And the only way we can lose it, is if we collectively sit on our hands and do nothing instead of supporting our Democratic candidates both financially and as importantly, through active GOTV efforts. So sitting here on my hands (just kidding) in a safe Dem. District, I began to ponder ways I could pitch in and help. And what I came up with is to start what I hope will be a series of diaries to get Kossacks to stop thinking the House is lost based on national generic polls (some more recent polls show a Rep./Dem. tie on an optimistic note), and focus on the individual District races we need to and can win to retain the House. When you start to look at the House on a District-by-District basis, it is not as bleak of a picture as the pundits make it out to be. But the pundits can only be proven wrong if we work to retain and flip "swing" districts.
Please join me after the jump /\ where I will cover the status of some swing district races and link you up with each Dem. candidate so you can show him/her a little financial love and/or volunteer for GOTV activities.
I have come to respect Nate Silver’s predictive capabilities with respect to national politics. His track record since 2006 has truly been amazing. Nate's latest predictive model indicates a total of 83 "swing" seats which range from "likely" to "possible" takeover by the opposite party, with 4 seats being a Dem. takeovers. In this diary, and hopefully others to come, I will review the 69 seats which Nate’s model ranks in categories of "lean", "even chance" and "possible" takeover opportunities. Today I will focus on such seats in Pennsylvania and Colorado. No rhyme or reason for starting with these two States. I just thought they had a manageable number of races that I could cover in my limited time today.
Before I get down to the nitty-gritty, I thought I would try to inject a little optimism by touching on a few points to show you that all is not lost when it comes to the House. Sure we are going to lose seats, it would be way overly optimistic to suggest otherwise. But that there are some emerging signs which suggest we can retain control of the House:
- Nate's Model - I know Nate’s model gives us only a 37% chance to retain the House and as I said above, I very much respect Nate’s work. While I won’t say the model is wrong in its prediction at the time it was published, models can only predict future trends based on past information. They cannot predict that changes in these trends will occur without at least some past data to support an emerging shift. It will be interesting to watch what happens to Nate’s predictive model as he updates it. It has already mardinally improved from its previous 33% chance prediction.
- August Verses September – I don’t need to tell anyone here that Dems. were generally getting hammered in the polls during August when Republicans were in full aggressive campaign mode and Dems. weren’t doing much of anything to fight back, taking hit after hit of bad economic/jobs news. In August Dems. were campaigning on a theme that "Things could have been worse without our past actions" without any forward looking program to make things better. But that all changed in September when President Obama came out on Labor Day with popular proposals to create jobs. Now as President Obama goes into full campaign mode in September and Dems. follow, we are starting to see some positive results in the polling. Some generic polls which showed a 10 point advantage for Republicans in August now indicate a dead even race. Also, the generic polls generally show Republicans to have higher negatives than Democrats.
- Taxes – The tax expiration issue so marvelously framed by President Obama has reminded voters that the Republicans support the rich while the Dems. support the middle class (and poor). Dem. polls predict that if the Congress introduces legislation extending only the middle class tax cut and leaving the tax cut for those earning over $0.25 million to expire, it will mean a 5 point positive Dem. shift in the generic polling.
- GOTV – There is no doubt that we can muster a better GOTV effort than the Republicans are capable of, if we just get out and work. We have longer lists of our voters from 2008 and we know where they live. We just need to get them out. A good GOTV effort can make all the difference as most polls indicate our biggest problem is not among "registered" voters, but among "likely" voters.
Running the numbers, Republicans need between 39 & 43 takeover seats in the House to take control, depending on whether Dems. can flip any of their 4 swing seats in Nate’s model. So of the 79 Republican takeover threats, Democrats have to beat back just over half of these challenges to retain the House. Sounds like a tall order, but as can be seen in Nate’s model, in 25 of these seats Republicans have a less than 50% chance of a takeover, meaning that Dems. only need to retain 15 of the remaining 54 seats where Republicans have a better than even chance of a pickup. Also, in many of these 54 seats, Republicans don’t have huge leads.
Well now that I have cheered you up a little (I hope), on to the Pennsylvania and Colorado swing districts. PLEASE use the campaign site links below to make a small contribution to some or each of these Dem. candidates. Even a few bucks can mount up if enough of us participate. Just as importantly, if you happen to live in any of these districts, PLEASE use the links below to sign up for GOTV activities. GOTV is the key to retaining the House.
Presented below are the swing districts, the % chance of a Republican takeover in the district based on Nate’s model, the names of the candidates, campaign cash on hand, any recent polling results, and of course, links to the Dem. candidate’s site.
Pennsylvania:
PA-3 - 60% takeover chance Kelly (R) vs. Dahlkemmper (D)
Polls: 8/1/10 - 52% R 38% D ("Rep. poll")
8/1/10 - 42% R 46% D ("Rep. poll")
Cash: Kelly (R) = $103,507; Dahlkemmper (D) = $1,014,735
Web Site: Help Dahlkemper
Conflicting polls on this race. Both Republican polls taken on the same day. What’s up with that? Good to see that Dahlkemper has substantially more cash. Still GOTV is key.
