All the sources I used in my previous meta-projection (Cook, CQ, Rothenberg and the National Journal) have updated their House projections this past week so I've updated my list as well, based on their new ratings. Also thanks to a post from Kos, I was also able to add the Evans/Novak Political Report to my panel of experts. And while I was at it I refined my methodology a little, assigning a numeric score between 1 and 7 to each risk level, where 7 is a Likely Dem hold or pick-up, 4 is a pure toss-up and 1 is a Likely Republican hold. I interpolated rankings from the National Journal Top 60 list to get numbers in that same range, so that I could average the scores from all five sources and get a single numeric score for each race.
The new totals for this week are:
Democratic Safe/Favored/Lean - 207
Republican Safe/Favored/Lean - 204
Toss-Ups - 24
(continued...)
So at this point, splitting the tight races down the middle while holding all the Lean and Likely Democratic seats would give Democrats control of the House. I still wouldn't be picking out new drapes for the Speaker's office just yet but I definitely prefer our position to theirs right now.
As before, to make my toss-up list a race had to have an averaged score of greater than 3 -- equivalent to Toss-Up/Tilt Republican or better on the Rothenberg or Evans/Novak scales. Races scoring greater than 5 get pushed into the Lean or Likely Democratic columns. I have added a watch list for Democratic held seats scoring less than 6, but so far all the Toss-Up races are still drawn from Republican-held seats.
Meta Toss-Up List (Average Score >3):
IN 2: Chocola - R, 5.0
IN 9: Sodrel - R, 5.0
IA 1: OPEN (Nussle - R), 4.8
FL 16: OPEN (Foley - R), 4.7
PA 10: Sherwood - R, 4.5
PA 6: Gerlach - R, 4.5
NC 11: Taylor - R, 4.4
IL 6: OPEN (Hyde - R), 4.3
CT 4: Shays - R, 4.3
OH 18: OPEN (Ney - R), 4.2
OH 15: Pryce - R, 4.2
FL 22: Clay Shaw - R, 4.1
NY 26: Reynolds - R, 4.1
NY 24: OPEN (Boehlert - R), 4.1
PA 7: Weldon - R, 4.0
NM 1: Wilson, 3.9
VA 2: Drake - R, 3.9
KY 4: Davis - R, 3.8
OH 1: Chabot - R, 3.7
WA 8: Reichert - R, 3.7
WI 8: OPEN (Green - R), 3.6
CT 2: Simmons - R, 3.6
MN 6: OPEN (Kennedy - R), 3.6
CT 5: Johnson - R, 3.2
Lean/Likely Dem Pick-Ups (Average Score >5)
AZ 8: OPEN (Kolbe - R), 6.6
TX 22: OPEN (DeLay - R), 6.0
IN 8: Hostettler - R, 5.7
CO 7: OPEN (Beauprez - R), 5.5
Democratic Watch List
(Dem Seats with Average Scores <6)
GA12: Barrow - D, 5.1
IL 8: Bean - D, 5.1
IA 3: Boswell - D, 5.2
GA 8: Marshal - D, 5.6
VT AL: OPEN (Sanders, I), 5.7
(Bigger numbers are better for Dem's in all three lists above.)
Sources:
http://www.cqpolitics.com/...
http://www.cookpolitical.com/...
http://rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com/...
http://nationaljournal.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...