PVIMER Update: 20 Dem downgrades, 2 Dem upgrades

posted at 5:50 am on May 14, 2010 by Patrick Ishmael

It’s been three weeks since the last survey of the surveys, and there’s been some noticeable, generalized movement in the interim toward the GOP. David Obey’s seat has gone from a likely Democrat keep to a lean Dem/toss-up; eleven new seats have been added to the watch list; and HI-1 has started to move out of lean-Dem territory and toward a toss-up/Republican pick-up.

One important note is that I’ve added RCP’s House rankings to the mix, and in preparation for this addition, I put together two spreadsheets for the last post, one that I published without the RCP rankings to maintain a proper comparison, and one with the RCP rankings that I kept unpublished (until now.) In short, I am comparing apples to apples here.

Now, to the chart.

Blue mountains indicate a seat that has been downgraded. Blue valleys indicate a seat that has been upgraded. 11 of the 20 downgrades are from safe seats previously unwatched by the prognosticators that are now getting attention, shown by the data bunching in the upper right hand corner. The remaining nine downgrades occurred in watched seats, with the largest drop in the Obey seat.

The downgrades:

My initial analysis is here. Your analysis is very much welcome in the comments.

Blowback