Dr. Rachel Bitecofer of the Wason Center was the first to predict the blue wave of 2017. In the summer of 2018, when the well-known forecasters waffled whether a blue wave would help the Democrats flip the House, Bitecofer boldly predicted 42 seat gain for team blue. Nearly all those seats did flip and her new, unique polarization model finally began to attract media attention.
Based on her new model, she is now predicting 18 Top Targets for Democrats in the House for 2020.
In the wake of the 2018 Blue Wave it was clear that as predicted by my forecasting model, suburbia shifted sharply towards the Democrats in the Midterms.
The main driver of the suburban revolt away from the GOP is college education. Although Trumpism has been an effective rallying cry for the GOP base, it has galvanized a previously complacent part of the electorate; white, college educated millennial women as well as all voters under age 40, who represent a far more diverse and liberal voter universe than their older counterparts. As such, any district with high levels of college educated voters was extremely vulnerable for Republicans in 2018, even those that had long been in the hands of the Republican Party such as the six Orange County districts in Southern California which my model was quite clear would uniformly flip to the Democrats.
The table below identifies these districts, as well as several others Democrats did contest but came up short in for the 2018 cycle. Nine of these districts are in Texas, which increasing looks like it should be Ground 0 of the Democrats’ 2020 efforts.
However, actually flipping these districts would require a massive investment in an area Democrats have continually under-invested in: Latino turnout. Democrats’ success in increasing the size of their House majority will largely depend on whether they come to recognize the need to maximize turnout among Democratic-friendly constituencies such as college-educated women, Latinos, African Americans, and Millennials and in their ability to understand that it is fear of Trump, not policy, that will best motivate these voters to the polls, no matter what the voters themselves may think.
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Out of the 18 targets, Dr. Bitecofer’s identifies 9 Texas Seats. Rumors are swirling currently in Texas political circles regarding McCaul’s (TX-10) retirement as well as one other GOPer not listed below. Texodus is not over yet!
18 Most Competitive House Races for 2020 : Sheet1