For those of you who only started reading Daily Kos Elections after we migrated our operation from our old home at the Swing State Project, allow me to introduce you to one of our longest-running endeavors that we kick-started early in the 2008 election cycle: the House Open Seat Watch. Our goal, as it has always been, is to keep tabs on every seat in the House of Representatives that may come open due to retirement, resignation, a primary challenge, or a bid for higher office.
With the help of the rest of the dKos Elections team, I've assembled three charts: the first details confirmed retirements and vacancies, the second tracks potential retirements (including "retirements" forced by primary losses), and a third chart keeps tabs on incumbents whose names have been taken off our "watch list" by confirming that they are seeking another term in the House. Each district is listed with the name of its incumbent, as well as its percentage of the vote given to Barack Obama and John Kerry in the past two presidential election cycles (noted as "O" and "K" in the column headers) and the incumbent's age on election day, 2012.
One new factor this cycle is the wild card of congressional redistricting. Since it would be far too complicated (and, at this point, speculative) to track the effects of redistricting on the electoral plans of incumbents, we simply won't wade into that swamp until these "redistricting victims" start to announce their plans. Once that happens, we'll do so in a separate chart. (A good example of such a redistricting victim would be Missouri Democrat Russ Carnahan — who knows where he'll end up running, if at all, in 2012.) I'd also like to note that these charts reflect the district lines as they are today, not as they will be after redistricting. Once redistricting is complete in all 50 states, and the boys down at SSP labs have crunched the precinct-by-precinct data, we'll update our charts to reflect the new lines.
I'd also like to give a special hat-tip to longtime blogosphere mainstay Taniel, who double-checked our work and provided some helpful suggestions. (You can follow him on Twitter here.) With that said, let's bring on the Open Seat Watch!
Definite Retirements/Vacancies:
Thirteen open seats is nothing to shake a stick at. In April 2007, we only had three confirmed retirements (and one of them, Luis Gutiérrez, later went on to reverse his decision!). However, by the end of April 2009, we had 15 confirmed open seats for the 2010 cycle. Three of the vacancies on this chart will be resolved by the end of the year through special elections (including NY-26, which will be decided today).
Much, much more below the fold, including our potential retirements chart and our "off the watch list" chart.
Potential Retirements/Vacancies:
I've tried to make the above "watch list" as thorough as possible, but it should not be taken as predictive of what will happen in 2012. Many of these names will choose to run again, or win their primaries, while we may see some surprise retirements from incumbents whose names were never on our radar screen in the first place. If there are other names you think belong on this list, please let us know in comments.
Finally, we have our list of incumbents who have confirmed that they'll be seeking another term next year:
Off the Watch List:
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