Who Will Win the House in 2012?

While the Presidential election and Senate races get much of the press, there are 435 races for the U.S. House of Representatives taking place on November 6 as well. While the majority of these races are foregone conclusions at this point in time, 97 of the races are competitive or potentially competitive come Election Day.  

According to my analysis using data from the Cook Political
Report (cookpolitical.com), the Rothenberg Political Report (rothenbergpoliticalreport.com), Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball (centerforpolitics.org/crystalball), CQ Politics (cqpolitics.com), and Real Clear Politics (realclearpolitics.com) there are 186 seats in which the Republican candidate is virtually guaranteed to win the House election and 152 seats in which the Democrat candidate is virtually guaranteed to win.  The current composition of the House is 240 Republicans, 190 Democrats, and 5 vacancies. 

For Republicans to control the House of Representatives in 2013, they will need to win a minimum of 32 of the 97 competitive house seats.  For the Democrats to control of the House in January they will need to win a minimum of 66 of the competitive house seats. For this reason, most experts believe that regardless of the outcome of the Presidential election, the Republicans will have little difficulty holding on to control of the House.

Based on my current data analysis, Republicans are heavily favored to win 32 of these 97 competitive seats, which would mean that they would hang on to control of the House even if they only won these seats in which they currently have a strong advantage.  Republicans have a slight edge in another 19 seats and 6 of the seats are absolute toss-ups. Democrats have a slight advantage in 20 seats and the a strong advantage in another 20 seats. This results in a very uphill climb for House Democrats to come anywhere near a House majority in the 113th Congress. 

This analysis is not to say that Democrats cannot gain House seats on November 6; they can and probably will.  Assuming Republicans win all seats in which they currently have an advantage, Democrats win all seats in which they currently have an advantage, and the absolute toss-ups are split equally the Republicans will enter the 113th Congress with 240 members and the Democrats will have 195 members.  This would be a slight gain of 3 seats for the Democrats. 

However, given the historic losses suffered by House Democrats in 2010, a "slight gain" is really a loss.  Republicans, who won House elections in many places they had not won in many decades (or in some cases ever) should have been more vulnerable given the large number of freshmen incumbents in their ranks.  Democrats, however, have been unable to make many elections competitive and in some cases shored up potentially weak incumbents through the redistricting process. 

This election cycle has some added intrigue due to the fact that congressional districts have been reapportioned based on the 2010 census.  This has resulted in a larger-than-normal amount of turnover in many state congressional delegations, but has not been a net gain to one party as Republican-led redistricting efforts in North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, and elsewhere have been offset by Democrat-led redistricting efforts in Illinois, California, Florida and a few other states.

In the days to come, I will take a look at some of the more interesting House races and analyze them in more detail as well as taking a look at the race for the Senate (spoiler alert: it doesn't look as good for the Republicans) and, of course, a look at the Presidential election.