restoring rail service to this commuter district, and power outages remain. Lowey will win another term without much trouble. She’s now 75 and had a health scare in recent years; she’ll be atop retirement watch lists next year – a retirement which some believe could provide an opening for the start of Chelsea Clinton’s political career.
Rating: Safe Democratic (changed from Likely Democratic)

New York’s 18th District – Mid-Hudson Valley including Poughkeepsie, Beacon, Cold Spring, Brewster, Somers, Bedford, Newburgh, Middletown, Port Jervis
Last flip: 2010
This district – where the Within the Margin duo grew up – comprises the next layer of suburbs, with plenty of NYC commuters, affluent millionaires in northeast Westchester, post-industrial cities – some emerging as tourist desinations, like Beacon, and some struggling mightily with drugs and gangs, like Newburgh – and robust farmland in the Black Dirt country of western Orange County. These places were strongly Republican for the first century or so of the party’s existence, but in the 1964 LBJ landslide Democrats captured both Hudson Valley districts. By 1972, both seats had returned to Republican hands and would remain so into the 21st century. One of these districts still exists in a similar form and will continue to do so as this new 18th district, a true marginal district (52% for Obama in 2008). It includes more cities than the previous version, but it lost some Democratic towns in northeast Westchester; all told about one-quarter of the district’s voters are new to Hayworth.

In 2006, Democrats captured it in their national landslide as John Hall edged out six-term incumbent Sue Kelly. Hall won easily in 2008, but Republican came after the district hard in 2010 and reclaimed it with a 53%-47% win for Nan Hayworth. For most of the next two years, local and national media went out of their way to paint Hayworth as the new Sue Kelly – the female suburban moderate. But Kelly really wasn’t particularly moderate in her final terms, and Hayworth  hasn’t been, either, with little daylight between her positions on taxes and spending and those of the Tea Party.

Sean Maloney, a former Clinton and Spitzer staffer, was recruited by the DCCC as this race became a major front in the battle for control of the House of Representatives. With support from organized labor he comfortably won the primary as the only candidate who could compete across the district’s four counties. Maloney has regional ties but didn’t live in the district; he has been attacked as a carpetbagger and for his role in the Spitzer administration’s Troopergate debacle. But his Cinton connection provides legitimacy for his economic message, and his fundraising prowess allows him to get the word out. He has hit Hayworth for being little different from the Tea Partiers in Congress. If he didn’t eschew traditional retail campaigning, I think he might win. But his focus on the airwaves makes for an incomplete push, and with power outages across the district after Sandy, he may have run out of time to get it done.
Rating: Tilt Republican

New York’s 19th District – Upper Hudson Valley and Catskills, including Oneonta, Monticello, Kingston, Middleburgh, Canajoharie, Hudson
Last Flip: 1974 (Ulster and Sullivan), 2010 (most of the rest)
I’ve lived in this district (which has been numbered the 20th until now) for the last 4.5 years, so I can vouch for its physical beauty – and for its newfound political competitiveness. This district’s predecessors elected Republicans decade after decade until Democrat Edward Pattison broke through in the Watergate landslide year of 1974. Pattison lost in 1978, and Dems rarely even came close again until 2006, when Kirsten Gillibrand beat John Sweeney. Gillibrand destroyed Sandy Treadwell two years later, was appointed to Hillary Clinton’s U.S. Senate seat, and was succeeded by Scott Murphy when the Democrat won a tight special election. Murphy couldn’t hold on in the 2010 wave, losing 55%-45%. Veteran and West Point professor Chris Gibson pulled away at the end for a comfortable win.

The redrawn district gave Obama 53% in 2008, with newly-added Ulster being the strongest Democratic county. It’s also Democratic candidate Julian Schreibman’s home turf. Columbia County is Gibson’s home turf and tends to be strongly Democratic in federal elections. Greene, Schoharie, Delaware and western Montgomery counties are GOP-friendly; Rensselaer County is winnable for Democrats. Outside of Ulster and Sullivan, Republicans maintain the edge in most local and state elections.

