'08 House rematch predictions as of June '07

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

You should have posted this in my CQ Politics thread but nevertheless interesting predictions.

I enjoyed your thread, but I wanted to create a new post to gauge fellow Atlasians views on the '08 rematches.

Do you think I'm too pessimistic on the chances of the repeat challengers? I'd say that for every Paul Hodes and Jerry McNerney, there are many more Lois Murphys and Diane Farrells.

Yes. For example, out of what you listed, I would say the following challengers would also win:

Stender
Kissel
Kilroy
Maybe Seals.

But if there wasnt a rechallenger then I'd say Musgrave goes down too.

I'd be stunned if Stender could win NJ-07 in a Presidential year, because I'd be stunned if the Hunterdon County results for 2008 proved to be as ugly for Ferguson as they were in 2006.  Republicans just aren't going to stay home next year.

It's also worth noting that in this latest session, Mike Ferguson has proved to be more moderate than he's ever been.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Did Kean carry the district? 

Well, it's impossible to come up with Kean's totals in NJ-07 without doing a lot of research into individual precincts in Linden (a tiny sliver), Union Township (about half), Bridgewater (again, about half), Woodbridge (almost all), and Edison (about a third), all of which are only partially in the CD.

But, if you'll allow me to use a shortcut: I totalled all the Kean/Menendez votes in the towns that are definitely in CD7 (which accounts for the vast majority of votes anyway), and then used the Ferguson/Stender numbers for the five towns which are partially in the district.  [The numbers seem to be consistent with Kean/Menendez's overall performances in the towns, which bodes well for the assumption.]

From this analysis, I get Kean 53% (103,895), Menendez 47% (92,314).  That's a big enough spread to safely say that yes, Kean did win NJ-07, and almost certainly by a larger margin than Ferguson did (mostly because Kean outpaced Ferguson in the towns in Stender's Legislative District).

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

So it's likely that Stender came as close as she'll ever come in this gerrymandered monstrosity of a congressional district?

That's my best guess.  It's not as if Stender was underfunded last time around.