Post bold 2022 predictions

[SaintStan86]

2022 House Predictions with winners in appropriate color; red for Republicans, blue for Democrats (would be nice if we had a map for this; includes speculative CDs not set in stone):

Democratic gains (3):
AL-02/Montgomery & Mobile (due to redistricting)
IL-13/Springfield, Champaign and East St. Louis (due to gerrymandering)
NY-22/Syracuse, Ithaca and Utica (due to gerrymandering)
These are pretty much the only gains the Democrats will be making in the current environment, all due to either redistricting or gerrymandering. Alabama's districts are now going to require a second district where a Black candidate (likely a Democrat) is capable of winning, while the linear district above in Illinois is the result of Illinois' power-grabbing Dem leadership and the New York seat is probably the one district that does flip, even with the New York legislators now calling the shots (big mistake) and creating a number of districts where Biden won by single digits - which is still not conducive to victory for Democrats in the current environment where a lot of GOP-held Biden districts are likely to exist after the midterms unless Biden's fortunes improve.

Republican gains (46):
AZ-02/Flagstaff & Casa Grande
AZ-04/Ahwatukee area of Phoenix and SE suburbs
AZ-06/Tucson suburbs & Sierra Vista
CA-09/Stockton
CA-13/Modesto & western Fresno suburbs
CA-26/Thousand Oaks & Simi Valley (major upset)
CA-49/Laguna Niguel & north coastal San Diego County
CO-07/Lakewood & western Denver suburbs + rural central Colorado fringes
CT-02/Norwich & Storrs
CT-05/most of Litchfield and western Hartford suburbs
FL-07/northern Orlando suburbs
FL-13/Pinellas County
FL-23/Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale (major upset)
GA-02/Albany & southwest Georgia
IL-06/southwest Chicago suburbs in SW Cook and SE DuPage counties
IL-11/western exurbs of Chicago
IL-14/exurban areas southwest of Chicago
IL-17/Rockford, Peoria & Moline
IA-03/Des Moines and southern Iowa
KS-03/Overland Park and other Kansas City suburbs
ME-02/Bangor and all areas north of Portland area
MI-07/Lansing and Livingston County
MI-08/Flint, Saginaw and Bay City
MI-10/southern Macomb & Rochester Hills
MN-02/southern Twin Cities suburbs
NV-01/Las Vegas and Henderson
NV-03/Summerlin and Laughlin
NV-04/North Las Vegas and Area 51
NH-01/Manchester and the southeast
NH-02/Concord, Nashua and the North Country (major upset)
NJ-07/Westfield, Hackettstown and the Skylands
NY-03/North Shore areas of Long Island
NY-17/Rockland and Orange counties (major upset)
NY-18/northern Lower Hudson Valley exurbs
OR-04/Eugene and southern coastal Oregon
OR-05/Southern Portland suburbs (Lake Oswego) to Bend
PA-06/Chester County and Reading
PA-07/Allentown and Lehigh Valley
PA-15/western Pittsburgh suburbs
TN-05/south Nashville, some eastern suburbs and southern rural fringes
TX-15/McAllen to eastern San Antonio exurbs
TX-28/Laredo to eastern San Antonio suburbs
VA-02/southern Hampton Roads including Virginia Beach
VA-07/exurban Northern Virginia incl. eastern Prince William County
WA-08/eastern Seattle suburbs to Wenatchee
WI-03/western Wisconsin incl. La Crosse and Wausau areas
My current prediction has the GOP picking up 46 seats in a lot of rural, exurban, suburban and mid-sized market territory, where voters will flip these districts on a combination of factors including top-tier GOP candidates in open swing districts, Biden's continuous weak showings among WWC voters, a maintained shift of Latino voters to the GOP brand (especially in more spread out areas like along the Rio Grande in Texas and in certain communities like Miami's Cuban diaspora), and suburban voters who either come back to the GOP with Trump no longer on the ballot or who like Biden but are preferring to have a check on the President (not unlike they did under Trump in 2018, Obama in 2010, and vice versa). Some of these seats were already predicted to flip anyway, such as TN-05 where Jim Cooper got redistricted out and WI-03 where Ron Kind is retiring, while others could be big upsets like CA-26 in Ventura (where there is a well-funded Republican running as of last check) and NH-02 (which despite being drawn as a safer seat for Annie Kuster may still go GOP anyway, as is likely to be the case with NH-01).

New seats (7 GOP, 1 Dem):
CO-08/Thornton to Greeley (northern Denver suburbs)
FL-15/northern and eastern Tampa suburbs
MT-02/Billings and Great Falls
NC-04/Fayetteville and southeast Raleigh suburbs
OH-13/Akron to Canton
OR-06/Salem and SW Portland suburbs (Tualatin)
TX-37/Austin
TX-38/West Houston and northwest Harris County
Save for OH-13, which is really Tim Ryan's old seat minus Youngstown, the seats being eliminated appear to be a mix of 4 Republican and 3 Democrat seats, so the net gain for the GOP will be 2. Only the TX-37 seat in Austin (Lloyd Doggett's new, restored seat from before Tom DeLay's big 2003 redraw) is safe for Democrats. The next more Democratic seats on this list is the new Oregon seat, which is likely to be a suburban battleground, and the aforementioned OH-13 that voted twice for Trump as well as Richard Cordray and Sherrod Brown in 2018, and the rest are either full-out battlegrounds or heavily Republican.

