2020 HOR elections

Thank you for the insight, Stat. We agree on those points and I suspect that most of what the IMPOTUS supporters are saying about those districts is based more on desires than data.

There was a survey out claiming that in battleground states IMPOTUS voters who voted Dem in 2018 would vote for him again in 2020. Turns out they were talking about a very small sliver of the electorate and even then it was confined to just his non-college white supporters.

That made me curious and I dug a little deeper and discovered that non-college whites comprised 44% of the 2016 electorate and 2/3rds of them supported the IMPOTUS. That same source projected that segment will decline by 2.3% which will mean a net loss of over a million supporters in 2020. (2.3% of 153 million RV's with a 2:1 ratio.) Given that the EC was decided by just 70k voters across 3 states that is a serious deficit to face even if there is not another Blue Wave.

http://politicalforum.com/index.php...single-witness.565518/page-42#post-1071265735

FTR since we are talking about this segment of the electorate the odds are that RV and LV are going to be virtually identical in both general elections.

While this is the House thread I did want to mention that what Pelosi is doing is going to have consequences in the Senate races. There might even be instances where some GOP incumbents could be facing primary competition if they don't give the "right answers" to IMPOTUS supporters. We might have to take a closer look at what is happening there given the actions of the Speaker of the House.

Going to be a fascinating election year IMO.

 

Well, yes, in a nutshell, I would think, that would be just about right!

 

Indeed. And please remember, not all polls are from premium pollsters.
And also, more and more people are moving away from landlines and are only using cell-phone numbers to telephone and to do internet. However, US law regarding polling has not kept up this this phenomenon. So, polling is, at the moment, skewing entirely to the Right, without exception.

 

The above is incorrect. The name of the party is the Democratic Party, never the "Democrat Party" true, but members of that party are correctly called "Democrats" and never "Democratics." So the use of both "Democratic" and "Democrat" as modifiers is perfectly fine in many cases. "Democrat seats," for example, is correct English as a matter of fact and not opinion. Have corrected you before on this and it didn't stick. Not surprised. Maybe limit the pedantry to your native tongue?

So, will this be a completely biased propaganda narrative underneath a thin (but amusingly voluminous) veneer of numbers towards faux legitimacy and "objectivity" like all your other prognostications? Can't wait.

 

The President's reelection has momentum
the Democratic Party has yet to achieve.


Hopefully President Trump will encourage those who vote
for him to vote for "like minded" Congressmen and Senators.


Does anyone really the Democratic Party today?


Moi

STOP ​

 

Ok that is a lot to digest. good homework. BUT, let me just say this. Thanks to the idiocy of this impeachment the GOP is flush with cash and will continue to raise more and more, which will allow the republicans to identify any opportunities to unseat a democrat and pour money in to those races. I believe some democrats that are just assuming that people will just rubber stamp them back in to office might be surprised.

 

On 21.08.2019, when I started this thread, there were 1,305 declared candidates for the US-HOR. The last time I reported on this thread (19.12.2019), there were 2,082 candidates.

Today, 24.12.2019 (Christmas Eve), there are now 2,062 such candidates, a reduction of 20 candidates in 5 days. Explanation below the graphics:



For the first time, the Rs have taken the lead in sheer numbers of candidates, by +0.48%. That is, of course, essentially a tie in the sheer numbers of candidates.
The gender balance has shifted from M 70 / F 30 to M 71.5 / F 28.5.

There were changes in the following 77 CDs:
CA-01, CA-02, CA-03, CA-04, CA-05, CA-06, CA-07,CA-08, CA-09, CA-10, CA-11, CA-12, CA-14, CA-15, CA-17, CA-18, CA-19, CA-21, CA-24, CA-25, CA-26, CA-28, CA-29, CA-30, CA-31, CA-32, CA-33, CA-34, CA-36, CA-39, CA-40, CA-42, CA-43, CA-44, CA-45, CA-46, CA-47, CA-48, CA-49, CA-50, CA-51, CA-52, CA-53, CO-04, MD-02, MD-08, NV-03, NV-04, NJ-02, NC-01, NC-02, NC-03, NC-04, NC-05, NC-06, NC-07, NC-08, NC-09, NC-10, NC-11, NC-12, OH-01, OH-02, OH-03, OH-06, OH-07, OH-08, OH-09, OH-10, OH-11, OH-12, OH-13, OH-14, OH-16, OR-02, TX-27, WA-10

