Really endangered Republicans (and danger zone Democrats)

Gary Miller (CA-31), really endangered Republican

Gather 'round, children, for some tales of ancient yore—back to the days of legend, when such beasts as Rockefeller Republicans roamed the suburbs of the northeast, or the fabled Blue Dog Democrat, who once stood tall in the rural districts of the south. Yes, once upon a time, you could find moderate Democrats in the House, representing districts that voted mostly for Republican presidential candidates, or similarly, you could find centrist Republicans representing districts that leaned in favor of Democrats at the presidential level.

While these mythical creatures aren't quite entirely extinct, the last decade hasn't been kind to them. Back-to-back-to-back wave elections cleaned many of them out, wiping out many of the swing-district Republicans in 2006 and 2008, then taking out even more Democrats who were in Republican-leaning rural turf in 2010. These were "realigning" elections, as voters increasingly viewed candidates through the prism of a national (and often partisan) media and nationalized parties, rather than judging candidates on their own unique fits to each district's parochial interests.

Subsequent redistricting in 2012 locked down many of the districts picked up by the GOP in the 2010 wave, helped along by increasingly sophisticated gerrymandering techniques. That diminshed the number of swing districts and pushed more districts either into the solidly red or solidly blue columns. That can be quantified: Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman has calculated that in 1998, there were 168 "swing districts" (defined as, at the time, having a Partisan Voting Index between D+5 and R+5, meaning that their presidential-election performance was within a five-point range, either way, of the national average). Following the 2012 elections, only 90 districts fell into that range.

Throw in that shrinking range of competitive districts—on top of the increasing tendency to vote straight-ticket, national-party, instead of according to regional quirks—and you've got a recipe for an ever-dwindling number of "crossover" districts. In other words, the number of House Republicans in Democratic-leaning districts and the number of House Democrats in Republican-leaning districts is near an all-time low, with only 17 Republican in districts that Obama won in 2012 and 9 Democrats in districts that Romney won. According to Kyle Kondik, that's the lowest number of "crossover" districts since 1920.

With the House having seemingly realigned itself thoroughly—bringing ideology and geography into unison with few mismatches on either side presenting opportunities—that tends to point toward something of a wash in the House in the 2014 elections. That's only good news if you particularly enjoy the current status quo; for Democrats to be able to actually move an agenda, though, they'd need to flip 17 more seats for a majority in the House and a mere wash isn't going to do the job. Since we're getting to the point in the cycle where we need to start thinking about recruitment and targeting, though, follow over the fold to take a look at where those remaining mismatches are, and what other swing district opportunities are out there.

We can finally talk about this with authority because, last month, we at Daily Kos Elections got the last precinct-level data we needed to be able to calculate the 2012 presidential results for all 435 of the nation's congressional districts. (In case you're wondering who to blame for the delay, Nassau County, New York, was the last holdout that was gumming up the works for us and, presumably, the other prognosticators.) With that data in hand, we can compile the rank order of the most-Democratic districts that still have a Republican representing them.

(You'll notice that the list is ordered purely according to Obama percentage in 2012, rather than according to, say, the Obama/Romney margin. We're also, for reference, including the newly calculated Cook Partisan Voting Index scores, since that's a handy way of shorthanding the district's lean. Bear in mind that calculation of PVI averages out 2008 and 2012 numbers, and doesn't account for the share of third-party candidates, so the PVI order might not exactly match the order of the candidate's actual 2012 percentages. In most places, you'll see the disparity between the methods is negligble; where it isn't, it can help you spot districts where Obama's percentage moved up since '08, like Miami's FL-27, or where he lost an unusual amount of ground since '08, like central Illinois's IL-13.)

