I have updated the Evans-Novak ratings, thanks to a tip from alert commenter davybaby (thanks again, davy). Also decided the "toss-up range" on the scale I used in the last round-up was probably a little too wide at 3 units on a scale of 1-7. So I eliminated the middle value and contracted the scale to a range of 1-6, where 1 = Republican Favored and 6 = Democrat Favored. The score for an un-leaned toss-up would now be 3.5, rather than 4 as on the previous scale, with Rothenberg's and Evans/Novak's tilted toss-ups scoring 3 or 4 instead of 3 or 5.
These changes together resulted in two more current Republican seats getting pushed into Leans Democratic territory. The new overall totals come to:
Democratic Safe/Favored/Lean - 209
Republican Safe/Favored/Lean - 204
Toss-Ups - 22
(But wait! There's more.)
If the good guys ended up winning all the races in contention that now score greater than 3.5 on my scale, that would give Democrats a total of 224 House seats in the new Congress. Of course that may still be a little optimistic and none of this is guarantee of actual gains on election day in any case, but I'm still not complaining.
Meta Toss-ups (score 3.0 or better)
NY 26: Reynolds - R, 4.3
PA 10: Sherwood - R, 4.1
IA 1: OPEN (Nussle - R), 4.1
IN 9: Sodrel - R, 4.0
NC 11: Taylor - R, 4.0
OH 18: OPEN (Ney - R), 4.0
FL 22: Clay Shaw - R, 3.9
PA 6: Gerlach - R, 3.9
PA 7: Weldon - R, 3.8
CT 4: Shays - R, 3.8
NM 1: Wilson, 3.8
OH 15: Pryce - R, 3.7
NY 24: OPEN (Boehlert - R), 3.7
IL 6: OPEN (Hyde - R), 3.6
CT 2: Simmons - R, 3.5
WA 8: Reichert - R, 3.4
VA 2: Drake - R, 3.4
MN 6: OPEN (Kennedy - R), 3.4
KY 4: Davis - R, 3.3
WI 8: OPEN (Green - R), 3.3
OH 1: Chabot - R, 3.1
CT 5: Johnson - R, 3.1
Likely Dem Pick-Ups (score 4.5 or better)
AZ 8: OPEN (Kolbe - R), 5.6
IN 8: Hostettler - R, 5.0
TX 22: OPEN (DeLay - R), 5.0
FL 16: OPEN (Foley - R), 5.0
CO 7: OPEN (Beauprez - R), 4.8
IN 2: Chocola - R, 4.5
Democratic Watch List (score <4.5)
GA12: Barrow - D, 4.3
IA 3: Boswell - D, 4.3
Methodology:
Current House race ratings from Congressional Quarterly and the Cook, Rothenberg and Evans Novak political reports were recast as numeric values where 0=Safe Republican, 1=Republican Favored, 2=Likely Republican, 3=Toss-Up/Tilt Republican, 3.5=Unweighted Toss-Up, 4=Toss-Up/Tilt Democratic, 5=Likely Democratic, 6=Democrat Favored and 7=Safe Democratic. Rankings from the National Journal's list of Top 60 seats most likely to change parties were transposed onto a harmonized scale where 1=6 and 60=1 (reversed for the Democratic Watch List so that higher scores are always better for Democrats).
Scores from all sources for each race were then averaged to get a single-number rating for each. To convert any score to a probability (where 0=Safe Republican and 1=Safe Democrat), just divide the score by 7.
Sources:
http://www.cqpolitics.com/...
http://www.cookpolitical.com/...
http://rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com/...
http://www.humanevents.com/...
http://nationaljournal.com/...