If a big blue wave sweeps Congress, which Democrats are likely to win? Which seats beyond the most obvious ones might flip?
I’ve now updated my previous spreadsheet to include the most recent DKE race rating, the endorsements of Climate Hawks, and the amount of money each of the Democratic challengers has raised through September 30, 2016. I’ve also ranked the seats from most likely to least likely to flip (thanks for the suggestion pierre9045) and added write-in candidate Debra Wirth (thanks peregrine kate).
The updated spreadsheet lists the 150 most vulnerable House Republican seats as determined by DailyKos Elections (DKE), with their Democratic challengers taken from Wikipedia, and race predictions made by DailyKos Elections (DKE), the Cook Political Report, the Sabato Crystal Ball, and the Rothenberg and Gonzales Report as well as endorsements for the Democratic challengers from President Obama and 15 Democratic and progressive organizations. It also includes the money raised by Democratic challengers taken from a DKE compilation and supplemented with numbers from OpenSecrets.
The resulting spreadsheet, available as a GoogleDoc, lists the Republican incumbents (with those leaving office shown in brackets) in Column C, their Democratic Challengers in Column D, and the DKE Republican Vulnerability Rank in Column E. Columns F through I show the DailyKos, Cook, Sabato, and Rothenberg race ratings. Note that 47 of the districts are considered by at least one of the ratings groups to be vulnerable to Democratic pickup (even if just by a slim chance). Columns J through Y show the endorsements of 15 Democratic and progressive organizations, with those that endorsed the most Democratic competitors listed first:
- DCCC: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red-to-Blue and Emerging Races programs
- Sierra: The Sierra Club PAC
- LCV: The League of Conservation Voters PAC
- Take House: Let’s Take the House website
- Climate Hawks
- Obama: Races in which President Obama is campaigning
- NCEC: The National Committee for an Effective Congress
- NOW: The National Organization for Women PAC
- Emily’s List
- CLW: The Council for a Livable World PAC (peace organization)
- Progressive Action: The House Progressive Caucus PAC
- DailyKos
- DFA: Democrats for America
- Feminist Majority PAC
- Our Rev : Our Revolution (Bernie Sander’s organization)
- PCCC: The Progressive Congressional Campaign Committee
Column Z lists the number of endorsements from these 15 groups. A total of 83 candidates have received at least one endorsement and 53 have two or more endorsements, indicating some support from the Democratic Party or from progressive activists.
Column AA shows the amount of money raised by the Democratic challenger in thousands of dollars. 81 Democratic candidates had raised more than $100,000 by the end of September.
In Column AB, I’ve calculated a “Flip Potential” score which is based on five things:
- The DKE Vulnerability Rank which is the sum of the seat's rank according to the 2012 presidential vote (from reddest to bluest) and the seat's rank according to the 2014 House vote (from smallest to largest). Open seats are given a rank of 0.
- Ratings from the four prediction groups which is based on the makeup of the district, the strength of the candidates (particularly whether the Republican is an incumbent), the amount of support garnered by the candidates from their parties and other groups, and the amount of money raised by each candidate
- Number of endorsements from these 15 Democratic and progressive groups
- Amount of money raised by the Democratic challenger through September which gives an indication of how popular and effective the candidate is
- Whether the DCCC has chosen the Democratic candidate to be in the Red-to-Blue program
The number of points I’ve assigned for each factor are shown in Columns AD-AK. The formulas I’ve used to translate the factors into points (details shown on a back worksheet) are just my “best guess”, but they seem reasonable and produce reasonable results. There are other factors that are surely important but for which I haven’t compiled or don’t have any data: the amount of money raised by the Republican candidate, outside spending from SuperPACs, other group endorsements (such as local and state labor, civil rights, or environmental groups) and how much support endorsers are actually supplying, the abilities of the Republican and Democratic candidates, etc. So please recognize that the Flip Potential scores are quite rough guesstimates — I’d say each score could be +/- 10 points from what I’ve guesstimated.
Based on the Flip Potential scores, I’ve ranked the races by likelihood of flipping Democratic (Column A). Conventional wisdom is that Democrats will win about 10-12 of these seats from among the top 30, with the particular winners depending on the specific circumstances in each race. If Hillary Clinton wins by 5% (as the polls currently show), then the conventional expectation is that Democrats might win 15-20 of the top 45. In a big, blue wave election in which Hillary wins by 10-12% (which now seems very possible), I expect that 30-50 of the first 100 seats would flip with, perhaps, even a few more startling surprises from among those further down the list.
You can help make it happen by donating to or volunteering for these candidates.