Incumbent-on-incumbent general election races:
NY-20/Binghamton, Schenectady, Cooperstown and the Catskills
OH-05/Toledo area
PA-08/Scranton and Wilkes-Barre
This is where the likely incumbent-on-incumbent battles are going to be in November. In this current environment, all will be won by the GOP despite being competitive for the Democrats in past elections, as they are the sort of mid-market, Reagan Democrat and WWC districts that Trump most likely won in either once or twice. In each of the respective cases, Claudia Tenney defeats Antonio Delgado, Bob Latta defeats Marcy Kaptur, and Dan Meuser defeats Matt Cartwright.

Close races:
AZ-01/north Phoenix and Scottsdale - more so due to David Schweikert's ethical issues
CA-06/north Sacramento
CA-25/Palm Springs and El Centro
CA-27/north Los Angeles County
CA-40/inland Orange County
CA-45/"Little Saigon" area of the OC
CA-47/coastal Orange County - more so due to Katie Porter's massive fundraising haul; would have been an all-Dem general if Harley Rouda ran given how divided the GOP field is so far
CO-03/Grand Junction & Pueblo - due to Lauren Boebert being Lauren Boebert
CO-06/Aurora and southern Arapahoe County, mostly due to the latter
CT-03/New Haven
DE-AL/all of Delaware
FL-22/Palm Beach County
FL-25/southwest Broward County
FL-27/Miami & Coral Gables
FL-28/south Miami-Dade & Key West
GA-07/southern Gwinnett County - two Dems up against each other in primary
IL-08/Schaumburg & northwest Chicago suburbs
IL-10/Waukegan & North Shore suburbs of Chicago
IN-01/Northwest Indiana
IA-01/Davenport and SE Des Moines metro area
IA-02/Cedar Rapids, Dubuque and NE Iowa
KY-06/Lexington and surrounding metro area
MD-01/Eastern Shore and southern Baltimore suburbs
MD-02/eastern Baltimore suburbs
MD-06/western Maryland and DC suburbs
MA-09/New Bedford, Cape Cod and Buzzards Bay
MI-03/Grand Rapids
MI-11/southern Oakland County - two Dems facing each other in primary
MN-01/southeast Minnesota
MN-03/western Twin Cities suburbs
MO-02/suburban St. Louis
MT-01/western Montana incl. Missoula and Bozeman
NE-02/Omaha
NV-02/Reno and northern Nevada
NJ-03/Burlington and Freehold
NJ-05/North Bergen, Passaic and Sussex - Josh Gottheimer has a massive cash advantage
NJ-09/South Bergen
NJ-11/Morris and west Essex - Mikie Sherrill is considered a rising star who might challenge Bob Menendez in 2024
NM-01/Albuquerque
NM-02/Las Cruces and southern New Mexico
NM-03/Santa Fe, Farmington & Roswell
NY-01/eastern Suffolk and the Hamptons
NY-02/South Shore areas of Long Island
NY-11/Staten Island and Brooklyn
NY-21/Plattsburgh and the North Country
NY-23/Southern Tier
NC-02/northeast North Carolina
OH-01/Cincinnati and Butler County suburbs
OH-04/Northern Columbus suburbs and west central Ohio
OH-06/Youngstown to Steubenville
OH-09/western Cleveland suburbs
OH-10/Dayton
OH-14/eastern Cleveland suburbs & Ashtabula
PA-01/Bucks County
PA-04/Montgomery and eastern Berks counties
PA-10/Harrisburg and York
RI-02/western Providence + Kent and Washington counties
TX-07/southwest Houston to Sugar Land
TX-23/San Antonio to El Paso along the Rio Grande
TX-32/eastern Dallas
TX-34/Brownsville and Weslaco to Kingsville
VA-10/western NoVa suburbs incl. Loudoun County
WA-02/Bellingham and coastal Snohomish County
WA-03/southwest Washington incl. Vancouver
WA-06/Tacoma and western Puget Sound region
WA-10/Tacoma suburbs and Olympia
WI-01/Kenosha and SW Milwaukee suburbs
These seats will all likely vote for either their existing incumbents or new ones from the same party as the departing incumbent, but will have close results in the end. In some of the districts, there are existing incumbents who likely won't be on the ballot for certain reasons, such as Jaime Herrera Beutler in WA-03 (who is probably going to lose to Joe Kent because of her vote to impeach Trump and the leading Democrat in the initial election) and Peter Meijer in MI-03 (who also voted to impeach Trump and has a Trumpian primary challenger), while MI-11 and GA-07 each have two Democratic incumbents battling each other in the primary. Some will be surprised that Delaware's at-large seat is potentially competitive, but it's important to note that Delaware isn't really that much of a blue state, particularly south of Wilmington and especially outside New Castle County.