2012 House Results/Discussion thread

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

That'd be an 8-seat net gain. Not great by any means, especially considering the respectable Presidential victory and Senate near-blowout, but still pleasing in light of the various vicious gerrymanders.

We did pretty well in CA, despite it not being a vicious gerrymander.

I think that was because the previous California map was an incumbent-protection gerrymander that held up for the most part extremely well throughout the decade, and California is a lot more Democratic now than it was in 2002.

[socaldem]

That'd be an 8-seat net gain. Not great by any means, especially considering the respectable Presidential victory and Senate near-blowout, but still pleasing in light of the various vicious gerrymanders.

We did pretty well in CA, despite it not being a vicious gerrymander.

After this election, I'm really liking our new election system in CA. I'd love to see it go national.

Independent redistricting + jungle primary = more competitive races and less protection for corrupt (Baca) and senile (Stark) incumbents.

California does seem to really break for Dems in house races in strong Dem presidential years. In 2000, Dems picked up several seats as well--Honda, Schiff, Harman,  and came very close to picking up a Long Beach-based district that was eliminated after redistricting.

Dems can pick up CA-31 next year and CA-10 and CA-21 in 2016, but unless we start encroaching further into Orange County, there isn't much left to take!

[Silent Hunter]

Has anyone tallied the total votes for each party in the House?

[Holmes]

Maldonado loses, Bono-Mack trailing... thank you, California.

[minionofmidas]

Arizona still hasn't even counted early votes, which were much more Hispanic than election day votes.

Ah. I see. I'd noticed yesterday that the reported vote total looked awfully low.

[krazen1211]

AZ-02 (Barber) - No idea how or what happened here

McSally simply ran a very good campaign. Laid claim to the Giffords-as-independent-minded (as opposed to Giffords-as-the-one-with-a-D-next-to-her-name) legacy without seeming crass about it.

That's true.

That said, Barber was a non scandaled, non controversional incumbent in a roughly 50/50 Presidential district, although Romney probably won it marginally.

That should be a recipe for a 6-8 point win.


Same with Hayworth. I don't see any massive D swing in the Hudson river valley. All the other upstate R's in such districts won.

[Lief 🗽]

Again guys, Barber is going to win. Just let them finish counting.

[minionofmidas]

Again guys, Barber is going to win. Just let them finish counting.

Still interesting that he did worse than Sinema.

Maybe Giffords wasn't as hyperpopular as we thought. Maybe Jesse Kelly is just really that awful and unelectable in this district.

[Mr.Phips]

Almost exactly what I expected in the House.  The good thing here for Democrats is that unlike 2006 and 2008, most of the seats Democrats pick up are quite favorable to them, meaning that they should be able to hold them for some time.  I dont think Democrats picked up a single Romney seat this time. 

[Benj]

AZ-02 (Barber) - No idea how or what happened here

McSally simply ran a very good campaign. Laid claim to the Giffords-as-independent-minded (as opposed to Giffords-as-the-one-with-a-D-next-to-her-name) legacy without seeming crass about it.

That's true.

That said, Barber was a non scandaled, non controversional incumbent in a roughly 50/50 Presidential district, although Romney probably won it marginally.

That should be a recipe for a 6-8 point win.


Same with Hayworth. I don't see any massive D swing in the Hudson river valley. All the other upstate R's in such districts won.

Not by much, though. The result in Reed-Shinagawa was shockingly close, for example.

[Torie]

That'd be an 8-seat net gain. Not great by any means, especially considering the respectable Presidential victory and Senate near-blowout, but still pleasing in light of the various vicious gerrymanders.

We did pretty well in CA, despite it not being a vicious gerrymander.

It was just vicious enough given the gaming and Pub incompetence and/or pseudo Pubs on the redistricting Commission. With a few tweaks, totally defensible, and better mapping really, the Pubs would have saved four seats that they lost be skin tight margins (Bilbray, Lungren, Strickland (not so skin tight - 52-48, but excising Simi Valley out of the Ventura County CD and putting it in with the high desert Antelope Valley CD was an outrage), and the Riverside seat - the successor to Drier's seat). It would have been five CD's, except that the Pubs got lucky and locked up a San Bernardino CD in the primary.

[minionofmidas]

The appropriate way to save the Lungren seat would have been to put up a more electable candidate, I think. You're right about Bilbray; that could have easily been designed more favorable to Republicans. I still don't understand how Bono Mack lost (but I guess that's sweet payback for splitting Imperial from Coachella. ). Reps also got a seat in the Central Valley gifted by the Commission, basically.
The bottomline though is that by 2008 the incumbent-protection map was not far distant from a Republican map in expectable outcome.

