Historically, the president's party has usually lost seats in the House in the midterms. In addition, the Republicans have gerrymandered a lot of seats. That would seem to make the goal of taking back the House almost impossible. But it may not be as bad as it seems.
Below the fold, I take a geeky look at things (I am, after all, a statistician)
The first point is relatively simple: If we look only at districts where Obama got between 40 and 60 percent of the vote, there are a lot more Republicans than Democrats. In fact, there are 121 Republicans and 73 Democrats. It is very unlikely that any of the other 241 districts will switch parties.
There are several ways of rating congressmembers from liberal to conservative. In this diary, I used Progressive Punch's lifetime crucial vote measure. I did this because it is more up-to-date than one that I usually use (VoteView). In any case, the ratings from the various places correlate very well. First, let's look at the distribution of scores, just among the districts that are changeable. They are percentages and can range from 0 to 100.
The scores on the left are conservative, those on the right are liberal. Notice the distinct valley in the middle. The higher peak on the left is indicative of the greater party cohesion on the Republican side (even in swing districts), and is the first hint of our ability to take back the House.
For those who don't like graphs, another way to show the same thing is to divide the congress members into 5 groups from "Very conservative" to "Very liberal". If we do this, we find that, in the swing districts, there are 114 representatives who are very conservative but only 11 who are very liberal. Further: if we make a table of that "group" by party we find that, of the 121 Republicans in swing districts, 114 are very conservative and none are moderate.
Next, I sorted the group of very conservative representatives by Obama percentage and here are the top 50:
CD Incumbent Obama.2012
CA-31 Miller, Gary 57.2
CA-21 Valadao, David 54.6
FL-27 Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana 53.1
NJ-03 Runyan, Jon 51.8
CO-06 Coffman, Mike 51.6
NY-11 Grimm, Michael 51.6
NY-02 King, Peter 51.6
IA-03 Latham, Tom 51.4
CA-10 Denham, Jeff 50.6
VA-02 Rigell, Scott 50.1
FL-13 Young, Bill 50.1
MN-03 Paulsen, Erik 49.6
NV-03 Heck, Joe 49.5
MN-02 Kline, John 49.1
VA-04 Forbes, Randy 48.8
NY-22 Hanna, Richard 48.8
MI-06 Upton, Fred 48.8
VA-10 Wolf, Frank 48.8
FL-25 Diaz-Balart, Mario 48.7
IL-13 Davis, Rodney 48.6
PA-07 Meehan, Pat 48.5
NY-23 Reed, Tom 48.4
OH-10 Turner, Michael 48.2
PA-06 Gerlach, Jim 48.1
MI-08 Rogers, Mike J. 48.0
PA-15 Dent, Charlie 47.9
NJ-05 Garrett, Scott 47.9
WA-03 Herrera Beutler, Jaime 47.9
MI-07 Walberg, Tim 47.9
WI-07 Duffy, Sean 47.8
CA-25 McKeon, Buck 47.8
OH-14 Joyce, David 47.6
WI-08 Ribble, Reid 47.6
WI-01 Ryan, Paul 47.4
FL-07 Mica, John 47.1
CA-39 Royce, Ed 47.1
MI-11 Bentivolio, Kerry 46.9
NJ-11 Frelinghuysen, Rodney 46.6
FL-02 Southerland, Steve 46.5
OH-01 Chabot, Steve 46.3
NJ-07 Lance, Leonard 46.3
PA-16 Pitts, Joe 46.3
OH-15 Stivers, Steve 46.3
VA-05 Hurt, Robert 45.9
WI-06 Petri, Tom 45.8
CO-03 Tipton, Scott 45.8
CA-49 Issa, Darrell 45.7
NE-02 Terry, Lee 45.7
FL-10 Webster, Dan 45.7
FL-15 Ross, Dennis 45.6
So, in my view, this is where we should concentrate our efforts. These are 50 representatives who not only have views we detest, but who represent districts where a considerable number of people disagree with those views.