(More great information - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
While the range of competitive House districts has narrowed considerably, I am still including all 8 Obama-Republican districts to watch their trends. I also added state legislative seats that are open this year in which the incumbent is not term-limited.
With the filing deadline passed, we are beginning to see how the fields are shaping up for the 2010 elections in California. While the range of competitive House districts has narrowed considerably, I am still including all 8 Obama-Republican districts to watch their trends.
Taking into account some suggestions and comments, I made some changes to my previous attempt at redistricting California. I conceded an additional 2 seats to the GOP, which concomitantly makes a number of other seats more strongly Democratic. The additional 2 safe GOP seats are CA-4 and CA-48. Here's what version 2 looks like, overall:
I decided to try my hand at redistricting California's Congressional districts for 2010-2012, using Dave's Redistricting App. After playing around with it a bit, here's what the map I came up with looks like overall:
Here's the 2008 Obama/McCain vote in California, on the precinct level:
We're setting a course for the center of the sun in the state budget process right now, but today is also the last day of the second quarter, an important day for Congressional candidates, who must file fundraising reports based on close of business today. So this is as good a time as any to take a look at the Congressional races and where we stand at this point. I have not yet done similar roundups for 2010 statewide offices or legislative races, but plan to do so in the near future. If you find any of these challenges attractive, I urge you to pass a few bucks along to the candidate of your choice. This quarter will help or hurt the candidacies in terms of their perception of viability.
A word on the notations. PVI refers to the Cook Political Report's Partisan Voting Index. I've also included the Presidential performance from last year and the particular Congressional performance, where applicable. That information is available for the whole nation at this link. Open Congress also has a good Wiki on all the seats involved.
I've been saving the changes in registration differences in the competitive districts that I track in my regular registration number updates. Here I will show the changes in registration going from the last numbers before the 2008 election to the latest numbers released a few days ago. Here they are in tabulated form. And for the congressional districts, in addition to the 8 Obama-Republican districts, I tossed in CA-04, because the House race there was very close in spite of the considerable Republican advantage in registration and the presidential race, and CA-46, the district of McCain's closest win of the 11 McCain districts and the only one that he won with less than 50%.
(More good stuff. Thanks! - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
With the release of the new registration numbers, and a couple of special elections just around the corner, I now have updates for the open and/or competitive State Senate and State Assembly districts, as well as the eight Obama-Republican districts. The Secretary of State's website has the presidential results by district, so I am including the presidential results in each district.
Breaking news: We now have a (albeit slight) registration advantage in AD-10!
And an edit: I am including CA-04 in the list because of McClintock's less-than-1% win, even though the presidential race and registration gap are not particularly close.
In 2007-08, I wrote a monthly series of House race roundups here in California, taking a look at the races with the highest potential to change members of Congress. This cycle, there are promises from the national Democrats that they will pay attention to a number of seats in California held by Republicans, and with the statewide races at the top of the ticket looking favorable for Democrats, and Republican registration collapsing throughout the state, in theory we should see some more movement. But many of these elements were true the past two cycles, amounting to little. Because it's a statewide officer election year, I will also do a statewide races roundup at a later time. But for now, let's take a look at the seats most likely to flip in 2010, starting with seats currently held by Democrats, few of which are in play. In addition to those "threatened" by Republicans, I'm including two seats where I've heard rumblings about primary challenges to incumbents.
A word on the notations. PVI refers to the Cook Political Report's Partisan Voting Index. I've also included the Presidential performance from last year and the particular Congressional performance, where applicable. That information is available for the whole nation at this link.
(Another great report on these numbers. Thanks! - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
With the release of the new registration numbers, I now have updates for the open and/or competitive State Senate and State Assembly districts. The Secretary of State's website has the presidential results by district, so I am including the presidential results in each districts.
I am also tacking on the eight districts that are our top targets in 2010: CA-03, CA-24, CA-25, CA-26, CA-44, CA-45, CA-48, and CA-50.
Two of the eight "Obama Republicans," that is, members of the GOP delegation in the House whose districts went for Barack Obama in November, are in the news of late, and I think we can draw some conclusions about their behavior.
