2020 Generic Ballot / Recruitment / Fundraising / Ratings Megathread v2

[politicallefty]

The GCB in Texas is D+3.

https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/cec848fe193c737af94db49a047028d8/ut-tt-2020-02-summary-1.pdf

Republicans won the popular vote in Texas in 2018 by 3.4%. A simple uniform swing would easily give Democrats a majority of the Congressional delegation. Even a neutral environment in November could easily see TX-22, TX-23, and TX-24 all go Democratic. At that point, Texas would only be 20R-16D. I think the next three top targets after those, in order, would be TX-21, TX-10, and TX-31.

[politicallefty]

Inside Elections has 8 Senate ratings changes, all downgrades for Republicans. I think some of these are quite noteworthy because I've also thought they're the most small-c conservative of the Big 3 ratings analysts.

https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1281657969533431810

Also, this:

https://twitter.com/InsideElections/status/1281659491856134144

[politicallefty]

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1283997484264587276

Interesting.

[politicallefty]

I think this really says it all in terms of the House:

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1291820992151662599

According to the Cook ratings, Democrats already have 3 Republican seats in the bag. I'm thinking a relatively good night takes Dems to close to or around 250.

[politicallefty]

To add to the above post, this is the rundown they offer:

Democrats have a 233-201 majority, with one Libertarian (Amash). Republicans need a net gain of 17 seats for a majority. Democrats are most likely to maintain control with most likely outcome range: No net change to Democrats +12 seats.

[politicallefty]

I didn't notice until now, but the Cook ratings have put the House out of reach for Republicans. There are now 221 districts that are safe, likely, or lean Democratic.

With TX-03 now at Lean R, it does seem as though the Republicans could have a potential massive disaster on their hands in the state. I'm hoping with all the cash Biden now has that he'll devote significant resources that could have down-ballot repercussions.

[politicallefty]

House Dems could realistically pick up 20+ seats this election. These internals are wild.

You're not kidding. Some of the indications show upwards of 25+. I'd be surprised if Democrats can reclaim what they had after Obama's first election, but it's getting close. It could potentially be a wave-proof majority. We'll have to see.

[politicallefty]

House Dems could realistically pick up 20+ seats this election. These internals are wild.

You're not kidding. Some of the indications show upwards of 25+. I'd be surprised if Democrats can reclaim what they had after Obama's first election, but it's getting close. It could potentially be a wave-proof majority. We'll have to see.

No such thing as a wave proof majority. 

Very true, but it was sort of in context of a recent topic. No, not wave proof, but a Democratic House approaching 260 is a far stronger majority than something closer to the mid-230s. It could potentially withstand 2022.

[politicallefty]

How exactly does that work where the statehood party candidate is aligned with the Republicans, yet only through Democrats will statehood actually be a possibility? (No need to explain how the PNP and PPD work. I already know that. I'm just talking about how things work in Congress.) There seems to be very little support among Republicans for PR statehood, which is a very real possibility in the near future.

[politicallefty]

How exactly does that work where the statehood party candidate is aligned with the Republicans, yet only through Democrats will statehood actually be a possibility? (No need to explain how the PNP and PPD work. I already know that. I'm just talking about how things work in Congress.) There seems to be very little support among Republicans for PR statehood, which is a very real possibility in the near future.

There's also the fact that the most recent Republican platform (2016, since they're not doing one in 2020) supports PR statehood.

And we all know how much worth the 2016 Republican platform was, lol.

[politicallefty]

I think it's pretty much a given that Katko will seriously outperform Trump and it's probably fair to say that Balter needs Biden to win by around a double-digit margin in this district. Biden only winning by 2% would be a miserable result for him and would definitely bode ill for Democrats nationwide. A 12-point win is very much the opposite and would portend very well for some nice gains in the House.

[politicallefty]

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/31/house-democrats-super-pac-ads-405557

House Majority PAC (D) adding $11M in new reservations:
— Atlanta: $1.3 million (GA-06, GA-07)
— Bakersfield, Calif.: $75,000 (CA-21)
— Binghamton, N.Y.: $65,000 (NY-22)
— Cedar Rapids, Iowa: $300,000 (IA-01)
— Cincinnati: $1 million (OH-01)
— Fresno, Calif.: $100,000 (CA-21)
— Indianapolis: $1 million (IN-05)
— La Crosse, Wis.: $175,000 (WI-03)
— Los Angeles: $3.2 milion (CA-25, CA-39, CA-48)
— Mankato, Minn.: $200,000 (MN-01)
— New York City: $120,000 (NJ-07, NY-02, NY-11)
— Philadelphia: $1.3 million (NJ-02, NJ-03, PA-01)
— Rochester, Minn.: $300,000 (MN-01)
— Salt Lake City: $340,000 (UT-04)
— Savannah, Ga.: $315,000 (SC-01)
— St. Louis: $1.3 million (IL-13, MO-02)
— Utica, N.Y.: $135,000 (NY-22)

I'd have to imagine most of the Los Angeles money is going to reclaim CA-25. I can't imagine much is going to CA-39 as Gil Cisneros is very rich and can self-fund.

Nothing really surprising here. It all makes sense, but this is Pelosi's super-PAC and she's not stupid. There's a decent amount of defense, but a lot of offense as well. That's exactly what House Democrats should be doing, keeping the incumbents propped up and trying to expand the majority. But what exactly does $120k get you in the NYC media market, lol?

[politicallefty]

I'll repost what I said in the other topic:

That's not a great result on the generic ballot. Democrats won by 10% in 2018, although Republicans didn't run a candidate in Mike Doyle's Pittsburgh district. I suppose that could've narrowed it to 8-9% if they fielded a candidate. Democrats almost certainly need to be doing better than +7% in PA on the generic ballot if there's any chance to win PA-01 or PA-10.

[politicallefty]

I’m thinking a good night for Republicans is one where they keep losses to single digits in the House. If things stay the same and are on the current trajectory, I’m looking at around +15-20 for Democrats, possibly more. That’s the high end of what IE is predicting, but I think the suburbs are going to turn in a nasty result for Republicans down-ballot. One of the big questions is going to be whether the incoming Democratic Majority in the House is bigger than the one after the 2008 election.

[politicallefty]

isn't this pointing to a double digit pickup of seats?

Yes. ~15 sounds right to me.

I made a comment a couple pages back that if things were on the same trajectory (and so far that seems to be the case), we could be looking at +15-20 or possibly even more. I think Democrats will break 250 seats in the House.

With all those new changes from IE, they're now apparently predicting a +14-20 seat gain for Democrats. For reference, they predicted +25-35 ("with larger gains possible) in 2018. I'm not searching for every year, but Stu Rothenberg himself noted today that they predicted +55-65 for Republicans in 2010.

So, how many more rounds of ratings changes should we expect from Wasserman/Sabato?

Sabato's final will either be tomorrow or Monday. No idea about Cook.

Yeah, looks like Sabato made his final calls the day before in 2016 and 2018. Maybe he'll make a few changes tomorrow.

According to the latest article just up, Monday will indeed be the day for final picks. They've also just moved both Georgia Senate races from Lean R to Toss-up.