Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller have produced an excellent tool. They have given us a list of the 60 (.pdf) most likely to change hands Congressional seats. What’s more, they have provided a lot of useful information, including how much cash the candidates have on hand, how their districts tend to vote, and more. We need 15 seats to make John Conyers Jr. the head of the Judiciary Committee and Henry Waxman the chairman of Government Reform. That is Swinging Dick Cheney’s most Big Time nightmare. Let’s make it happen!! Or else, why go on living?
Bowers predicts 15-25 seats. Markos predicts 7-14. I am more optimistic (all caveats to proper tabulation still apply).
MyDD lists 22 Republican seats that are leaning Dem or are toss-ups. They list no Dem seats that now lean Republican, no Dem toss-ups, and only three Democratic held seats in all of Congress that even merely Lean Dem.
Here is a list of the most likely Dem pick-ups. Republicans are listed first.
CT-02 Lean Dem Simmons Courtney
CT-04 Lean Dem Shays Farrell
IN-09 Lean Dem Sodrel Hill
IA-01 Lean Dem Whalen Braley
NY-24 Lean Dem Meier Acuri
PA-06 Lean Dem Gerlach Murphy
TX-22 Lean Dem ????? LampsonTier 1 Projected Gain: 8-12
AZ-08 Toss-up ????? ?????
CO-07 Toss-up O’Donnell Perlmutter
CT-05 Toss-up Johnson Murphy
FL-22 Toss-up Shaw Klein
IL-06 Toss-up Roskam Duckworth
IN-08 Toss-up Hostettler Ellsworth
KY-04 Toss-up Davis Lucas
MN-06 Toss-up Bachmann Wetterling
NM-01 Toss-up Wilson Madrid
NC-11 Toss-up Taylor Schuler
OH-01 Toss-up Chabot Cranley
OH-18 Toss-up ???? Space
PA-07 Toss-up Weldon Sestak
PA-08 Toss-up Fitzpatrick Murphy
WI-08 Toss-up Gard ?????
WA-08 Toss-up Reichert Burner
First things first. Patrick Murphy is going to win in PA-08. Bet on it. Joe Sestak is going to wipe the floor with Curt Weldon in PA-07. The only way he can lose is if he fails to go negative and point out that Curt Weldon is certifiably insane. We are going to pick up between 5 and 7 seats in Pennsylvania and Connecticut alone. I believe we will win the 6,7,8, and 10th disticts in PA, and the 2,4, and 5 in CT. We must make sure that Ken Lucas gets the cash he needs to win in KY-04. But there are some second tier races that I am confident we will win too.
McNerney is going to take down Pombo in CA-11. I think Wulsin will take out Mean Jean Schmidt in OH-02. Stender is poised to take out Ferguson in NJ-07. Gillebrand will knock off Sweeney in NY-20.
The Republicans are not likely to pick up any Democratic held seats anywhere in the country with the possible exception of WV-01, where Mollohan is mired in a corruption scandal. That is amazing in and of itself. But even more amazing is that the Dems have a real shot at the Wyoming at large seat held by Cubin and the ID-01 held by Sali. Dems are targetting Florida seats in 9, 13, 16 and 22. Dems are looking at IN 2 and 8, and KY 3 and 4. We have already picked up Tom DeLay’s TX-22.
My feeling is that we are going to lose a couple of Bower’s Tier One races, but we are going to clean up on a lot of tier two and three races and more than make up for it. Say goodbye, J.D. Hayworth.
In the Senate I predict that we will win the seats in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, Missouri, and Virginia. Tennessee is another real possibility. And if we get really lucky, we can pick up Nevada and Arizona. Best case scenario, we will have 53 Democratic seats and one held by Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont. More likely, we will have 51 seats with one held by Bernie Sanders.
In Congress, I predict a pickup of between 23-32 seats.
Of course, this all depends on the country being at peace and the votes getting counted accurately.
What are your projections and what is going on in your congressional race?
22-32 votes? Damn, someone’s being optimistic.
I’d put myself more in line with what Bowers predicted. I think we have a good chance in a lot of those seats. Once the money really starts flowing after Labor Day, we’ll see a lot of movement.
Markos is a perennial pessimist. That’s never fun.
if he has confidence in the voting mechanism, his prediction is tantamount to saying his whole political philosophy is bankrupt.
If he doesn’t have confidence in the voting mechanism but keeps pretending publicly that he does, then his whole political website is morally bankrupt. He looks damned either way.