First of all, Dan Lungren held a "town hall meeting" in his district last week. I put "town hall meeting" in quotes because unlike actual town hall meetings, attendees weren't allowed to ask questions:
After a brief introduction by Elk Grove Mayor Patrick Hume, Lungren made it clear that the format of this 'townhall' meeting would not include direct questioning from the audience. Rather constituents were to fill out a questionnaire and submit for indirect questioning by Hume.
Lungren's reasoning was that he had received several constituent complaints that other district meetings were "so rambunctious" that they were afraid to come. To make the meeting open, Lungren said questions would be answered only by those filling out the questionnaires.
During the course of the meeting there were 15 questionnaires read covering a variety of topics, none of them pointed or very relative, in our opinion, to the staggering recession we find ourselves in. Lungren talked about his favorite topics of immigration, deficit spending and judiciary matters.
Hume, who had a table full of submitted questionnaires in front of him, never seemed to ask the questions as written. Hume was either being overly polite, or didn't want to incur the wrath of a congressman [...]
"If this is a townhall meeting, we should be allowed to be allowed to make comments," said Elk Grove resident Mike Monasky. Immediately Monasky was loudly told by city charter commission member Christopher Orrock to be quiet.
Now there's someone who doesn't want to be held accountable by his constituents. That makes the Bush "town hall meetings" look like free-for-alls.
Then there's Buck McKeon. His home in Santa Clarita was burglarized. We're sorry for him and his wife. But we did not expect McKeon to push a political angle.
A thief, who has since been arrested, broke into the McKeons' home on the morning of March 4 and stole jewelry from the master bedroom, said Bob Haueter, McKeon's 2010 campaign manager. The rest of the home was not disturbed, he said [...]
The burglary was mentioned in a McKeon fundraising letter, dated March 25, that discussed McKeon's opposition to the Employee Free-Choice Act - a bill that would make it easier for workers to unionize. The legislation is backed by President Barack Obama, whose political roots are in Chicago.
The letter says the labor legislation is "right out of Stalin's playbook" and part of the president's "socialist agenda." A note at the bottom of the letter, written by Patricia McKeon, read:
"As if things couldn't get any worse, our home was just broken into while we were in D.C. Some observant neighbors were able to identify the thieves and get the license plate number of the car they used.
"You won't believe this; the car is registered to a person in Chicago! Just know this, no matter what happens to us, Buck and I won't back down."
Are you kidding me? Apparently we're to believe that President Obama has a cadre of thieves he's dispatching across the country to Republican homes. While I admit that would be a simply ingenious strategy (note to Patricia McKeon: I'm joking), I simply don't think he's concerning himself with an underworld network.
Can we conclude that these two are maybe just a little bit scared, as they see their stranglehold on their districts slipping away?
(Sorry, guys, I wrote this one, as well as any "Open Thread" comment. I forget to log out sometimes...
- promoted by David Dayen)
State Democrats are buzzing about this weekend's Carla Marinucci article entitled "California Dems target 8 GOP districts", which claims that Republican voter registration is dropping fast, providing a major opportunity to pick up Congressional seats in 2010.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted 35 districts across the country represented by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives - including eight in California - that were won by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, said Jennifer Crider, the committee spokeswoman.
The Democrats plan increased appeals to voters in those areas and will make aggressive efforts to recruit Democratic candidates to run against the Republican incumbents, she said [...]
The vulnerable California districts with Republican representatives that were won by Obama are those of Reps. Dan Lungren of Gold River (Sacramento County), Mary Bono-Mack of Palm Springs, David Dreier of San Dimas (Los Angeles County), Elton Gallegly of Thousand Oaks (Ventura County), Brian Bilbray of Solana Beach (San Diego County), John Campbell of Newport Beach (Orange County), Ken Calvert of Riverside and Howard "Buck" McKeon of Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), the committee says.
It would be nice if I thought any of this would work. First of all, the registration changes didn't just spring up in December 2008. These trends have been occurring for some time, and were all present during the last election. Despite this, we had a candidate in CA-25 (McKeon) who spent less than $10,000 or her entire campaign. The candidate in CA-24 (Gallegly) won her primary because of her ballot designation and without spending any significant money. (By the way, CA-25 is now the seat held by the GOP with the closest registration gap between Republicans and Democrats in the whole state. Did you know that?) In the races where we managed to compete, our candidates significantly underperformed the top of the ticket, and in most cases underperformed Barbara Boxer's performance in 2004, when a less dominant John Kerry was at the top of the ticket.
