The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

With 83 days until the 2018 Midterm elections, it's time to check in with the Cook Political Report after primaries this week in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Vermont, and it's not just shaping up to be a Blue Wave in the House, it's a Blue Tsunami.

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.