For Republicans, the 2018 House playing field is a lot like a game of Whack-a-Mole: everywhere they turn, new problems keep popping up in surprising places. In January, we rated 20 GOP-held seats as Toss Ups or worse, including three leaning towards Democrats. With today's changes, we now rate 37 GOP-held seats as Toss Ups or worse, including ten leaning towards Democrats.
Republicans are relieved that state Sen. Troy Balderson appears to have eked out a win in Ohio's 12th CD special election last week. But a new round of polls shows several more GOP incumbents, including Reps. Mimi Walters (CA-45) and Tom MacArthur (NJ-03) highly vulnerable. Their seats, along with Rep. Robert Pittenger's open NC-09, move from Lean Republican to the Toss Up column.
On the bright side for Republicans, a handful of their battle-tested incumbents appear to be defying the "blue wave" in Democratic-leaning seats. Recent campaign polling shows Reps. David Valadao (CA-21), Carlos Curbelo (FL-26), John Katko (NY-24) and Will Hurd (TX-23) with impressive initial leads in districts Hillary Clinton carried. This week, Curbelo moves from Toss Up to Lean Republican.
Here's the latest Cook chart:
Even if the Dems lose in PA-14, just by taking the ten GOP seats that now lean Dem and splitting the toss-ups 50/50 you get 22 seats, just shy of retaking the House.
Democrats will do a lot better than splitting the toss-ups. Should the dam break as I expect it to with Dems getting 75% of the toss-ups, 50% of the lean GOP seats, and a quarter of the likely seats, that's somewhere around 45 seats, well more than enough to retake the House.
And should it be a 2010 bloodbath, that could turn into 60+ seats very quickly. If the primary turnout last night was any indication, the Republicans are in dire straits.
While measuring primary turnout isn’t a perfect way to gauge how the general election will play out — primary voters, after all, don’t necessarily equal general-election voters — it’s unmistakable that more Democratic voters participated last night. (And while Scott Walker, for example, faced little opposition in his GOP primary in Wisconsin, there was a competitive Republican contest for Senate.) Here’s a look at the turnout in last night’s gubernatorial primaries:
- Minnesota: Dem 580,962; GOP 319,276
- Wisconsin: Dem 537,840; GOP 456,007
- Connecticut: Dem 211,499; GOP 142,890
- Vermont: Dem 57,102; GOP 35,840
But that scenario only happens when we vote.
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