I don't think there are that many other people who have followed California congressional races closer than I have, and I have to say that we simply suck at elections in these kinds of races out here in California. The state party is dysfunctional at best and downright criminal at worst. Put it this way: we had the same chance to win all these seats in 2008. Nate Silver, making a separate point, provides a list of the 30 districts where Obama won between 50 and 52 percent of the vote. As you'll see, we did extremely well in those seats, except for in California.
Barack Obama won 51 percent of the vote in NY-20 on November 4th. How did congressional candidates perform in other districts where he received between, say, 50 and 52 percent of the vote? Again, we see essentially an even split; Republicans won 16 of 30 such districts and Democrats won 14:
Won by Republicans (16): CA-24, CA-25, CA-26, CA-44, CA-45, CA-50, FL-10, FL-18, MI-4, MN-3, NE-2, NJ-7, NY-23, VA-4, WI-1, WI-6
Won by Democrats (14): FL-22, KS-3, MI-1, MI-7, MN-1, NC-2, NJ-3, NY-1, NY-19, NY-20*, NY-24, TX-23, VA-2, WA-3
Winning percentage in these seats in states other than CA: 58.3%
Winning percentage in CA: 0.0%
By the way, the other two districts not mentioned above that are now being "targeted"? CA-03 (Lungren) was 49-49 Obama, and CA-48 (Campbell) was also 49-49 Obama. Heck, even CA-46 was only 50-48 McCain. Obama got 46% in CA-19 (Radanovich), where there was no Democratic candidate, and 47% in CA-40 (Royce).
Some would argue that, properly resourced, these seats would suddenly become very winnable. I give you CA-50, where Nick Leibham consistently beat Brian Bilbray in fundraising and maxed out at the 45% ceiling on Democrats in that district.
CA-44 is somewhat winnable because Bill Hedrick came close in '08 and is running again. We lost our best candidate in CA-03, Bill Durston, and everywhere else, I'm just extremely dubious, because the state party has systematically psyched itself out of winning these seats (thanks to the Faustian bargain of incumbency-protected gerrymandering designed by... imminent state party chair John Burton), and the commitment at the national level has been known to wane. We've left dozens of winnable elections on the table the past two cycles, dramatically underperforming the nation. A little DCCC money won't change that.
Greetings and welcome to the latest installment of the California House races roundup. We're just around 100 days to go until the election, and things are starting to take focus. There are about a half-dozen seats where Democratic challengers have an outside shot at dumping the incumbent, and another six on the watch list in case something spectacular occurs. One thing to note is that the Cook numbers are tied to the 2004 election, and given the demographic changes and cratering of the Republican brand I think they mean significantly less now - it'll be interesting to see how all these districts change in November.
We have plenty of new information to judge these races, including 2nd quarter fundraising reports, national ratings from Charlie Cook and Swing State Project, additional DCCC targets, and the appearance of many challengers at Netroots Nation. So this list is really about who I think has the best chance to retain or take over a seat, not necessarily who should (though that may come through in the writing). Here are some helpful bits of information that I used to help judge.
Getting this one in under the wire. On the last day of April, with just over a month to go until the June primaries, and six months to go until Election Day, there's a lot going on all over the state in the Congressional races. Of the 19 seats in California currently held by Republicans, 17 will be contested in the fall, and some strongly so. And we now have a full 34 Democrats with the election of Jackie Speier early in the month, and only one of them is a serious challenge. We also have the first quarter of 2008 fundraising numbers, which will raise some eyebrows. You can track these races yourself with the 2008 Race Tracker wiki.
A note: I'm mainly getting my numbers on cash-on-hand competitiveness from the Swing State Project. Fundraising information comes from the FEC.
Welcome back to the California House races roundup for March. The races are coming into focus, with new challengers entering the fray before the March 7 deadline, and some actual campaigning between candidates (shocking!). And with the DCCC looking at four races in the state, California will certainly be a battleground in Congress in November.
We also know with a fair degree of certainty that Jackie Speier will be the next Representative in CA-12, after Lawrence Lessig declined to run. The initial primary is April 8 and Speier is heavily favored.
