MN-03: Ramstead Retiring

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Should be a Republican hold unless they pick an awful candidate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

MN-03 is the kind of suburban/exurban open House district that the GOP lost in 2006.

Not so. The Republicans, generally, didn't do so badly in districts like this one in 2006 (which is why I'm sceptical of a Democrat gain). Though maybe voting patterns in 2008 will be different.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not so. 16 of the 31 Democratic House pickups were in suburban districts. In fact, the Democrats carried the suburban House vote by a margin of 50-48 in 2006.

Note that I didn't mention anything about suburban/exurban or anyothersortofurban. I wrote "this sort of district"; affluent, white collar, well-educated, owner-occupied, and mostly made up of older (by American standards...) middle suburbs.

Demographically, MN-3 is very like IL-6, though a bit more bourgeois*.

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Most, but not all, of those districts are very different to this one.

*No, I'm not a Marxist, but people would get the wrong end of the stick if I used the term "middle class"; which o/c means something completely different in the States than it does over here.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Democrats won 49% of the vote in IL-06 despite running a political neophyte who didn't even live in the district. That was also after a nasty primary and residual bad blood between the two losing primary candidates and the eventual victor.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is to say that the swing in IL-6 was -4.48; very low for an open seat in an election like 2006.

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There are certain similarities to WA-8 (though there are also some significant differences) though not really to PA-6 (beyond some very basic stuff). Neither seem to be as like it as IL-6 though.