What I’ve done is looked through all 435 elections for the House of Representatives and identified all the races the Republicans won by less than 30,000 votes. I hope I missed one or two, but I came up with only 34 districts that fit my criteria of potentially winnable Republican-held seats. This is a very rough way of mapping out the vulnerable seats. Some seats might become competitive if the incumbent dies or decides to retire or is consumed in scandal or loses a primary to a total wingnut. Some candidates were quite vulnerable last time but might not be vulnerable next time, and vice-versa. In some cases, we had bad candidates and a better candidate can make a big difference. But, as a general matter, if a candidate won in November with more than a 30,000 vote cushion, beating them is largely out of our control. In most districts, in a two-way race, a 30,000 vote cushion translates to about 57% of the vote. We can’t wipe out a lead like that just by doing a focused registration drive and Get Out the Vote effort.
In order to take back control of the House of Representatives, the Democrats need to make a net gain of 17 seats in the next election. That means that if we don’t lose any seats we currently control, we’d basically have to win at least half of the districts I am listing below. You can see how hard this is going to be to pull off.
California (10th District)- Jeff Denham won by about 13,000 votes.
California (25th District)- Buck McKeon won by about 24,000 votes.
California (31st District)- Gary Miller won by about 15,000 votes.
Colorado (6th District)- Mike Coffman won by about 11,000 votes.
Florida (2nd District)- Steve Southerland won by about 18,000 votes.
Florida (10th District)- Dan Webster won by about 11,000 votes.
Florida (16th District)- Vern Buchanan won by about 25,000 votes.
Illinois (13th District)- Rodney Davis won by about 1,300 votes.
Indiana (2nd District)- Jackie Walorski won by about 4,000 votes.
Indiana (8th District)- Larry Bucshon won by about 29,000 votes.
Indiana (9th District)- Todd Young won by about 25,000 votes.
Kentucky (6th District)- Andy Barr won by about 12,000 votes.
Michigan (1st District)- Dan Benishek won by about 2,300 votes.
Michigan (3rd District)- Justin Amash won by about 28,000 votes.
Michigan (11th District)- Kerry Bentivolio won by about 23,000 votes.
Minnesota (2nd District)- John Kline won by about 29,000 votes.
Minnesota (6th District)- Michele Bachmann won by about 6,000 votes.
Nebraska (2nd District)- Lee Terry won by about 6,000 votes.
Nevada (3rd District)- Joe Heck won by about 21,000 votes.
New Jersey (3rd District)- Jon Runyan won by about 27,000 votes.
New York (11th District)- Michael Grimm won by about 10,000 votes.
New York (16th District)- Chris Gibson won by about 18,000 votes.
New York (23rd District)- Tom Reed won by about 10,000 votes.
New York (27th District)- Chris Collins won by about 4,300 votes.
North Carolina (8th District)- Richard Hudson won by about 24,000 votes.
North Carolina (9th District)- Robert Pittenger won by about 23,000 votes.
Ohio (6th District)- Bill Johnson won by about 20,000 votes.
Ohio (16th District)- Jim Renacci won by about 16,000 votes.
Pennsylvania (12th District)- Keith Rothfus won by about 12,000 votes.
South Carolina (5th District)- Mick Mulvaney won by about 21,000 votes.
South Carolina (7th District)- Tom Rice won by about 26,000 votes.
Tennessee (4th District)- Steve DesJarlais won by about 27,000 votes.
Texas (14th District)- Randy Weber won by about 21,000 votes.
Virginia (2nd District)- Scott Rigell won by about 23,000 votes.
Any district that was won by 10,000 or less votes should be considered highly competitive. Under 5,000 should be considered a toss-up. You can see that there are only seven presently highly-competitive seats and only four toss-ups. That is a horrible place to begin our campaign to retake the House. Only half of these districts were won by less than 20,000 votes. Only 22 of them are in states that Obama carried, and almost none of them are districts that Obama carried.
The only way we can win back the House is to get on the ground in most of these districts and start organizing. So, let’s start a conversation about that.