One CD moved from a competitive race to unopposed race by one party: CA-38

Formerly unopposed races in 6 CDs now with a contender in both major parties: CA-11, NC-04, NC-07, NC-10, NC-13, OH-07

Filing closed since the last report: NC, OH

Complete list of states where candidate filing has now closed: AL, AR, CA, IL, NC, OH, TX

So, with so many massive changes, how could the number go down? The answer is: California.

Remember, THE GREEN PAPERS tracks the declared candidates by their FEC filings and announcements in the open media, but at the end of the day, those candidacies have to be filed in the respective states according the the deadline systems lined out in each state. So, the filing date for California came and went a number of days ago and then, on 20.12.2019, the state of California posted this notification of candidates that they currently have on the list. This is not the end-list. The certified list will come out on December 26th, 2019 (in two days) and then I will most certainly check it for additions or deletions, but what has essentially happened in California is that the wheat has been separated from the chaff. This very same thing happened in California in 2018 (and in every other cycle going way back into the past), but in 2018 the primary elections were in June, so the deadline for the candidacies was later in the election calendar 2017-2018. In other words, on Christmas Eve 2017, the wheat had not yet been separated from the chaff yet in CA.

This will happen in most all other states as well, and well, it's always a coin-toss to see what may happen right at deadline time. In NC-11, Mark Meadows announced his retirement one day before the deadline, and whooosh! 12 Rs declared for his seat. I will remind that on this thread, I noted more than once that Mark Meadows had not announced his candidacy for re-election and suspected that he (among others right now) was waiting to see what would happen with the Impeachment of the President.

Plus, as we all know, life can flip on a dime, "n'est ce pas"?? In CA-43, Republican Omar Navarro (who ran against Maxine Waters in 2018 and got all of 22.3%) is currently in prison after he was arrested on December 9th, 2019 on 3 felony charges and 1 misdemeanor charge for stalking his former girlfriend. Call me skeptical, but it's really hard to wage a campaign from a prison cell. This is the SECOND time that Navarro has been charged with felony stalking counts and the SECOND time that he sits in jail for it. Not surprisingly, he has endorsements from Roy Moore, Alex Jones and "Sherriff" Arpaio. So, the FEC reports and the state candidate reports tell us the numerical stuff, but of course, they don't tell us about the quality of the candidates, etc.

Here the current shut-out races:




All in all, we are down to 89 currently unchallenged CDs, as follows:

4 CDs where absolutely no candidate from either political party has declared yet. This will, of course, change.
30 CDs where there is no Democratic challenger (called R-shutouts)
55 CDs where there is no Republican challenger (called D-shutouts)

For comparison, going into election night 2018, there were 39 automatic shutout seats (36 D-shutouts, 3 R-shutouts).

There are still a number of incumbents who have not declared their candidacies.

And now, a trip down memory lane. On exactly this day two years ago, on Christmas Eve of 2017, I posted the following numbers for the HOR candidates:


On that day, there were 1,968 declared HOR candidates. Today, there are 2,062, close to 100 candidates more than 2 years ago. By the time the primaries were up and going in 2018, these numbers swelled to about 2,180. I suspect that when all is said and done, we will have had close to 2,300 HOR candidates out there stomping the pavement.

Again, a reminder: in politics, as in real life, sometimes, life can flip on a dime. This means that we are sure to see more retirements (currently, there are 40 open races, 35 due to retirements, 4 due to resignations and one due to death while in office) and surely a sex scandal or a financial scandal will break out in a CD that people don't think about all that much...... it is going to be an exciting election year in 2020, just as much for the HOR as for the Senate, the Governors races and of course, for the Presidency.

Happy Chanukah to my fellow Jewish brethren out there and a very Merry Christmas to all of my Christian friends and acquaintances out there!

-Stat

 

What a crock. Polling is skewing left, that is why there is always liberal oversampling, usually around 4-9% The broken methodology being used also tends to oversample women, who tend to be liberal. You are also pretending that cellphones aren't being called. You need to go and actually look at what the methodology is...