Gibson is more moderate than his freshman neighbor to the south, Nan Hayworth. He’s also more articulate. But the court-drawn map for the new 19th only includes 40% of his old territory, and he polls much worse in these areas. His campaign has released polls showing double-digits leads, but the recent Siena poll showed  Schreibman within two points. One tends to trust the public polls more than campaign polls, so it appears Schreibman is closing. Gibson showed he was a finished in 2010 with the wind at his back; it remains to be seen if the Democrat can get over the top in a neutral year. I think Gibson has done what he needed in order to distance himself from the extreme conservative of fellow House Republicans, but the momentum appears to be with Schreibman.
Rating: Tilt Republican

New York’s 20th District – Capital Region, including Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Saratoga Springs
Last flip: 1958 (Schenectady, Amsterdam), 1970 (Albany), 2010 (Saratoga)
The capital region’s cities range from slightly Democratic (Amsterdamn) to extremely Democratic (Albany). The area’s suburbs have mostly trended blue in recent decades. The more rural areas comprise some very GOP-friendly territory, but they’re always going to be outvoted in a district that orbits Albany. This district’s predecessors have elected Congressman with very long and effective careers, from conservative Democrat Sam Stratton to the moderate Mike McNulty to the liberal Paul Tonko, who first won in 2008. Tonko saw his share of the vote drop to 59% in 2010, but it will rise back above the 60% this time around.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 21st District – North Country, including Watertown, Potsdam, Plattsburgh, Glens Falls, Johnstown
Last flip: 2009 (northern/western portions), 2010 (Warren/Washington/Essex/Saratoga)
This is the Adirondack district, though it stretches beyond the park’s borders somewhat to the west and south. It voted narrowly for Obama in 2008 (and its predecessor for Gore in 200) but the GOP held it for quite a long time: from the Civil War era until losing a 2009 special election after longtime Republican incumbent John McHugh was appointed Secretary of the Army by President Obama. After more than a century of safely belonging to the same party, the district is now in the midst of its third consecutive close election.

How did Democrat Bill Owens come to capture this once-safe territory? Republican nominated Deirdre Scozzafava, a moderate North Country Assemblywoman, for ’09 special. At the peak of the Tea Party’s ascendance, conservatives were feeling their oats and weren’t happy to have a moderate as the standard-bearer. They rallied behind accountant and businessman Doug Hoffman, who received the Conservative Party nomination and rode a grassroots insurgency to blow past Scozzafava in the polls. She eventually withdrew from the race after weeks of being berated by her party’s right wing, and endorsed Owens with just a few days before the election. In the midst of all the shouting, Owens kept trucking along. Scozzafava’s share of the vote plummeted to just under 6% on the Republican line on Election Night, Hoffman hit 46% on the Conservative line, and Owens won with 48%.

In 2010, national Republicans set about correcting the matter. They recruited businessman Matt Doheny and duly nominated him…while Hoffman ran once again on the Conservative line. This time, Hoffman finished a distant 3rd, with 6%. Owens edged out Doheny by a point, 47.5%-46.4% in what was one of the unlikelier Democratic holds coming into the cycle.

This time, it’s an Owens-Doheny rematch – sans third wheel – in the redrawn district, and polling consistently shows Owens with an edge. He is running a decidedly conservative campaign that matches his voting record, and appeared set to win again, with both public and private polls showing solid leads for Owens. But the final Siena poll, released this past week, is showing movement for Doheny, essentially closing the gap. Owens still has the edge, but if he’s not sealing the deal with the appreciable number of undecideds in this race, Doheny will squeak to victory.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

New York’s 22nd District – Central New York, including Rome, Utica, Little Falls, Cortland, Norwich, Binghamton
Last Flip: 1974 (Binghamton), 2010 (rest of the district)
This is mostly the successor to the 24th district, though Binghamton comes from Maurice Hinchey’s dismantled 22nd. It covers what is sometimes known as the Leatherstocking Country – overlapping with parts of the Mohawk Valley and the Southern Tier. The region is generally Republican but not particularly ideological; as a result, the GOP tends to win local elections but faces tougher sledding at the federal level when voters must reckon with the conservatism of the national party. Moderate Republican Sherwood Boehlert held the seat with ease for 24 years; when he retired in 2006 the Democrats rode a prize recruit, district attorney Michael Arcuri, to a fairly comfortable victory. But unlike most Democrats elected that year, he actually had a harder time in 2008 and only beat businessman Richard Hanna 52%-48%.   Hanna returned in 2010, and in the midst of the GOP wave beat out Arcuri 53%-47%.

