End of the Decade House Ratings Changes

The events these last couple of weeks have had large impacts on the battle for the House. The most impactful of these is North Carolina re-drawing its Congressional districts to make them more fair to Democrats. This is guaranteed to give Democrats 2 additional House seats, throwing a monkey wrench in the Republican’s plan to flip the House. Other important happenings were Duncan Hunter’s guilty appeal and likely resignation, and Jeff Van Drew’s party switch. In total, I’ve made 10 House ratings changes since October.

District	Old Rating	New Rating
CA-7	Likely Democrat	Safe Democrat
CA-25	Likely Democrat	Lean Democrat
CA-50	Likely Republican	Safe Republican
IN-1	Safe Democrat	Likely Democrat
NC-2	Likely Republican	Safe Democrat
NC-6	Safe Republican	Safe Democrat
NC-8	Safe Republican	Likely Republican
NC-13	Likely Republican	Safe Republican
NJ-2	Lean Democrat	Likely Republican
NY-2	Likely Republican	Lean Republican
District	Old Rating	New Rating

North Carolina In My Mind

The 2 sharpest ratings changes came from North Carolina, where as I mentioned before, the districts were re-drawn. The 2 districts, NC-2 and NC-6, were re-drawn from districts Trump won with 53% of the vote or more to districts Hillary Clinton got 60% of the vote or more. It won’t be an uphill battle for Republicans to hold these two seats, it will be a free-solo on a sheer cliff. In 2018, no Republican won in a district where Hillary Clinton got 51% or more of the vote. These districts, especially, NC-2, seem unwinnable for Republicans in their current state, and chances are Republicans won’t even bother making a big effort to hold them. Therefore, both move from Likely/Safe Republican to Safe Democrat.

While the re-drawn NC-8 still leans red, it voted for trump by only 9 points, while the old district voted for him by 15 points. Looking at purely the 2016 presidential result, NC-8 is now the most competitive district in the entire state. This district could be interesting, so I’ll change the rating from Safe Republican to Likely Republican.

The upside for Republicans: NC-13 moves from Likely Republican to Safe Republican. The district changed from a semi-suburban Trump+9 district to a very rural Trump+36 district. Democrats aren’t winning here.

Duncan Out of the Hunt; Van Drew Party Switch

There are two political figures named Hunter who’ve found themselves in scandals recently. The one that’s much less well-known, and the one I’ll talk about today, is California congressman Duncan Hunter, a Republican. He represents a ruby-red district, and the only reason it was considered competitive was due to Hunter’s scandal involving misuse of campaign funds. He has recently pleaded guilty to these charges and has announced his plan to resign and not run for re-election. With him out of the equation, there’s no reason to believe this district will be competitive. CA-50 moves from Likely Republican to Safe Republican.

The other sharp Ratings Change comes from NJ-2, where incumbent Democrat Jeff Van Drew plans to switch parties, apparently over a dispute with Democrats over impeachment. This turns the fundamentals of this election on its head. The race starts at Likely Republican. The district voted for Trump by only 4 points, but has shown signs of becoming redder. Usually, politicians that switch parties do well in elections, because they have the backing of one party, in addition to some leftover support from the other side. Jeff Van Drew is one of the most moderate members of the House, which will contrast with the progressive candidate Democrats are likely to put up in this district in Drew’s absence. While his party switch definitely rubbed some people the wrong way, most of those people were voting for a certain party anyway, and this won’t change that.

Open Seats

Since the last time I updated my House ratings, two congressmen named Pete announced retirement: Pete Visclosky (D, IN-1) and Pete King (R, NY-2). Both of them were staples in local politics who never received particularly strong challengers. Without them, it gets a bit easier for these two districts to flip. IN-1 moves to Likely Democrat, while NY-2 moves to Lean Republican. While these two are both suburban districts, they both trended sharply right from 2012 to 2016. IN-1 went from Obama+24 to Clinton+12, NY-2 went from Obama+5 to Trump+9. It’ll be interesting to see how they vote in 2020.

California Special Election

After Katie Hill had an affair with a staffer in defiance of House rules, she resigned, forcing a special election in her district, CA-25. This suburban/rural district in LA County voted for Hillary Clinton by 7 points. Katie Hill was a political talent, defeating incumbent Republican Steve Knight in 2018 by 8 points, a race many expected to be much closer. Now, Knight is running again in the special election, and is in a battle to be the Republican nominee with former Trump campaign advisor and convict George Papadopoulos. Fighting to face him are two Democrats, state Assemblywoman Christy Smith, the establishment pick, and arch-progressive talk show host Cenk Ugyur, who was endorsed by Bernie Sanders. However, Sanders had to redact his endorsement after misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and Armenian-genocide denying comments he had made in the past were brought to attention. This shows his problems as a general election candidate. It seems both parties have 1 establishment candidate and 1 problematic candidate, so I’ll rate the special election Lean Democrat, the default rating for this district.

I’m also making one last ratings change in California: CA-7 moves from Likely Democrat to Safe Democrat in the absence of a serious Republican candidate to face incumbent Democrat Ami Bera in this blue-leaning district.

Overall, the outlook in the House remains pretty much the same: Democrats are in the driver’s seat to retain control. They’ve gotten a boost certainly from the new North Carolina maps, a boost that has been countered by Jeff Van Drew’s party switch. There are 30 Democrats that represent districts that voted for Donald Trump, and Republicans need to flip 21 seats to gain control of the House, assuming they lose the 2 North Carolina districts and TX-23, a Hillary Clinton district where the incumbent Republican is retiring, that Democrats are expected to pick up. The issue for Republicans is in a lot of these districts either the incumbent Democrat is popular, there is a left-ward trend, Republicans have yet to find a good candidate, or a combination of these three things. I also don’t expect Republicans to flip more than a few Hillary Clinton voting districts, if any, given what we’ve seen in elections since 2017. Let’s not forget Republicans have a good deal of vulnerable seats of their own. The GOP has to come close to running the table on competitive districts to flip the House.

According to RCP polling averages, more Americans oppose impeachment than support it once again, and Trump’s approval rating has risen marginally to 43%, after Judiciary Committee Democrats approved 2 articles of impeachment against Trump. Jeff Van Drew switching parties over the impeachment issue is not a good showing for the viability of impeachment. How will Democrats get 20 Republican Senators to vote to convict if they can’t even keep all of their won on the impeachment train? At this juncture, impeachment probably helps the GOP. One way Republicans can retake the House is if support for impeachment continues to go down, but almost all House Democrats vote for it, damaging their bipartisan images and causing a surge of enthusiasm among Republicans in the new year.

Thank you for reading my article. If you want more Toss-Up Central, visit my home page: https://tossupcentral.com/

Note: This is going to be my last article this year. Over the next few weeks, I’ll work to make this website look better for the likely increased interest in elections after the holidays before the Iowa caucus. I wish everyone reading Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.