 

If wishes (and columns and columns and columns of numbers) were horses, beggars would ride.

 

Most all of what you wrote was a complete crock of ****, as usual. If you want to debate me, then do it like an adult and bring ACTUAL FACTS to the table.

1.) Polling is NOT skewing Left. Some polling has house effect to the left, far, far more have a house effect to the Right, some have no dog in the race at all.
2.) Women are not being oversampled. In fact, they may actually be undersampled, since females are a majority of the US population, especially from 18-70. Not only that, for the states that report voter registration, females are also the majority of RV.
3.) I never said that cellphones are not being called. I did, however point out that Conservative leaning pollsters rely far too heavily on landlines, which indeed skews their results to the Right. That is because less and less people are using landlines, but older, more conservative leaning families, esp in rural areas, still use landlines.

 

On 21.08.2019, when I started this thread, there were 1,305 declared candidates for the US-HOR. The last time I reported on this thread (24.12.2019), there were 2,062 such candidates.

Today, 30.12.2019, we end the year 2019 with 2,068 such candidates:



There were changes in the following 12 congressional districts: AL-03, CA-08, CA-12, CA-15, CA-22, FL-14, MD-05, MD-08, TX-23, TX-26, UT-02, VA-04

The CDs that I just bolded in dark green are CDs from states where the filing deadline has officially come and gone, and yet, we still see some slight changes. This is not abnormal, it happens every time. Either there is a dispute over a candidacy or a report was filed late, yadayadayada. This brings me to the following reminder - the filing deadline for US congressional candidates has passed in the following states: AL, AR, CA, IL, NC, OH and TX. Those states combined have 147 CDs, or 33.8% of the HOR.

This means that for some states, instead of linking to the Green Papers, I have moved the hyperlink directly to the state SOS document that shows the candidate listing, since it is supposed to be official, while the estimates from the Green Papers have been inofficial all along. Remember, the Green Papers bases its listings on FEC filings and open media statements, but a lot can happen on the day of a filing deadline. For instance, in NC-06, the Green Papers is still listing an independent candidate who has indeed filed with the FEC, but that person's name is not on the official NC candidate list. This is, at the moment, the only discrepancy I have found and likely that will be sorted out in the next days. But in order to make things easier for your eyes to follow, in the leftmost column, I have highlighted all of the states where the filing deadline has closed in a very light green. Also, wherever I have moved the hyperlink from the GP to the actual state SOS documents, I have changed the color of the hyperlink (in bold) to green as well. Example: ALABAMA



Just a reminder: you can see the online document HERE.

So, based on the closed filing deadlines for a number of states, we can say some things with absolute certainty. We are now guaranteed the following unopposed races:

D-shutouts: AL-07, CA-38, IL-08, OH-16*
R-shutouts: AL-05, AL-06, AR-01

This time around, there will be no shutouts in either NC or TX. I have asterisked OH-16 because the Republican incumbent has not yet declared and yet, he easily won this race in 2018. No one is talking about why this race is sleeping like this right now, but deadline is deadline. Wait and see what happens in OH. As for CA, right now, CA-38 is the only shoutout race, but since the CA primaries are jungle primaries, there is indeed the possibility that other races will become shutouts after the primary. For instance, in 2018, both CA-08 and CA-27, those races became shutouts AFTER the primaries were over. So, wait and see.

We end the year with 88 races (including the 7 I mentioned above) as technically unopposed, simply because one side or the other (or in 4 cases, both) has not yet fielded a candidate. That breaks down into:

4 completely unopposed races (neither party has fielded a candidate yet)
30 R-shutouts (no D candidate yet)
54 D-shutouts (no R candidate yet)
Going into election night 2018, there were 39 automatic shutouts total (36 D, 3 R).
Currently, the highest concentration of R shutouts can be found in the deep South, while the highest concentration of D shutouts can be found in the NE (for instance, 8 of 9 Massachusetts CDs are currently D-shutouts).