Dist.	Rep.	2012 %	Cook PVI
CA-31	Gary Miller	57.2/40.6	D+5
CA-21	David Valadao	54.6/43.5	D+2
NJ-02	Frank LoBiondo	54.0/43.7	D+1
FL-27	Ileana Ros-Lehtinen	53.0/46.5	R+2
NY-19	Chris Gibson	52.1/45.9	D+1
NJ-03	Jon Runyan	51.8/47.2	R+1
CO-06	Mike Coffman	51.6/46.5	D+1
NY-11	Mike Grimm	51.6/47.3	R+2
NY-02	Peter King	51.6/47.2	R+1
IA-03	Tom Latham	51.4/47.2	Even
CA-10	Jeff Denham	50.6/47.0	R+1
VA-02	Scott Rigell	50.1/48.6	R+2
FL-13	Bill Young	50.1/48.6	R+1
WA-08	Dave Reichert	49.7/48.1	R+1
MN-03	Erik Paulsen	49.6/48.8	R+2
NV-03	Joe Heck	49.5/48.7	Even
PA-08	Mike Fitzpatrick	49.3/49.4	R+1
MN-02	John Kline	49.1/49.0	R+2
MI-06	Fred Upton	48.8/50.2	R+1
VA-04	Randy Forbes	48.8/50.1	R+4
VA-10	Frank Wolf	48.8/49.9	R+2
NY-22	Richard Hanna	48.8/49.2	R+3
FL-25	Mario Diaz-Balart	48.7/50.8	R+5
IL-13	Rodney Davis	48.6/48.9	Even
PA-07	Pat Meehan	48.5/50.4	R+2

The top two names on the list, Gary Miller and David Valadao, should be no surprise to anyone who pays close attention to the House, because these are seats that, when the California map was released, most people initially expected the Democrats to pick up (or hold, if you consider CA-21 to be the descendant of Jim Costa's old seat). After all, these are districts with Hispanic majorities, although with problems with very low turnout.

Republicans, however, won CA-21 thanks to Dem recruitment problems (which left them with an underqualified and underfunded candidate) and won CA-31 thanks to an almost fluky scenario under California's new top two primary: There were two credible Republicans and four credible Democrats running in the primary, and the Democrats split the Dem vote perfectly enough to allow the two Republicans to advance to the general! While it's not clear who the Dems might get to try and improve their chances in CA-21 next year, they already have two credible candidates lined up in the 31st. Assuming Miller can't find a willing Republican to help him replicate last year's scenario, he faces long odds against whichever Dem advances to face him in the general.

Things start looking sketchier right away, though, as you move down the list. In third place, for instance, is Frank LoBiondo in NJ-02. "Who?" you might be asking ... and that's exactly the point, as he's been able to fly under the radar for decades in a lightly Dem-leaning district with scarcely a challenge. How has he managed to blend in with his surroundings and attract little attention, while almost all the remaining northeastern moderates around him have been eradicated? Partly it's a matter of avoiding controversy and offering up the occasional pro-environmental or union-friendly vote, and partly it's a lack of a compelling Democratic bench in this part of the Jersey Shore.

And the example of LoBiondo is precisely why it's not always helpful to look only at districts' partisan lean to look for potential pickups; LoBiondo and some of the other names further down the list (like Bill Young and Frank Wolf) are so deeply entrenched that the Democratic approach with them has become mostly one of sitting tight and hoping that retirement comes sooner rather than later. That's not terribly wise—you always want to have a credible option in case lightning strikes, in the form of an unexpected scandal or just a rusty incumbent taken out of his comfort zone—but at the same time, the best opportunities are often, instead, in significantly redder districts. For instance, FL-02, where we've got a strong challenger in the form of Gwen Graham, doesn't make the list above; nor does MN-06, where there's a badly damaged incumbent by the name of Michele Bachmann.

One slot below, with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Miami's FL-27, is a similar case with a personally popular, entrenched incumbent and Dems willing to bide their time (although they did make a half-hearted push here in 2008). However, while NJ-02 has hovered in the D+1 range for decades, FL-27 is a district rapidly moving in the Dems' direction, along with the other Cuban-American seats in Miami-Dade County; it's one of only three districts in the country that went for McCain in '08 but Obama in '12 (along with NY-11 and neighboring FL-26). This district probably isn't poised to fall this year—especially since Ros-Lehtinen has already confirmed she's running again—but it seems like an ideal place to support running an up-and-comer in an effort to lay some groundwork for future runs.

Skipping a few slots down are two Mikes: Mike Coffman in CO-06 in Denver's suburbs, and Mike Grimm in NY-11 on Staten Island. These are two of our other best opportunities on the list, even though these districts aren't as clearly Dem-leaning. In Coffman's case, it's because he's a hard-right conservative who had a dark-red district last decade and has had some growing pains adapting to the swing district he got redistricted into; in Grimm's case, he's trying to stay one step ahead of multiple ethics investigations. Both won by only single digits against underwhelming opponents in 2012, and now both face top-tier Democratic opposition already (former Colorado House speaker Andrew Romanoff versus Coffman, and New York city councilor Domenic Recchia versus Grimm).

