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2010

This Politico story makes the 2010 House elections seem much more contested than they are likely to be. Earlier this year I looked at CQ’s race ratings for 2010, and I concluded from those early projections that the GOP would have a difficult time picking up many seats in either chamber. Obviously, this was before […]

This Politico story makes the 2010 House elections seem much more contested than they are likely to be. Earlier this year I looked at CQ’s race ratings for 2010, and I concluded from those early projections that the GOP would have a difficult time picking up many seats in either chamber. Obviously, this was before the August recess, the upsurge in right-populist protests and the main debate over health care legislation. One would assume that the Democrats have lost ground in these race ratings since July, and they have, but the interesting thing is how little ground they have given up. There are now more Democratic seats that are rated as toss-ups, but even if all the toss-ups went to the Republicans and the Democrats lost LA-03 the Republicans would at best net seven House seats. Not seventeen or seventy, but just seven. If that were the outcome, that would be the smallest first-term midterm loss in the House for the party controlling the White House since 1962 and the second-smallest midterm loss for the President’s party since WWII. A loss of just seven seats for the Democrats would be the fourth-best midterm performance for the President’s party in House elections since 1986, including the post-September 11 GOP success of 2002 and impeachment-year gains for the Democrats in 1998. Unlike the other three midterms, the President’s party would not be benefiting from the high approval ratings of the President, but would instead be performing fairly well despite somewhat weak approval ratings for Obama. Were that to happen, we would have to conclude that Republican tactics for the first two years of Obama’s Presidency had failed to move many voters and did nothing to repair the damage to the reputation of the national GOP.

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