House rating changes: 11 moves, all in favor of Republicans

First of all, this is a cycle where we expect the Republicans to be playing a lot of offense and not much defense. So as we get closer to November, it may be that there are fewer and fewer Republican-held seats listed as competitive in our ratings. Moving from Likely Republican to Safe Republican this week are Reps. Bill Huizenga (R, MI-4), Richard Hudson (R, NC-9), Scott Perry (R, PA-10), and Tony Gonzales (R, TX-23).

Those Republicans all hold districts that Donald Trump won by single digits and that could be competitive in a presidential or Democratic-leaning midterm year, but they don’t seem to be this year. In fact, among these 4 states, Democrats will have enough of their own vulnerable seats that targeting Republican incumbents in Trump-won districts may seem like too much of a reach. Gonzales, for example, was a somewhat surprising victor in the frequently competitive TX-23 last cycle, which extends from El Paso to San Antonio. But Republican mapmakers helped him a bit, as did an apparent Republican turn among Latino voters that has endangered Democrats in South Texas. Our thinking is that if Democrats are in danger of losing 1 or more of the 3 districts that cover South Texas (TX-15, TX-28, and TX-34) — and they definitely are — then TX-23 doesn’t seem like it would go blue in this cycle.

The other big group of rating changes this week come in districts we’re moving from Likely Democratic to Leans Democratic. In a Republican wave scenario, these are the kinds of districts that could get swept up: places where Biden won between 53%-55% of the vote that are clearly more Democratic than the nation as a whole, but not so much more Democratic that Republicans couldn’t win in a good environment.