I like and respect Kos, but I don’t see any reason for him to be trying to temper enthusiasm now. Everyone active on the blogs now needs to be encouraged to do everything possible (volunteering, etc.) to encourage turnout in the less active crowd on election day.
he’s being pessimistic — to keep the time, talent and treasure flowing to the Democratic (and especially the netroots) candidates, and to keep folks from just sitting back on their laurels and chilling the champagne too soon.
We’re just barely in the top of the 5th…there’s a reason why the clubhouse crew waits till the 9th to put up the plastic sheeting in the clubhouse…
and there is always another Bill Buckner in the Democratic Party.
I’m with you and Bowers in this. I think I smell change in the air but my faith in how clearly peopel are seeing things is not unshaken enough to be optimistic enough to see [I]that[/I] much change!
Projections are great fun, everyone likes to ask “what if?” But I hope we don’t get caught up in the guessing what is going to happen part so much that we forget to take care of business in our home districts. Hopefully, we all will do what we can to help the local Dem win!
Markos predicts 7 to 14. Thank god he is always wrong!!!
Hill in IN-9
Ellsworth in IN-8
Donnelly in IN-2
and an upset by Barry Welsh in IN-6.
I see a lot more person to person contact by the Democratic candidates this year than in the last campaign. A lot of rural voters like that approach.
Well I guess Kos hasn’t been checking the diaries quite so much lately because my local candidate has been hitting the keyboard pretty strongly and on the ground he’s getting incredible movement against the Rep incumbent who quite literally has gone missing. So add one to the list and that’s Peter Goldmark over McMorris in WA state. ps her only sign we can find up is one on a highway in front of an abandoned farm house. YES!
I saw that picture over on Washblog. It was great. š
I hope Goldmark can get elected. He sounds just like what Eastern Washington needs.
Burner is lookin’ good. Her opponent is coming across as a likeable lackwit who happened to have the good fortune to be Sheriff when the notorious Green River Killer case was solved (he really didn’t have that much to do with it, but he played it for all it’s worth). He’s not particularly articulate, he hasn’t done a lot for his district — for instance, up until a few weeks ago I don’t think he had sponsored a single piece of legislation — and he was a de facto protege of Tom Delay. The local Dems have taken to calling him “Rubberstamp Reichert.” Hopefully it will stick.
There are some negatives on Burner’s side too — she is a political novice and a great deal has been made both of her being touted as a “Microsoft Executive” when she was more like a product line manager (Microsoft apparently considered her an executive; some of the Republitrolls on a local blog say she’s padding her resume), and of her dropping out of law school (to run for office). I don’t think any of these memes — likeable dunce, rubberstamper, manager-or-not and law school dropout — have taken hold yet. It’s early in the campaign, so we have yet to see what happens.
Thanks Omir, I have to admit in my sailing around the internet pipes…I couldn’t remember where I’d seen the picture, but it is really priceless. http://www.washblog.com/ It’s a post by gibney “This is For the Methphor” I swear in all my travels over here I have yet to see one of her signs. I love Peter’s idea to identify National Security CROPS which can be used for alternative fuels. Hey, it’s a sure bet that the Farmers of America could do a better job on security than Chertoff.
does anyone think that the projections have any merit when all we have to do is continue to read about some of the absurdities such as pham emanuel criticizing soros for not contributing enough!
Wake up foolks- as usual, we are now goig to display the dems fantastic ability to rip defeat from the jaws of success! just watch. one more example- santorum will defeat the emanuel choice of casey- what a joke!
billjpa
I agree that Joe Sestak will win this race, and I’ll be overjoyed if we can say he wiped the floor with Curt Weldon. But this:
Eh, not so much. I disagree that this is “the only way he can lose.” There are enough stright-lever R voters in the district to make it a race regardless of who’s running.
I also seriously doubt that Joe will “go negative.” At least not unprovoked. Joe Sestak has every intention of running a clean, issues-focused campaign and has done so up to this point. He has and will defend himself when attacked unfairly (i.e. Weldon questioning his choice of healthcare for his daughter; the non-issue of wearing his uniform to a Memorial Day parade, etc.) but I don’t believe that he would go negative unprovoked. I have heard him say on many occasions that he doesn’t have a problem with Curt Weldon the man, but has serious disagreements with with Curt Weldon’s voting record. I could be wrong (and often am), but Joe Sestak’s character is truly above this. Additionally, Joe Sestak doen’t need to point out that Curt Weldon is batshit crazy, Curt does a damn fine job of making it clear every single time he opens his mouth.
PS — If any Philly area BooTribbers want to blog Joe’s press conference this Thursday that we are hosting at our Union Hall, drop me a line.