For anyone following National Review Online's Campaign Spot, or any other good tracking sights, its becoming apparent that a likely scenario for Democrats this November is not just that they'll lose the House of Representatives to the Republicans, but that they will REALLY lose it. Like, we're talking from 50-100 seats as well as losing the Senate outright. IF this is the case, California's GOP Congressional hopefuls may go from being the relative turd in the punchbowl at the National Teaper coming out Party, to becoming the rich, yummy frosting on the Tea Party birthday cake. This is because when last given a chance to carve, slice, and dice up California's 53 congressional districts, Democrats made Elbridge Gerry one proud papa, making sure that as many districts as possible gerrymandered into comfortable but not too comfortable Democratic majorities. This, and the plain fact is that this state is now decidedly left leaning has led to the donkey's current 33-20 margin in the house, 25-15 margin in the State Senate, and 48-30 edge in the Assembly. Truth be told, Republican Representatives were a little lucky things weren't even worse than they were in 2008, with about four pretty close calls in house elections. So, what does 2010 look like?
Well, the bad news is that thanks to the 2002 gerrymander, there is relatively little low, or even medium hanging congressional fruit in this state. But, the potentially exciting news is that if the trends continue along the lines they look to be going, there may be as many TEN congressional districts in addition to the now likely wins in CA-11 and CA-47 given the 8.0 earthquake in national politics that now appears likely. Today, in response to his readers acting like a bunch of 10 year olds having not done their homework, Geraghty is demanding some actual data as to why a district would be winnable. Frankly, you'd think some GOP hack would have done this by now so the rest of us don't have to dig and guess for it, but the fact is that finding actual information on a particular district race in a big state like ours, with no shortage of liberal, lazy media types is no easy task. OK, enough, I've dug up the June primary results, eyeballed past voting history in primary and general elections, and now have some actual metrics for Geraghty. Now, keep in mind that using the results of primaries to predict general elections is hardly an exact science. Nonetheless, from eyeballing the results of 2006, 2002, and 1994, it would appear that the Democrat candidate typically receive about 200% of their primary totals in the general elections (though more in Hispanic districts), while Republicans appear to average closer to 250%. Naturally, competitive primaries and the nature of the district affect these numbers, as does the voter's mood in the period between June and November, in our case. With a likely 70/30 breakdown in independents towards Republicans this year and given current trends, I'd say a primary election result of 55/45 Dem vs Rep should be well within striking distance this year given a wave and/or some luck.
So, without further ado, here's the June 2010 breakdown comparing the total votes, by party, for the 12 most competitive incumbent Democrat districts in California. (H) for heavily hispanic district, CP for competitive primary. Source: California Secretary of State
D R Other DTS
Statewide vote 44.73% 43.26% 2.59% 8.51%
Party participation 31.99% 43.73%
CA-11 McNerny v Harmer (cp) 41.5% 57.4%
CA-47 (H) Sanchez v Tran 47..0% 53.0%
CA-27 Sherman v Reed (cp) 55.0% 45.0%
CA-18 Cardoza v Berryhill 55.5% 45.5%
CA-23 Capps v Watson (cp) 55.3% 45.2%
CA-20 Costa v Vidak (cp) 55.8% 44.2%
CA-10 Garamendi v Clift (cp) 56.4% 43.1%
CA-29 Schiff v Colbert 56.6% 43.1%
CA-53 Davis v Crimmins (cp) 57.5% 42.0%
CA-36 Harman (cp) v Fein (cp) 57.8% 41.9%
CA-43 (H) Baca v Folkens 58.3% 41.7%
CA-51 Filner v Popaditch 59.8% 40.2%
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