While playing offense is, of course, more fun, we also need to remember that we picked up a number of seats in swingy territory in 2012, and those are going to need to be defended. Some of our freshmen are going to be in for hard fights, as well as some of our veterans whose districts have shifted out from under them.

Dist.	Rep.	2012 %	Cook PVI
UT-04	Jim Matheson	30.2/67.2	R+16
WV-03	Nick Rahall	32.8/65.0	R+14
NC-07	Mike McIntyre	39.9/59.2	R+12
GA-12	John Barrow	43.6/55.4	R+9
MN-07	Collin Peterson	44.1/53.9	R+6
FL-18	Patrick Murphy	47.6/51.7	R+3
AZ-01	Ann Kirkpatrick	47.9/50.4	R+4
TX-23	Pete Gallego	48.1/50.7	R+3
AZ-02	Ron Barber	48.4/49.9	R+3
MN-01	Tim Walz	49.6/48.2	R+1
NY-01	Tim Bishop	49.6/49.1	R+2
IL-12	Bill Enyart	49.7/48.2	Even
NH-01	Carol Shea-Porter	50.2/48.6	R+1
OR-05	Kurt Schrader	50.5/47.1	Even
CA-36	Raul Ruiz	50.7/47.5	R+1
NY-03	Steve Israel	50.8/48.2	Even
CA-07	Ami Bera	50.8/46.8	Even
AZ-09	Kyrsten Sinema	51.1/46.6	R+1
NY-18	Sean Maloney	51.4/47.1	Even
OR-04	Peter DeFazio	51.7/45.0	D+2
MN-08	Rick Nolan	51.7/46.2	D+1
CA-52	Scott Peters	52.1/45.7	D+2
NY-21	Bill Owens	52.2/46.1	Even
ME-02	Mike Michaud	53.0/44.0	D+2
FL-26	Joe Garcia	53.1/46.4	R+1

When we talk about veterans whose districts have shifted out from under them, that especially means Jim Matheson, Nick Rahall, and Mike McIntyre. Interestingly, they're in much worse districts in terms of Republican lean than any Republican in a blue district faces. Matheson and Rahall's districts, in fact, are in the bottom decile of all 435 districts in terms of Obama '12 percentage. What's more, all three of them face potential rematches with their 2012 Republican opponents, against whom Matheson and McIntyre had the closest races of any Democrats who survived 2012. (Rahall won with a more comfortable margin.)

Matheson has always had a tough row to hoe in red districts in Utah, though his district just got somewhat worse than it was in the 2000s, thanks to being targeted in redistricting. Rahall, however, is just the opposite: When he started out in Congress (in the 1970s!) he was in a reliably blue area, in southern West Virginia's coal country. His district hasn't changed shape much over the years, but it's gone from being a district that Walter Mondale won in 1984, to one that Barack Obama got not even one-third of the vote in last year. McIntyre is a little from column A and little from column B: His rural corner of SE North Carolina was slowly trending red, and then he got a big shove in that direction last year thanks to the North Carolina GOP's fearsome gerrymander.

Matheson and McIntyre (and John Barrow, in an appreciably better district, though one of the few other worse-than-R+5 districts held by a Dem) have proven their resilience over the years, though; they've already run a gauntlet of worst-case scenarios (a wave in 2010, getting screwed by gerrymandering in 2012) and survived. For the short-term, I'm a little more worried about some of our freshmen, who are in swingier districts but who haven't necessarily found their footing yet (and who give us significantly better voting records than the remaining core of Blue Dogs).

Most notably, that would be Patrick Murphy, who's in an R+3 district and won't have the luxury of running against controversy-magnet Allen West in FL-18 next time. But that also goes for guys like Raul Ruiz and Ami Bera, who are likely to face top-tier competition and are in districts where there's likely to be a big falloff in off-year minority-voter turnout. It also includes some Dems with a little more experience, but who are in tough districts and seem to wash in and out with the national tide, like Ann Kirkpatrick and Carol Shea-Porter.

As I alluded to earlier, merely looking at districts' partisan lean isn't the alpha-and-omega of predicting where the competitive races will be. Next week, we'll look at which House members had the closest races in 2012, and which ones most overperformed and underperformed their presidential candidates. As you'll see, those lists will look very different from the ones we saw today, giving us another way to look at the question of who's most vulnerable.