Why do pundit House forecasts seem so harsh on Democrats?

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://www.270towin.com/2024-house-election/

Just look at 270towin. Why is Biden + 11 open seat CA-47 a tossup? Why are Biden seat Dems who survived unfavorable headwinds in 2022 rated as being in tossup races (CO-08, NM-02, OH-13, PA-07).
Also why are Rs who had underwhelming 2022 performances rated as lean or even likely R like Michelle Steele, Ken Calvery, Kevin Kiley, John James, or Miller-Meeks?

Literally every tossup seat was won by Biden in 2020 except a few seats with Dem incumbents who has historically proven they can big time overperform. Yet there are plenty of Biden + 5-10 seats that are open or with a D incumbent rated as tossup.

Also there are almost no Trump > 10% seats rated as less than Safe R except AK-AL, NC-11, and the 2 NC seats expected to flip from redistricting just from briefly eyeing things. Yet there are tons of left-trending double-digit Biden seats where the Dem ended being fine in 2022 rated as lean or likely D.

It seems like on a lot of races pundits are quite bullish on Republicans chances, especially since these are the same pundits who rate WI and PA-Sen as lean or even likely D.

[ProgressiveModerate]

The running argument for why 2022 was a good year for Democrats was lower turnout causing more high-information voters to show up.

If the opposite is true then 2024 should fundamentally favor Republicans.

Then for CA specifically the primary results for Democrats were quite poor. None of the target seats held by Republicans were particularly close, especially compared to 2022. On the other hand a couple seats seen as safer for Democrats like CA-47 were essentially tied in the primary which doesn't bode well. (That being said I think CA is one of the few states where the turnout dynamic still matches the traditional one where presidential years will favor Democrats just due to the sheer advantage Democrats have among non-white voters).

I don't understand why people read some much into California primary results specifically as some sort of gospel - the reality is these primary turnouts are so low and not representative of the general election the same way Dems winning that Trump + 1 HD in Alabama by over 20% doesn't mean Alabama is a tossup.

Agree that California is one of the states where turnout dynamics generally help Rs in lower turnout elections, especially in midterms (though it varies by region). This is most prominent in the Central Valley where Hispanic turnout is always very very poor, and you see Dems up and down the ballot struggle in off years to win seats Biden carried with relative ease in 2020.

I think what happened in 2022 was a bunch of mini-waves in both directions caused by lopsided turnout. Yes, turnout was lopsided in Democrats favor in MI and PA in a way that is unlikely for 2024, but that was also true in CA, TX, FL, and NY where turnout strongly favored Republicans. And it's important to remember even in the context of turnout strongly favoring Republicans, these Republicans who won Biden seats still generally underran the top of the ticket (Newsom and Hochul) by quite a few points.

Because Central Valley turnout is so low, there could be some weird dynamics there, but I would be absolutely shocked if Trump is even coming close to winning seats like CA-47, NY-17, and NY-18 at the top of the ticket.

[ProgressiveModerate]

While anything can happen when the House is so narrowly divided, it's reasonable to believe that 2022 was more or less the high water mark for the party under the current house map. The House is going to fundamentally favor Rs for as long as FL, OH, PA, NC, TX and WI are under their control for redistricting purposes. With NY, MI, AZ, and CA all under some form of an independent commission and MD/MA/NJ already maxed-out, IL isn't enough to match the Republicans redistricting power.

FL, OH, and WI didn't change all that much in partisanship from 2020 maps, FL did drop the AA district FL-5 but that's about it.  There's really not a whole lot anyone can do with WI's congressional map anyway.

In TX the Republicans were forced to give up two tossup seats and make them safe D to shore everything else up, that hardly made things better for them and increased the Dem's floor nationally.

Bottom line is that the net effect of 2020 redistricting was overall helpful to Democrats compared to where they were before, so it seems extremely unlikely 2022 is a high water mark.  Especially considering the partisanship of districts changes as the decade goes on.

Yeah this is the thing about 2020 redistricting. Even though in absolute terms Republicans drew more districts, most of those redraws were just shoring up existing gerrymanders. Furthermore in many cases political reasons prevented Republicans from perusing maximal gerrymanders which is why we still have seats like KY-03, IN-01, and MO-05.

On the flip side quite a few states went from R Gerrymander —> neutral or neutral —> D gerrymander.

Still overall the median seat is ~2 points to the right of the nation on 2020 Pres, but this isn’t any worse than last decades maps and by no means is some insurmountable permanent Republican majority like the early 2010s. I personally expect that bias to narrow and possibly even flip just because of how the coalitions are changing - Republican’s recent and prospective gains tend to be disproportionately concentrated in safe seats.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Because Rs have incumbency and have outran Trump in both 2016 and 2020. If the Presidency is pure tossup then the house is probably narrowly favored for Rs.

There's a lot of evidence to suggests this may not be the case in 2024 though, plus in 2020 Republican's overperformance of Trump in the House is overrated. House Republicans literally won one more seat than Trump carried, and that is with all 5 races under 1% going R.