1. A thread: Let's go through my district by district piece on the House today - centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar…
2. First of all, before going into Dem path to netting 24 seats and winning the majority, I think we ought to assume they'll lose at least one current seat. For illustrative purposes, going with open MN-1, a seat Trump won by 15 (Toss-up in actuality)
3. So Dems, in this scenario, need to win at least 25 current R seats to get to a bare 218-217 majority
4. We rate four current R seats as Lean Dem, meaning Ds are favored to win them - AZ-2, CA-49, FL-27, NJ-2. All open seats. I'd consider these the closest seats there are to "must-wins" for Dems. Win these, get to 4/25 needed
5. Next, a group of 4 more open seats - CA-39, MI-11, NJ-11, and WA-8. All rated as Toss-ups. In reality, these may be akin to must-wins too, but my roadmap only requires 3/4 here. That gets Dems to 7/25.
6. You can see here how open seats could make up a third or more of required number of takeovers -- but still, beating 15 or more incumbents likely also needed, barring more retirements (there are more open seats in categories to come).
7. The next step is a big unknown -- PA. PA-7, Meehan's open seat, is likely something of a must-win under old or new map (Clinton-won seat). The rest is up in the air. I think Ds probably need 3 net seats out of PA under old or new map
8. So if you think winning PA-7 & then two of the following -- PA-6 (Ryan Costello), PA-8 (Brian Fitzpatrick), PA-15 (Open), PA-18 special, or PA-16 (Lloyd Smucker) -- is unrealistic, that's fine, but you have to make up the difference somewhere else. PA is mostly to be continued
9. Netting 3 seats in PA gets the Dems to 10/25 needed. Let's move to California next
10. I already have Dems winning open CA-39 & CA-49 in this scenario. More likely required. They will target at least five incumbents on top of the two open seats: CA-10 (Jeff Denham), CA-21 (David Valadao), CA-25 (Steve Knight), CA-45 (Mimi Walters), or CA-48 (Dana Rohrabacher)
11. Pick 3 of these 5 and add them to the two open seats to get a net gain of 5. So I think Dems likely need to win 44/53 seats overall in CA (they already hold 39, an impressive total).
12. The CA gains illustrated here -- again, this is just a loose roadmap, NOT some sort of firm prediction -- gets Dems over half of the way there, 13/25
13. Next are impressive incumbents from HRC-won seats: CO-6 (Mike Coffman), FL-26 (Carlos Curbelo), IL-6 (Peter Roskam), MN-3 (Erik Paulsen), TX-23 (Will Hurd), VA-10 (Barbara Comstock). Winning all 6 not realistic. I'd say beating half would be good
14. Assume that, and Dems get to 16/25. Add one more historically R, Clinton-won seat from this list of 3 - NJ-7 (Leonard Lance), TX-7 (John Culberson), or TX-32 (Pete Sessions). Now 17/25
15. Now we're getting into targets that are largely (not exclusively) Trump seats, starting w/ two narrow winners from narrow Trump seats: MN-2 (Jason Lewis) and NE-2 (Don Bacon), who are both freshmen. Defeat one to get to 18/25
16. Next: "Trump York," 7 mostly Trump-won seats located outside of non-Staten Island NYC: NY-19 (John Faso) and NY-22 (Claudia Tenney), but also possibly NY-1 (Lee Zeldin), NY-11 (Dan Donovan), NY-21 (Elise Stefanik), NY-23 (Tom Reed), or NY-24 (John Katko). Pick 2- 20/25
17. Dems used to hold all of these seats but lost them in the second half of the Obama presidency (Trump carried all of them): IL-12 (Mike Bost), KY-6 (Andy Barr), ME-2 (Bruce Poliquin), or UT-4 (Mia Love). Beat two: 22/25
18. Net at least two seats from heartland states Iowa & Kansas. Options: IA-1 (Rod Blum), IA-3 (David Young), KS-2 (Open), or KS-3 (Kevin Yoder). 24/25
19. Finally -- find at least one seat from Trump-won districts in North Carolina, Ohio, or Virginia. Some options: NC-2 (George Holding), NC-9 (Robert Pittenger), NC-13 (Ted Budd), OH-1 (Steve Chabot), OH-12 (Special), VA-2 (Scott Taylor), VA-5 (Tom Garrett), or VA-7 (Dave Brat)
20. There it is, 25/25. Some combination of those seats, or some others not listed, is what it will take. The path I constructed in my piece showed Dems flipping 13 Clinton-won seats & 12-Trump-won seats. centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ar… /end of thread
Bonus point -- seems reasonable to think there could be one more and maybe several more R retirements from competitive districts. That would only make the D path more plausible.