So that leaves just one Democratic seat in any degree of question, and I've decided to expand to write about 13 Republican-held seats that have varying degrees of challenges. Overall, Democrats are running in 18 of the 19 seats currently held by Republicans, and 52 of 53 seats overall. Only Kevin McCarthy in CA-22 (Bakersfield) is uncontested AFAIK. You can track these races yourself with the 2008 Race Tracker wiki.
A couple notes: I've changed the percentage of Democratic turnout in the February 5 primary statistics to reflect the final numbers from the Secretary of State's office. As you'll see, six of the thirteen Republican-held seats mentioned had majority Democratic turnout. Very encouraging. Also, I've noted where applicable which challengers have endorsed the Responsible Plan to End The War In Iraq. My hope is that eventually every candidate will do so; it will absolutely help them in their campaigns to show some leadership and offer a comprehensive strategy to end the war and change our conversation around national security.
(bump cause I like congressional and numbers - promoted by Lucas O'Connor)
Turnout from Tuesday's primary by party. Every district with a Republican leaning PVI plus Barbara Lee just for fun and comparison's sake. Of the Republican leaning districts, Dem turnout was higher in 8 and close in several others. Might be an interesting November. Just sayin.
Numbers on the flip.
Update: I should have mentioned in the first place, there are still no Democratic candidates in CA-02, CA-19, CA-22, or CA-25. Turnout was dead even in the 19th and higher for Dems in the 25th, just for starters.
There's some real data in the form of third-quarter fundraising numbers to pore over, and events in Washington and at home have served to focus on some of our Congressional candidates here in California. Plus, believe it or not, we're only about a year out from Election Day. Let's take a look at the top ten races.
As usual, I'm going to rank them in order of most possible pickup, including their number from the last roundup. I'm also, as usual, including the "Boxer number." Basically, seeing how Boxer fared in her 2004 re-election against Bill Jones in a particular district is a decent indicator of how partisan it is. If I put "57," that means Boxer received 57% of the vote. Anything over 50, obviously, is good. (over)
BENAWU posted another of his great Congressional race tracker updates yesterday, announcing that 317 out of 435 House races have confirmed candidates (or presumed returning incumbents). But despite this early success, in California there are only confirmed challengers for 10 out of 19 sitting Republicans. Only Texas has more unfilled races right now, and it's friggin Texas. As BENAWU notes, all of these districts had challengers in 2006, so some level of infrastructure exists for a challenge. Now many of these districts are going to be tough sledding for any Democrat thanks to redistricting in 2002, but anyone who's been paying attention the last few years knows that the Republican party is potentially vulnerable almost anywhere. The goal of filling every race proved its worth last year with surprising success in supposedly safe districts across the country. Just ask Jerry McNerney or Nancy Boyda or Jim Webb for starters.
With 16 months to go before Election Day, some Democratic challengers are getting a little more visible in their efforts to unseat Republican incumbents. I see good news at the very top of the target list, and elsewhere we're still waiting to see who will run. Let's focus on the top 10 races where a Republican is currently serving, knowing that we are still going to have a fight in CA-11 to re-elect Jerry McNerney (although that probably won't be against Guy Houston, who may be on trial for fraud at the time).
So let's take a look at the top 10 challenges. I'm going to rank them in order of most possible pickup, including their number from the last roundup. I'm also adding the "Boxer number." Basically, seeing how Boxer fared in her 2004 re-election against Bill Jones in a particular district is a decent indicator of how partisan it is. If I put "57," that means Boxer received 57% of the vote. Anything over 50, obviously, is good. (over)
Last week I ran down the unused money from last year's unopposed and underopposed California members of Congress. It was a long list. 22 districts held by Democrats fielded no Republican challenger who met a very low bar of fundraising legitimacy. Really not impressive, but really not surprising either. So what about the flipside? How did Democrats do in going after Republicans?
Democrats left only one California seat unopposed, and failed to raise money in one other. Of the 21 Republican-held seats, only 4 qualified as as unopposed or underopposed (challenger raising less than $25,000). It suggests two things to me. One, Democrats are already doing a pretty good job of funding candidates in red districts (although there's still room to improve of course), and two, that strong funding only goes so far given the way these districts are drawn. So as I would be cautioning anyways, fundraising is only one piece of the puzzle. It still takes the right candidate in the right context.
