Even though Larry Sabato is proudly proclaiming that 2010 is not going to be another 1994 for a variety of reasons, mostly consisting of hope and prayer, we predict that the GOP will pick up 49 seats to take it to a grand total of 227 seats and a strong majority in the House.
Going off of Sabato’s analysis, NYT’s House ratings, Rasmussen’s skewed polls and other surveys, and tGO’s intuition, it is highly likely that the GOP will win (back) the following seats, mostly from freshmen or class of 2006 Democrats, or from open seats:
| Leaning Republican Seats |
Toss-ups |
| AR-2: OPEN
LA-3: OPEN MD-1: Kratovil – F MS-1: Childers – early 2008 NH-1: Shea-Porter – 2006 NH-2: OPEN NM-2: Teague – F NY-29: OPEN OH-1: Driehaus – F OH-15: Kilroy – F TN-6: OPEN TN-8: OPEN |
AL-2: Bright – F
AR-1: OPEN AZ-1: Kirkpatrick – F CO-4: Markey – F FL-8: Grayson – F ID-1: Minnick – F IL-14: Foster – early 2008 IN-8: OPEN IN-9: Hill – 2006 KS-3: OPEN MI-1: OPEN MI-7: Schauer – F NC-8: Kissell – F NV-3: Titus – F NY-24: Arcuri – 2006 PA-7: OPEN PA-8: Murphy – 2006 VA-2: Nye – F VA-5: Perriello – F WA-3: OPEN WI-7: OPEN WV-1: OPEN |
| Leaning Democratic | |
| AZ-5: Mitchell – 2006
AZ-8: Giffords – 2006 CO-3: Salazar CA-11: McNerney – 2006 FL-22: Klein – 2006 IL-11: Halvorson – F IN-2: Donnelly – 2006 MI-9: Peters – F NJ-3: Adler – F NY-20: Murphy – F NY-23: Owens – F OH-16: Boccieri – F OH-18: Space – 2006 PA-3: Dahlkemper – F PA-10: Carney – 2006 PA-12: Critz – F VA-11: Connolly – F |
|
| Key:
F: freshman 2006: Class of 2006 2008: Special election in 2008 |
|
The reasoning is that most of these Democrats were elected in 2006 or 2008 in Republican districts, during what were perhaps the worst years for the GOP since the Great Depression. A few other Democrats, such as Edwards in TX-17, Kanjorski in PA-11, Pomeroy in ND and Herseth in SD, will hold on to their seats because of the incumbent advantage of a long-tenured Congressman along with a moderate reputation. Sean Salazar was elected in 2004, but CO will likely kick him out along with Markey.
The GOP will lose:
LA-2: Cao
HI-1: Djou
DE-AL: OPEN
All 3 of these seats are Dem strongholds and a GOP Congressmen in them is really a freak of nature (LA, HI) or a legacy moderate Republican moving on to higher office (DE). It seems highly unlikely the GOP will lose any other seat, except perhaps IL-10 which is open but these 4 will be it in our belief.
So, GOP-DNC will be 227-208 after November. The GOP not winning a majority in the House seems like a distinct impossibility. The DNC and DCCC are on a MI-4 to prevent that from happening and there’s no Ethan Hunt in real life.
It only remains to be seen what other crazy legislation will be rammed through Congress after the elections once Reid-Pelosi LLC lose their lofty ledges in November.