[Sic Semper Fascistis]

So it looks like a D+8, with 201 seats? I didn't follow the House discussions much, but this looks slightly better than expectations, right?

As soon as we get rid of gerrymander, things should get bad for the GOP.

[Lief 🗽]

Most pundits were predicting around a zero seat net change (some even raised the possibility of Republican gains), so Democrats did over perform slightly, yeah. Getting above 200 is also a good psychological victory.

[Sic Semper Fascistis]

Most pundits were predicting around a zero seat net change (some even raised the possibility of Republican gains), so Democrats did over perform slightly, yeah. Getting above 200 is also a good psychological victory.

Wow, yeah, that's indeed pretty significant. I hope Nancy keeps on fighting, because 2016 might not be out of reach (I know it makes no sense to talk about things to happen 4 years from now, but I'm just saying the possibility exists).

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

They seem to be counting the outstanding ballots in Arizona. McSally's lead over Barber has as of this writing shrunk to 81 votes.

[Mr.Phips]

So it looks like a D+8, with 201 seats? I didn't follow the House discussions much, but this looks slightly better than expectations, right?

As soon as we get rid of gerrymander, things should get bad for the GOP.

Yep, Democrats just need to win the governorships in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in 2018 and those maps fall apart big time in 2021, giving Democrats at least an additional 10-12 seats in those states alone in 2022. 

[Lief 🗽]

Sinema is now up 4000 votes and 2.1% in AZ-09. About time to call that one, AP. (Though they've also not yet called UT-04, which Mia Love has actually conceded already.)

[adma]

As soon as we get rid of gerrymander, things should get bad for the GOP.

Well, never mind gerrymander.  Preemptively speaking, now that the first new-distribution congressional election's passed and the dust has settled, it should be easier for the Dems to gauge future targets, including apparently "left-field" targets...

[Miles]

WV-03:



Rahall (D)- 54%
Snuffer (R)- 46%

The most heavily Republican county that Rahall carried was Wyoming, which was 76/22 Romney.

[badgate]

Ron Barber seems to be gaining in AZ-2

[minionofmidas]

As soon as we get rid of gerrymander, things should get bad for the GOP.

It's not just that (nvm that pesky "how the hell do you do that" part).
The voter distribution is also such that, with fair winner take all districts, the GOP should have a slight advantage vis-a-vis the national vote early in the cycle (to be lost by the time the next census draws near as many heavy D districts are then underpopulated.)

The bigger problem is that, unlike apparently the old President-only Republicans who used to outnumber them, the President-only Democrats are far from dead. And they are heavily concentrated in certain areas, affluent inner suburbs mostly, that happen to fall into swingy districts. These are (exagerrating and being vaguely offensive for effect here, just to make the point clearer) high income, high information, low intelligence people who feel they're like, so edgy being moderate heroes and professing to like their Republican Representative.

After all, the reasons they don't vote Republican for President are merely due to dismay at the current party's crass and dimwitted rhetoric, not due to actually feeling hated and threatened by their former party's rhetoric as goes with the people the Dems lost.

And that they also don't vote in Democratic primaries, ie the Democratic primary electorate in these places is well to the left of the Democratic GE electorate, and the Democratic candidates are therefore frequently not tailormade to win them over, doesn't help either.

There's a reason the old, much less crassly gerrymandered (though still gerrymandered) versions of the SE Pennsylvania suburban districts were regained in 2010 or in Gerlach's and Dent's cases never fell. Or that the Dems took so long to take IL-10. Heck, even the R vote sinks in the Chicago metro in the new Dem gerry map, IL-6 and IL-14, actually voted for Obama in 2008.

[Lief 🗽]

More votes counted today, and Barber is now ahead by almost 600 votes.

Flake is also under 50% now, which screws up my prediction.

[nclib]

The only incumbents to lose whose losses were not caused by redistricting:

KY-6: Chandler is the only Dem (assuming Barber in AZ-2 pulls it out)

Repubs:

CA-36: Bono Mack
FL-18: West
FL-26: Rivera
MN-8: Cravaack
NH-1: Guinta
NH-2: Bass
NY-18: Hayworth
NY-24: Buerkle
TX-23: Canseco

IL-8: Walsh (I assume would have lost anyway)

any others...

[Lief 🗽]

Bono Mack just conceded, so that's cool. A lot of people were doubting the DCCC here, so it's good to see they pulled it off.