Game time: Final House rankings

The die has been cast, and this is what the final roll has turned up.

I’ve done my best to replicate the system of scoring House seats that I developed back during the 2010 cycle while trying to integrate all of the new information from the decennial redistricting. As I came to find, it was remarkably difficult to get a good handle on whether, for instance, a new district was replacing a Republican or Democrat district, so counting how many seats are flipping each way required some occasional art on my part. 2014 should produce a more stable picture for prognostication.

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The situation

Currently the GOP holds a 240-190 seat lead over Democrats in the House, with five “vacant” seats likely splitting 3 Dem-2 GOP. Assuming a 242-193 House, Democrats would need to gain 25 seats to claim a majority. That won’t happen. Among other things, redistricting forced a slew of of long-time Democratic House members into retirement whose replacements will almost certainly be Republicans. As I noted earlier in October, Republicans have the most seats to lose, but they have the most certain seats to gain.

The seats

Below is the list of Democratic seats in jeopardy, and below that are the Republican seats in jeopardy. Seats rated over 60% are pretty safe for Republicans. Seats between 50% and 60% favor the GOP along a spectrum. Seats at 50% are, of course, a toss-up. Seats below 50% favor the Democrats.

If you have particular questions about a particular race, listed or not, tweet me @theish.

The prediction

There isn’t going to be much net movement, but as I said in October, there’s a real possibility the GOP could actually pick up a few seats here. My 2010 model predicts a GOP pickup of 3 seats. The model revised for a non-wave 2012 election predicts a Dem pickup of one seat. Because of the ambiguity I noted above, I’m splitting the difference and predicting a net GOP pick up of one, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual result came in between GOP +4 and Dem +2.

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Am I way off? We’ll soon find out. In the meantime, be sure to vote! Predicting is fun, but winning’s more fun…

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