Sam Spade's 2010 Predictions

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Are you going to put PA-17 in the Watch list?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I know. NY-16 should at least be considered lean Dem.

In all seriousness I do agree on PA-17, though at this point I'd say every district with a PVI of R+5 or greater really should automatically be considered watch list until further evidence proves otherwise.

Well not exactly. I wouldn't be putting Boren, Chandler or Taylor up there. You have to consider whether a reasonalby good opponent is running or considering running.


I wonder if the results in MA will convince Terry Kilgore to run against Rick Boucher in VA-09?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Moved TX-23 from Watch List to Likely D based on the fact a GOPer with a Hispanic name will appear on the ballot.

And people thought I was nuts when I put TX-23 as going GOP in a 1994 like result with House Interactive Map.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Wasn't he the one who was raising a ton of money a few months ago?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Well, its not like the Dems are going to win the Governorship of the NY or anything. I think though the NY State Senate could flip back, narrowly. Albany will be fun to watch in 2011. . I am so glad I left 10 years prior.


Part of the problem was 2008 really gave many Dems a deflated sense of what was GOP territory bound to return to Republican hands. In 2008 only TX-22, LA-06, KS-02 and FL-16 went back to GOP and this made the Dems feel like a lot of territory such as PA-10, ILL-14, NY-19  and NY-29, because they weren't Southern, could be held by the Dems long term. Some are marginal like NY-19 and ILL-14 but  NY-29 and PA-10 really are drawn to be heavily Republican and really would have been in the "Lost after one term" category, but then came 2008 when that collumn of 10 or 12 seats was blown to above 20, meaning that even a marginal or slight GOP year would produce 15 to 20 seats to GOP by default. It also meant that Dems were over extended in marginal, formerly Republican territory like NY-19, ILL-14, NH seats, OH-15, OH-16, PA-07, PA-08 that a bad year could produce a wipe out.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Well, its not like the Dems are going to win the Governorship of the NY or anything. I think though the NY State Senate could flip back, narrowly. Albany will be fun to watch in 2011. . I am so glad I left 10 years prior.


Part of the problem was 2008 really gave many Dems a deflated sense of what was GOP territory bound to return to Republican hands. In 2008 only TX-22, LA-06, KS-02 and FL-16 went back to GOP and this made the Dems feel like a lot of territory such as PA-10, ILL-14, NY-19  and NY-29, because they weren't Southern, could be held by the Dems long term. Some are marginal like NY-19 and ILL-14 but  NY-29 and PA-10 really are drawn to be heavily Republican and really would have been in the "Lost after one term" category, but then came 2008 when that collumn of 10 or 12 seats was blown to above 20, meaning that even a marginal or slight GOP year would produce 15 to 20 seats to GOP by default. It also meant that Dems were over extended in marginal, formerly Republican territory like NY-19, ILL-14, NH seats, OH-15, OH-16, PA-07, PA-08 that a bad year could produce a wipe out.

I agree on OH-16, PA-10, NY-29 and IL-14, but OH-15, PA-07, and PA-08 should be seats that any competent Democrat should be able to hold onto with the advantages of incumbency. 

Look at all the marginal seats Republicans held onto in 1996, 1998, and 2000.  They held most of their 1994 gains until 2006. 

Notice the bolded words. I categorized. Seats drawn to be Republican and those that are Marginal and that in former a marginal year would return to the GOP, and that this was unusally large group already. I then said that the later had overextended Dem presence meaning that even a temporary return to its former Republican roots such as a year like 2010 can cause, could be murderous.

1996, 1998 and 2000 witnessed the loss of several seats that were beyond the GOP's permenent grasp in the modern era in CA, WA, CT, NJ, NY, ILL, and MA. And it was only the balancing out with gains of Solid South seats slowly falling from the Dems reach in GA, TN, AL, NC, MS, SC, and TX. And to some extent, gaining seats in the former list of states but not ones lost in the those years like CT-02, that kept the GOP in the majority.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There was an internal poll for Rep. Russ Carnahan's Republican opponent, showing Rep. Carnahan's lead shrunk to 9.

Uh, that's the kind of poll result that you move a seat from Lean D to Safe D for. Not the other way round.

I wouldn't give anything on such rumours (or more frequently "rumours".) That goes to the poster you replied to as well, of course.

I wasn't basing anything off the rumors, I was basing it off of the raw numbers. Democrats are edging the Republicans by 2,000 in early voting and this is before Reid's GOTV machine started busing in voters (this began today, I think) and Obama's Las Vegas event. Democrats are actually doing much better at early voting than they were in 2006.

This is what I was interested in seeing. The early vote info I have is about four days old now. How often is it updated?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Oh, and I might even watchlist MA-05 (Tsongas). This is a weird year in Massachusetts. Every Democrat is scrambling and on air with brutally negative attacks calling their opponents crazy. Quite literally.

They're just not good at this "actual campaigning" thing. I got a mailer from Rep. Neal, and I'm about 50 miles outside his district.

The democratic strenglehold on MA is held together with bamboo candidates, all hollow in terms of candidate skills. If the MA gop could double its registration numbers and recruit a lot of real talent, there are plenty of Dems who were safe that would be sent scurrying away Coakley style, especially in the state legislature.

This ironically was a big concern for the ME GOP in the 1960's and 1970's, and that was they had dominated the state but with weak candidates and when the Dems begin to gain strength they started being picked off like low hanging fruit.