Hanna has staked out ground as perhaps the most moderate Republican in Congress both in tone and ideology. He even encouraged women to donate to Democrats, saying his party has nothing to offer women at this time. That seems likely to earn him a strong primary challenge from the right in 2012; this year he escaped with negligible opposition in the nominating contest. Democrats, meanwhile, nominated Dan Lamb, a Hinchey staffer. Lamb should be able to parlay the Hinchey name to a decent showing in Binghamton and Broome County, where Hanna is unknown. But elsewhere, Hanna should cruise; he’s well-funded and he fits pretty well his district, which was slightly improved (from his perspective) in redistricting; it’s now a district where McCain won very narrowly, as opposed to the previous Obama 50%-48% version. Lamb doesn’t seem to have gained traction.
Rating: Safe Republican

New York’s 23rd District – Southern Tier and western Finger Lakes, including Jamestown, Olean, Corning, Elmira, Geneva, Ithaca
Last flip: 1974 (Ithaca), 2004 (Jamestown), 2010 (rest of the district)
This is the successor to the Southern Tier’s 29th district, though Ithaca comes from Hinchey-land, Jamestown from the old 27th and Geneva from the old 24th. As such Republicans will always be favored here; there is not much of a Democratic bench outside the deep-blue stronghold of Ithaca and Tompkins County, and Democrats who hail from that region will be tarred as being too liberal for the rest of the district. Tom Reed easily picked up the old 29th in 2010 after freshman Democrat Eric Massa resigned amidst a sexual harassment scandal. The former Corning mayor faces off with Tompkins County legislator Nate Shinagawa, who has not demonstrated that he’s closing in on Reed. The new district is more Democratic than the one Reed originally won; it voted narrowly for Obama in 2008. But Reed fit in fine with the original version and seems to be motoring along without a hitch in the new one.
Rating: Safe Republican

New York’s 24th District – Syracuse area and eastern Finger Lakes, including Ontario, Oswego and Auburn
Last flip: 2009 (Oswego), 2010 (rest of the district)
Syracuse has historically been a GOP-friendly upstate city, but it has gradually come to stop defining itself by voting against New York City. The ‘cuse gave 76% of its votes to Obama four years ago, and Democratic presidential candidates have steadily increased their share of surrounding Onondaga County over the last two decades. So much so, in fact, that many people considered the old 25th district to effectively be a safe seat for Democrats once Dan Maffei succeeded longtime moderate Republican Jim Walsh in 2008. But just two years later, Maffei suffered a narrow defeat at the hands of Ann Marie Buerkle, returning the seat to GOP hands. 

Buerkle campaigned as a very conservative candidate and has voted like one; she has generally been considered one of the GOP’s most vulnerable members throughout this cycle. She’s not a great fundraiser, either. Maffei is back to reclaim his old seat. But what I thought would be slam dunk has been much tougher than expected for the former Congressman. Polling shows a tight race; with the latest Siena offering showing a 44-44 tie. It’s worth pointing out that polls also consistently show Green Party candidate Ursula Rozum garnering 5-8% of the vote. Typically third-party candidates underperform their polling on Election Day, but Maffei has to be concerned that he’s losing votes on his left flank, all the while being blasted by Buerkle for being too liberal himself. Maffei is playing on blue turf (56% Obama) and has shown the ability to win comfortably under great conditions and lose by the narrowest of margins under hostile conditions. He remains the favorite, but we spent the year assuming this race would be over by now.
Rating: Lean Democratic

New York’s 25th District – Rochester area including Irondequoit, Brighton, and Brockport
Last flip: 1986
The old 28th district was the most ridiculous in New York state, stretching from Rochester to Buffalo and doing so via a narrow coastal pathway along Lake Ontario. The judge who drew the state’s new map sought compactness and cohesion of communities of interest, so the new district now includes all of Rochester and is entirely contained with Rochester’s Monroe County. It no longer contains a largely-African American section of Buffalo, so it’s not as Democratic as before. But it’s still pretty blue – Obama won the new version 59%-40%.

