Charlie Cook has us really confused at this point. We have watched a video in which he says, "And it's very hard to come up with a scenario where Democrats don't lose the House." Then we look at his competitive House races tally which shows a grand total of 6 Democrat held House seats going to the Republicans. Since he says that the Republicans will lose the seat in Delaware and thus would need to pick up 41 Democrat held seats to regain control of the House, what scenario is he talking about? Even if we give the Republicans all 21 seats listed as Democrat toss-ups, that only gives them 27 new seats, still 14 short of control.
It would seem to us that Charlie Cook already has a scenario in which Republicans do not regain control of the House, namely his own charts. So where does he come up with this scenario that is not hard to imagine giving the Republicans 41 Democrat held seats? Now he does say that those seats are not there right now but surely there are more than 6 that the Republicans would pick up if the election were held today. We are curious as where Charlie thinks the other 35 seats might come from. To help him out, we are going to construct a new chart for him showing what it might look like.
There have been polls taken in several House districts, so where the polls have show the Democrat losing by 10 or more points, we will make them likely Republican. If the Republican is up less then ten but more than three points we will make the seat leaning Republican. For a race from tied to up by three points we will make the race a Republican toss-up. That would add 10 seats to the Republican group which would not all be coming from the Democrat toss-up group either. MA-10 comes from the likely Democrat group and ND-AL comes from the leans Democrat group. The Republican groups would then look like this:
| REPUBLICAN TOSS UP | LEAN REPUBLICAN | LIKELY REPUBLICAN | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Italicized name denotes Freshman member
This is much more realistic but surely a scenario that will eventually give the Republicans control of the House should have more than 16 seats going to the Republicans already. So let's give the Republicans those seats where the Democrat won by less than 6 points in 2008 with less than 2 points being likely, 2 to 3 being leaning and 4 to 5 being a toss-up. The problem here is that several races would be coming from the likely Democrat or leans Democrat and not just the toss-up group. From the likely Democrat group, we would have to move CT-4, NY-20 and PA-3 over to the Republican side and not to the toss-up group either.
Scott Murphy in NY-20 wins with a 0.45% margin while Obama only wins by a 3% margin in a terrible year for Republicans and that is a likely Democrat seat? Kathy Dahlkemper wins in PA-3 by a 2.47% margin while the Presidential candidates are essentially tied and that is a likely Democrat district? This does not compute. This means we will also have to move NJ-3, NY-23, NY-24, NY-29 and PA-11 from the leans Democrat as well and not to the Republican toss-up group either. Perhaps those districts needed to be re-evaluated anyway. With these changes we would add 21 more seats to the Republican groupings for a total of 28 seats.
Surely this would be more in line with a quote about it being hard to imagine the Republicans not regaining control of the House. That still leaves needing 13 more seats to gain control of the House but there are only 8 seats left in the Democrat toss-up group so we had better move some of the leaning and likely Democrat seats over to the Democrat toss-up group. Let's pick those seats where the incumbent Democrat won by more than 6 but less than a 10 point margin. That moves AZ-5, FL-22, ME-1, MI-9 and WI-8 to the Democrat toss-ups. Oops, ME-1 is not even listed as being in play. Oh well, surely a seat that was won by less than 10 points should be in play anyway.
With these now 13 seats in the Democrat toss-up group plus the 28 in the Republican group, we can at least see where the 41 seats would come from to give the Republicans control of the House. This way Charlie's charts would match his quote and the confusion would be alleviated. Doesn't this make more sense, Charlie? Please feel free to adopt any of our suggestions that make sense to you in the now revised chart below:
| LIKELY DEMOCRATIC | LEAN DEMOCRATIC | DEMOCRATIC TOSS UP | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| REPUBLICAN TOSS UP | LEAN REPUBLICAN | LIKELY REPUBLICAN | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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* denotes possible incumbent retirement
# denotes possible serious primary challenge