We end the year 2019 with 40 seats (9.2% of the entire HOR) that are guaranteed OPEN races due to retirements, resignations or death. On December 6th, Duncan Hunter (R, CA-50), who changed his plea from not-guilty to guilty for campaign finance crimes that he committed (some of which he committed with his then wife), said that he would resign after Christmas. Well, today is December 30, 2019, and Duncan Hunter has still not resigned. Since Hunter has pleaded guilty to a federal crime, he is no longer eligible to cast a vote on any legislation in the US HOR. Had the man had any sense of decency at all, he would have resigned as soon as he pleaded guilty, but no, he is still living off the public's money in spite of having committed crimes. When the House reconvenes in January, I suspect that either

a.) he will finally resign
b.) be forced to resign by his own party in order to save some face for the GOP
or
c.) Nancy Pelosi can have him officially expelled from the HOR per roll-call vote.

On, a final note, with Democratic Rep. (GA-05) John Lewis' sad announcement that he is battling stage IV pancreatic cancer, I think we all know what this means. Stage IV cancer of any type, most anywhere in the body, results in death in most all cases, and not long after the diagnosis. As of January, 2021, John Lewis will have served in the HOR for 34 years. I suspect that the list of OPEN races will continue to rise, and his seat may be among them. When Republican congressmen have opened up about serious illnesses, I have afforded them the same empathy and sympathy, for instance, when Walter Jones (NC-03) took seriously ill and then, sadly, died in the early spring of this year.

Soon, the FEC reports for Q4 will be in, and they will tell us alot about which way the financial winds are blowing in the 2020 HOR elections.

I wish all of you a Happy New Year and a good start in 2020.

-Stat

 

I'm not going to waste time dispelling your lies. Post a poll of your choosing, we'll go through it step by step. It will have liberal over sample, it will have women over sampled, and you will pretend that isn't the case...

 

Happy New Year, everybody.

On 21.08.2019, when I started this thread, there were 1,305 declared candidates for the US-HOR. The last time I reported on this thread (30.12.2019), there were 2,068 such candidates.

Today, 03.01.2020 (January 3rd, 2020), we begin the year 2020 with 2,087 such candidates:



Republican declared candidates now have a +0.67% edge on declared Democratic candidates. There is a noticeable uptake on unafilliated candidates, vis-a-vis 2018.

There were changes in the following 17 CDs: FL-04, FL-06, FL-09, GA-05, GA-14, IN-03, MD-05, NJ-03, NY-02, NY-17, NY-20, PA-03, PA-05, PA-08, TN-09, TX-26, WI-02

We have an interesting filing situation in Georgia. After Rep. John Lewis announced that he has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, I was also curious to see if any other Democrats may declare for his seat (GA-05). To date, none have, and still no Republican has declared for his seat. However, an individual has declared for his seat as a Libertarian. Interestingly enough, her last name is exactly the same as the last name of two other women who also declared as Libertarians for GA-14 (which is an open seat). The person who just declared as a Libertarian for GA-05 is:



And in GA-14, the following two Jeffersons also just declared as Libertarians:



That seemed like a bit too much of a coincidence to me, so I checked for possible family ties and found this gofundme site:



So, it appears that this family, of which Areishka and Demondria are apparently sisters, lived in TX in 2015 and survived a tornado. Only, Dakinya Jefferson is also running as a Libertarian for TX-30, and her filing has been there much longer:



Color me skeptical but I am thinking to myself that it is going to be hard to campaign in GA-14 and TX-30 all at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I am not indicating any criminal intent on the part of any of these three Libertarian candidates here, and indeed this may end up being a pretty cool and interesting family story. And it wouldn't be the first time that family members ran for various high offices. Mike Pence's brother is a Rep in Indiana, we have a Kennedy (part of THE Kennedy clan) as a Rep in Massachusetts and now running for Senator, we have the Castro brothers, etc. Also, after the tornados of 2015-2016 and the floods of 2017, a number of people moved from Texas to other states, so it is indeed very possible that this family has moved to Georgia. I have reached out to Dakinya to ask if these FEC filings are for real. And although it would be unusual for black Americans to identify as Libertarians, a small sliver of that Party is black. According to PRRI from 2013, it's 6%. According to the CATO Institute in 2016, it's 5%.