Louise Slaughter is 83 years old and facing a somewhat tougher district, so Republicans targeted her for the first time ages. They recruited Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks, who has proven popular in Monroe County. But her fiscal conservatism is less appreciated in federal races, and her early vagueness in answering basic questions about major federal legislation did not earn her the appreciation of the press corps.

And Slaughter is well-liked here. Despite breaking her leg earlier this year, keeping her off the campaign trail just when she needed to meet new constituents, she has consistently led the few polls in this district by a pretty good margin – one by five points, the other three by ten points. Brooks might be viable when Slaughter retires if she sharpens her command of federal issues – or at least her willingness to take a position on them – but in the meantime, Slaughter appears to have another term in her.
Rating: Likely Democratic

New York’s 26th District – Buffalo area including Niagara Falls, Tonawanda, Amherst, Cheektowaga, Lackawanna
Last flip: 2004
Usually-Democratic Buffalo elected moderate Republican Jack Quinn to Congress for a number of years, but Democrats regained his seat upon his retirement in 2004. Since then, Democrat Brian Higgins has won with ease, even as the district registered a relatively small gain for Obama in 2008 and Carl Paladino swept the region two years ago. Now, redistricting has given Higgins the rest of Buffalo (previously a significant section of the city was connected to Rochester) while removing marginal Chautauqua County and a conservative swath of southern Erie County. His district is more compact and much more Democratic; at 63% Obama, we won’t be seeing Republicans compete here any time soon.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 27th District – Western New York including Lockport, Hamburg, Orchard Park, Batavia, Geneseo, Canandaigua
Last flip: 2011
Formerly numbered the 26th, this district focuses on the GLOW Region (Geneseo, Livingston, Orleans and Wyoming counties) which is upstate New York’s most conservative region. It also includes the further reaches of Buffalo’s suburbs. Traditionally a Republican district, Democrats were competitive in 2006 and 2008 but fell short. It seemed like Chris Lee was consolidating his grip, but then a taking-shirtless-photos-of-himself-and-sending-them-to-people-besides-his-spouse scandal occurred in early 2011. Lee resigned very quickly rather than letting any more shoes drop, and Republicans set about replicating their divided-party drama for the special election (see New York’s 21 district, above). Republican Assemblywoman Jane Corwin was deemed insufficiently conservative by some of the Republican base, even though she had the Conservative nomination. Local septuagenarian billionaire and industrialist Jack Davis, who had run as a Democrat in 2006 and 2008,  launched an independent campaign that garnered Tea Party support. Corwin’s team melted down as the election drew near, while the Democrat Kathy Hochul was unflappable. The Erie County clerk’s laserlike focus on Republican efforts to replace Medicare with a voucher system was effective in an aging district, and she won 47%-42% in one of the more surprising special election results in recent memory. 

Hochul’s political chops probably could have gotten her reelected in that district even without split opposition. But she was hurt mightily by the new maps, which swapped in a lot of conservative territory from southern Erie County. Those voters know her from her time as county clerk, but they’re not necessarily looking to send a Democrat to Congress. The district lost some of the Rochester suburbs where she did well in the special election, too. It’s now a 54% McCain district, about two points redder than the version she won last year.

But Republican can’t count on the pickup. They nominated Chris Collins, the former Erie County Executive. Collins was considered an up-and-coming star…until losing his bid for reelection last year. An abrasive figure, Collins has little crossover appeal, whereas Hochul has proven her ability to win in Republican areas. With polling effectively tied and little seeming to affect the race in terms of candidate mistakes or coups, we give the edge to the candidate on friendlier ground, and that’s Collins. But his is a very narrow advantage indeed.
Rating: Tilt Republican

Summary: No net change; 1 Democratic pickup, 1 Republican pickup (new total: 20 Democrats, 7 Republicans)

New projection: 53 Democrats, 47 Republicans – no net change

When we first posted our race-by-race Senate ratings in mid-October, we concluded that Republicans were looking at a net gain of one seat, for a 52-48 Democratic majority come January (down from their current 53-47 edge). Since then, several Senate races have shifted unmistakably in favor of Democratic candidates. We’re shifting some of our ratings appropriately. In one case – Indiana – we’re moving from Tilt Republican to Tilt Democratic. This makes it a Democratic pickup and gives them three pickups (along with Massachusetts and presumably Maine, if the independent Angus King caucuses with Dems as expected). We have three Rep pickups right now (Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota) so the arithmetic is simple: no net change in the 2013 Senate. Democrats would consider that a huge win, considering the difficult map they faced coming into this year’s Senate elections. It’s also worth noting that we consider Montana and North Dakota each to be a on knife’s edge – if the Republican is favored, it’s by the smallest of margins. Let’s look at what’s prompting our changes in each state.

