An action that’s often tempting for a young politico like me early on in the election cycle is changing race ratings whenever a certain candidate/certain number of candidates declare challenges to an incumbent. I wanted to examine whether this is a valid method or if I’m just desperate for a semblance of political action where none exists.
To do this, I looked at the start dates of each campaign (according to the FEC) that was successful in flipping a congressional seat last year. I labeled them as either “before” if the campaigns were started before June 13th, 2017 (the current date is June 13th, 2019) or “after”. I tallied them up, and here are the results.
| Before 6/13 | After 6/13 | |
| House | 22 | 18 |
| Senate | 0 | 6 |
As you can see, the number of successful campaigns before and after June 13th are nearly even. Honestly, I had a sneaking suspicion this was the case. There are two races I think this discovery affects most. I just moved NY-24 (John Katko, R) from Likely R to Lean R in my House Ratings (1), because at least 3 credible candidates, 2 of them veterans, have announced challenges as Democrats. I’m not just going to immediately reverse my decision now, but just because 3 candidates are running against him doesn’t mean he’s doomed. Another race is TX-7 (Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, D) where two very credible Republicans, Pierce Bush, who’s in the Bush “dynasty”, and Wesley Hunt, an African-American veteran with several valuable endorsements, have kept the race in Lean D. Again, I’ll probably keep it there, but Fletcher’s definitely closer to Likely D than Toss-Up. Another thing to note is that 9 “after” candidates started their campaigns by July 31st. Perhaps then would be a good time to revisit this topic. I probably shouldn’t go crazy with ratings changes until at least then.
Rather surprisingly, in the Senate, all successful campaigns started after June 13th. Rick Scott’s famous run in Florida didn’t start until April 2018, in fact. This could provide some solace to Democrats sad that they “missed out” on some good Senate recruits this cycle that are running long-shot campaigns for president instead. There’s still plenty of time for candidates to reverse course, especially as candidates begin dropping out after the first debate. Heck, Steve Bullock (D-MT) didn’t even qualify for the debates.
Very interesting and well written!