PA-4 - 28% takeover chance Rothfus (R) vs. Altmire (D)
Polls: 9/2/10 - 24% R 51% D ("Dem. poll")
Cash: Rothfus (R) = $201,681; Altmire (D) = $1,466,074
Web Site: Help Altmire
Small chance for Rep. pickup here, with good cash differential. But GOTV can’t hurt.
PA-7 - 72% takeover chance Meehan (R) vs. Lentz (D)
Polls: None ?
Cash: Lentz (D) = $785,935; Meehan (R) = $1,123,551
Web Site: Help Lentz
This is Joe Sestak’s seat. Couldn’t find any polls, so I’m not sure why we have a 72% chance of losing this seat. Lentz has a cash deficit. Please give him more support.
PA-8 - 53% takeover chance Fitzpatrick (R) vs. Murphy (D)
Polls: 8/23/10 - 48% R 41% D ("Rep. poll")
Cash: Fitzpatrick (R) = $664,063; Murphy (D) = $1,775,409
Web Site: Help Murphy
This is a close race as indicated by Nate’s ranking and the lone poll (Since it’s a Republican poll taken in August, things may be brighter than the poll suggests). But its one we should be able to retain with a little more cash and a lot of GOTV.
PA-11 - 63% takeover chance Barletta (R) vs. Kanjorski (D)
Polls: 8/1/10 - 52% R 41% D ("Rep. poll")
Cash: Barletta (R) = $236,806; Kanjorski (D) = $1,058,311
Web Site: Help Kanjorski
Again, I like the cash edge we have, but we will need good GOTV to retain this seat, which is Biden’s old stomping grounds. Hope he can make an appearance.
PA-12 - 56% takeover chance Burns (R) vs. Critz (D)
Polls: 8/1/10 - 44% R 40% D ("Rep. poll")
9/9/10 - 41% R 48% D ("Independent poll")
Cash: Burns (R) = $163,492; Critz (D) = $166,356
Web Site: Help Critz
This is close race for Jack Murtha’s old seat. Take a look at the poll flip between August and September which seems to suggest that our September offense might be paying off. The cash is about even here. So if your strapped for cash this week and can oly afford putting $10 bucks on one race, this is the one.
Colorado:
CO-3 - 56% takeover chance Tipton (R) vs. Salaza (D)
Polls: 8/28/10 - 51% R 43% D ("Rep. poll")
Cash: Tipton (R) = $167,401 Salazar (D) = $1,257,639
Web Site: Help Salazar
That’s John, not Ken Salazar. Again, good cash differential, but we will need GOTV to keep this seat.
CO-4 - 72% takeover chance Gardner (R) vs. Markey (D)
Polls: 8/28/10 - 50% R 39% D ("Rep. poll")
9/8/10 - 38% R 38% D ("Dem. poll")
Cash: Gardner (R) = $734,770; Markey (D) = $1,507,805
Web Site: Help Markey
Not sure about the polling in this race. Could be an actual shift from August to September like we are seeing in some other polls, or could be due to the Dem. vs. Rep. poll slants. Anyway, let’s keep Markey in a cash advantage and GOTV help.
CO-7 - 26% takeover chance Frazier (R) vs. Perlmutter (D)
Polls: 8/26/10 - 40% R 39% D ("Rep. poll")
Cash: Frazier (R) = $252,344 Perlmutter (D) = $1,283,167
Web Site: Help Perlmutter
Nate’s ranking indicates that we should retain this seat, but the only poll shows its tight. May be optimistic Republican polling, but we need to make sure we retain seats we are expected to keep. So let’s contribute and GOTV.
That’s all for this week! Hope to do more races next week. But, before I go I would like to leave you with this somewhat optimistic quote from
Nate's Latest Analysis of House races:
Democrats have also become somewhat more aggressive over the past few weeks in releasing the results of internal polls conducted by their campaigns. This will not necessarily help them in our forecasts, as such polls are subject to heavy adjustments. Nevertheless, it may be a sign of at least modestly improved confidence in some local races, as Democratic campaigns had been conspicuously quiet about disclosing the results of such polls before Labor Day.
It is important to maintain some perspective here: Republicans are poised to make very substantial gains in the House. They are favored to take control the chamber, and have a 40 percent chance of winning a net of at least 50 seats, and about a 20 percent chance of winning at least 60 seats.
Still, as the results of this week’s primaries perhaps suggested, there remains considerable uncertainty — and ambiguity — in the forecast. A 95 percent confidence interval on our projections would encompass everything from a Republican gain of 78 seats to a gain of just 12. Although that interval will narrow some before Election Day, there’s still a lot of campaigning — and poll-watching — left to do.
CONTRIBUTE AND GOTV!