U.S. House outlook for the 2008 elections

When Congress convenes in January there will be more Democrats and fewer Republicans in the House of Representatives than there are now.

How many more/fewer?

Oh, maybe 15, maybe 20. Maybe even more. Blowouts do happen. But not many more.

National polls indicate that 49 percent of the voters are planning to choose a Democrat for Congress, while only 36 percent plan to vote Republican. But people don’t vote for “Congress” as such. They vote for (or against) an actual, human, candidate, and sometimes they like one candidate or another regardless of party.

So those national polls are imprecise predictors.

On the other hand, if there is really a nationwide reaction against one party, as there seems to be this year against the Republicans, a small percentage of votes per district could swing several seats to the Democrats.

Theoretically there are 435 separate House elections, but close to 400 of them might as well be coronations.  Thanks to a combination of housing segregation (socio-economic as well as racial) and the artful drawing of district lines, one party or the other has something close to a lock on most seats.

This year, roughly 230 seats are considered safe for the Democrats (who now hold a 235-199 edge, with one vacancy), and about 175 are safely Republican.  Do the arithmetic. There aren’t that many battlegrounds.

A district is more likely to fall into that category if the incumbent is not running for re-election. Among the Republican problems is that 32 of their incumbents decided not to seek re-election, while only six Democrats are retiring or seeking other offices. That means there are more vulnerable Republican seats.

In general, first-term representatives are the most vulnerable, especially if they took the seat away from the opposite party. That losing party really tries to win back the district in the next election before the new incumbent can solidify his or her support.

So perhaps the worst news for the Republicans is that Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire is leading former Rep. Jeb Bradley, whom she ousted in one of the biggest upsets of 2006. 

Shea-Porter was considered the most vulnerable of the freshmen Democrats. She wasn’t even supposed to be her party’s nominee in 2006. She was one of those anti-war activists who beat the establishment-backed Democrats in the primary. She was considered such a splinter candidate that most Democrats wrote her off. Even after she won, Bradley never stopped running for this year’s re-match, and he was the early favorite.

The latest poll by Survey USA commissioned for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call shows Shea-Porter up 50-41. In fact, that poll indicates that in all 14 races in which the same candidates will face each other in re-matches of 2006, the Democratic candidate is ahead.