Another installment in my quest to collect and quantify the collective wisdom.
Some fairly big doings this week, a lot of relative position changes, but not much resulting movement in the overall totals. Evans-Novak, Cook, CQ and Rothenberg have all updated their rankings in the past week. I have also added Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball to my panel of experts (I knew I was forgetting someone).
That current collective totals come to:
Democratic Safe/Favored/Lean - 209
Republican Safe/Favored/Lean - 203
Toss-Ups - 23
(more details on the jump page)
One reason the totals didn't move much is that I realized after my last post that two Democratic-held seats, GA 12 and IA 3, properly belong in the toss-up list by the same criterion used for Republican-held seats (my bad). Personally, I am skeptical about IA 1 -- I'd be more concerned about IN 7, which doesn't seem to have made it onto anyone's radar except CQ's -- but of course my own opinion isn't supposed to enter into this analysis.
In any event, this move was offset by two more Republican seats (IA 1 and PA 7) edging into likely turn-over territory. Two more previous Lean Repub seats (FL 13 and PA 8) also moved into the toss-up list but OH 1 tipped back into leans-R status for now.
As of now, if Democrats were to split the races scored at 3.5 and sweep all the races scoring higher we would end up with a total of 225 Democrats and 210 Republicans. Of course that and $20 bucks will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks and a lot can happen in a week. Still another week has passed, we're one week closer to home and it still kinda sucks to be them.
Republican Held MetaToss-ups (Score 3.0 to 4.4)
CT 02: Simmons, 3.5
CT 04: Shays, 3.8
CT 05: Johnson, 3.0
FL 13: Open (Harris), 3.2
FL 22: Clay Shaw, 3.8
IL 06: Open (Hyde), 3.6
IN 09: Sodrel, 3.9
KY 04: Davis, 3.4
MN 06: Open (Kennedy), 3.5
NC 11: Taylor, 3.9
NM 01: Wilson, 3.7
NY 24: Open (Boehlert), 3.7
NY 26: Reynolds, 4.4
OH 15: Pryce, 4.0
OH 18: Open (Ney), 4.2
PA 06: Gerlach, 4.1
PA 08: Fitzpatrick, 3.2
PA 10: Sherwood, 4.5
VA 02: Drake, 3.3
WA 08: Reichert, 3.5
WI 08: Open (Green), 3.5
Likely Looking Dem Pick-Ups (Score 4.5 or better)
AZ 08: Open (Kolbe), 5.5
CO 07: Open (Beauprez), 5.0
FL 16: Open (Foley), 4.8
IA 01: Open (Nussle), 4.6
IN 02: Chocola, 4.6
IN 08: Hostettler, 4.9
PA 07: Weldon, 4.5
TX 22: Open (DeLay), 5.0
Democratic Watch List (Score <5)
GA 08: Marshal, 4.6
GA12: Barrow, 4.4*
IA 03: Boswell, 4.4*
IL 08: Bean, 4.6
VT AL: Open (Sanders, I), 4.9
* Now included in the toss-ups total.
Methodology:
Current House race ratings from CQ, the Cook, Rothenberg and Evans Novak political reports and Larry Sabato's Cryatal Ball were recast as numeric values where:
0=Safe Republican
1=Republican Favored
2=Leans Republican
3=Toss-Up/Tilt Republican
3.5=Unleaned Toss-Up
4=Toss-Up/Tilt Democratic
5=Leans Democratic
6=Democrat Favored
7=Safe Democratic
Evans-Novak's (four) categories were mapped to 2-5 on this scale. Rankings from the National Journal's list of Top 60 seats most likely to change parties were interpolated 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 arrive at a single-number aggregate race rating.
Sources:
http://www.cqpolitics.com/...
http://www.cookpolitical.com/...
http://rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com/...
http://www.humanevents.com/...
http://nationaljournal.com/...
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/...