It was an earthmoving election night.
“No one could have imagined the tsunami that just crashed on Republicans in Mississippi,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview after the victory. “There is no district that is safe for Republican candidates.”
House Democrats now hold a 236 to 199 majority, up from 203 seats they controlled two years ago.
Van Hollen exaggerates. We saw a safe Republican seat in Louisiana’s First District two weeks ago, where the Democrat was held under thirty percent of the vote. There are probably about 100 such safe Republican seats. But there are at least 70 Republican-held seats that should now be considered vulnerable because they have decently funded Democratic challengers and less of an historical Republican lean than Mississippi’s First District. For perspective, every Republican-held seat in Michigan has a PVI rating lower than MS-01’s rating of plus-ten. Can you imagine a Michigan with no Republican House members? Neither can I. And it won’t happen because the Democrats have not fielded well funded candidates in every GOP district in Michigan. But it could come close to happening. There isn’t a district in Illinois with a PVI rating higher than R+8. There isn’t a district in Minnesota with a PVI rating higher than R+6.
When Van Hollen says there are no safe Republican seats he is not off by that much. Even in Indiana, where the Republican districts have enormous PVI ratings, the Democrats are running strong challengers that have a real chance to pick up at least two seats.
I’ll have to do a thorough analysis to come up with a comprehensive list of vulnerable House seats. What I’ll do is look at fundraising and PVI to find viable Democratic challengers in districts that have a PVI of R+10 or less. Then I’ll have to throw in a few wildcards for extremely well-funded Democrats running in even more historically Republican districts. I think the number will probably come out to about 70-80 seats. How many will the Democrats win? My guess is at least half. So, my preliminary analysis is that the Dems are poised to pick up 35-40 seats.
Most of those seats are going to be in the Mid-Atlantic, Upper Midwest, and California. Despite the two recent gains in the Deep South, I do not think the Dems will pick up more than three or four more seats from the region (excluding Florida, where there could be a rout). I do think that it is quite likely that Ronnie Musgrove will win Trent Lott’s old senate seat. And Saxby Chambliss, Lamar Alexander, and, especially, Liddy Dole, should be getting a little bit nervous.
The realignment is coming, and it is coming in force. After it is over, the Republicans will be mostly a southern party. Meanwhile, the Democrats will be a ruling majority party that is quite a bit more ideologically diverse (conservative), but also very much reality-based.