Indiana
Republican Treasurer Richard Mourdock has never held more than the narrowest of leads here, and has occasionally trailed Democratic Congressman Joe Donnelly. The ultra-conservative Mourdock has always had limited crossover appeal to independents, and alienated some of the state’s Republicans by defeating longtime senator and widely-respected statesman Dick Lugar in the primary. But since our original Tilt Republican rating, Mourdock may well have sunk himself by declaring that it is “God’s intent” when a pregnancy occurs resulting rape. Mourdock has been somewhat mournful in the week since, and has tried to clarify his statement. But at the end of the day, it’s a bizarre sentiment, and I doubt many Indianans believe that their God views rape and pregnancy quite the same way. Donnelly is hardly a progressive’s dream candidate when it comes to reproductive rights; he quite foolishly once bought into the distinction between “rape” and “forcible rape.” But it’s not hard to appear reasonable when Richard Mourdock is your opponent, and Donnelly’s careful campaign may finally be starting to pull ahead here. The last two Democratic polls each show a seven-point lead, by far his largest of the campaign; independent polling has shown a narrower Donnelly lead while Mourdock’s last internal showed the Republican ahead by a point . There are still a great many undecideds here, as has been the case all year. But it’s our gut feeling that those undecideds are finally seeing Mourdock’s extremism, adding it to his loud partisanship, and edging toward Donnelly. Add to that the anecdotes we’re hearing about GOP women refusing to applaud Mourdock at a recent GOP dinner – after giving gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence a standing ovation – and it seems like it’s all going wrong for Mourdock.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

Massachusetts
We are very cautiously moving this race to Lean Democratic from its previous Tilt rating. Generally held to be the most intriguing Senate matchup of the cycle, we never anticipated either candidate pulling away. But Elizabeth Warren appears to be doing so. She’s now polling over 50% with some regularity, at least one survey has shown that minds are made up enough that Scott Brown’s ceiling is lower than he can afford it to be, and Brown seems to be running out of ideas to attack her. We mentioned in our first writeup that Brown is a closer, and I expect him to be sharp in the final days of this campaign. But in 2010 he had momentum, and this time it appears he does not.
Rating: Lean Democratic

Nebraska
I don’t think either Matt or I really expected this race to tighten up; Democrat Bob Kerrey just didn’t seem to have it in him this time. The decorated veteran and former governor and senator is attempting a comeback after 12 years out of politics and trailed by double-digits in polls all year against Deb Fischer, the state senator who pulled off an upset win in the GOP primary as the Tea Party standard-bearer. But anecdotally, Kerrey is outworking Fischer on the ground, and he has found a line of attack that seems to be working with regards to a land dispute lawsuit by Fischer against her neighbors. And perhaps voters are feeling nostalgic for the 1990s? Either way, there have been five polls of this race since mid-October – one from Kerrey showing a five-point deficit for the Democrat, one from Fischer showing her still ahead by 16 points, and three independent polls showing leads of 2-3 point for Fischer. This is still her race to lose, Nebraska is fundamentally a solidly red state, and there are plenty of attacks for Fischer to roll out to blunt Kerrey’s advance in the final week. But we can’t call a race with two weeks of close polling safe, and in fact, we’re not even sure it’s Likely Republican. We’re skipping all the way to Lean Republican. If Kerrey shows signs of receding again over the weekend, we’ll change the rating accordingly before Election Day next Tuesday.

For dueling takes on the race and particularly Kerrey’s movement, read this and this.
Rating: Lean Republican

So to recap:

Indiana From Tilt Republican to Tilt Democratic
Massachusetts From Tilt Democratic to Lean Democratic
Nebraska From Safe Republican to Lean Republican