Now, I just spent a good amount of time about something that might, at the end of the day, be much ado about nothing, but my eyes have been trained over time to see patterns. I saw these three names and remember Dakinya from when I was doing the stats on Texas....

So, äääähm, HAPPY NEW YEAR!


xxx

 

Good catch and Happy New Year!

 

I thought I would do a survey but I just cannot figure out how to do it on this site, so maybe someone else can set it up. I would like to know if people think that independents are really all that independent. I can say for most of my life, including a time myself when i thought of myself and registered as an independent, I believe that those whom call themselves independent are really not at all. I believe that if you could see the voting history of most independents you would find that many vote 99% of the time democrat party or 99% of the time republican party, they just want to feel enlightened to call themselves independents.

I have a few in my own family that get red faced and angry if I call them democrats but they have never voted for a republican in their lives, they are part of the pretend party really.

What do "y'all" think about that?

 

Not so sure that this posting belongs in this thread, but because I sense that your intent is good and honest, my quick two-cents. You are not the first person to show interest in this phenomenon. Indeed, there is very strong evidence that the word "Independent" can very much depend on the overal political tilt of the state where said Independent lives. And since there is not national Independent Party with a written platform, one that nominates slates of candidates for national and state offices, then it's also pretty hard to determine exactly what an "Independent" is supposed to be.

But what we CAN do is to research historical voter registration and voting data from the past in order to draw some interesting conclusions or at least make some hypotheses. THIS HERE:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KdMz913KDsKspCLf_bbxpoCgmf2n5pOS/view?usp=sharing

is the current voter registration data as of the end of August, 2019 (will be updated at the beginning of February, 2020). There are 31 states (including DC) that provide VR data by party affiliation, 19 states only provide RV totals, and 1 state (North Dakota), does not even do VR. You might be interested to look at both Kansas and Massachusetts. Just slightly under 1/3 of all voters in Kansas are registered Independents, and yet, Republican win (more often than not) very large landslides in this state, which can only mean that most Kansas Independents swing more Republican in thought, but call themselves Independents. Same case with Massachusetts in reverse colors, but more extreme. Closing in on 56% of all MA voters are officially registered Independents, but the Democrats tend to win with massive margins (see: 2018 midterms), so, with only 33% of the MA electorate actually registered as Democrats and yet, DEMS win with between 65%-80% of the vote, this can only mean that the "Independents" in the Bay State tend to default Democratic Party in thought and deed.

And btw, just to be absolutely clear, it is not "democrat party", but rather, "Democratic Party", with -ic at the end of the word. The use of "Democrat" Party is an intended perjorative that got started in the 1930s. There have been some lively discussions in PF about this phenomenon, as we members are officially not allowed to insult other groups of people..... so, now, armed with this information, I do hope that you will call the Democratic Party what it is, and by it's correct and well-earned title. I sure as hell don't call the GOP any other name than "Republican Party". Thanks for your attention into this matter.

-Stat

 

On 22.08.2019, when I started this thread, there were 1,305 declared candidates for the US-HOR. The last time I reported on this thread (03.01.2020), there were 2,087 such candidates.

Today, 10.01.2020 (January 11th, 2020), there are now 2,141 such candidates, a net-gain of 54 newly declared candidates in the last 7 days and 836 more candidates than when I first started the thread:




There were changes in the following 56 CDs: AZ-01, AZ-08, CO-01, CO-05, CO-06, CO-07, CT-01, CT-04, CT-05, FL-03, FL-08, FL-09, FL-13, FL-14,-FL-19, FL-20, GA-09, HI-02, IL-18, IN-01, IN-03, KS-02, KY-02, KY-03, MD-02, MD-04, MD-05, MA-04, MI-05, MN-02, MN-05, MS-02, MI-04, MO-07, NJ-02, NJ-10, NM-03, NY-07, NY-13, NY-27, OH-15, OR-02, SC-01, SC-07, TN-01, TN-05, TX-07, TX-32, UT-01, VA-01, VA-03,VA-04, WA-04, WA-07, WI-01 and WI-03.

It's still essentially a tie between declared D and R candidates, but the R candidates have numerically moved into a small lead. Both major parties are now just under 1,000 candidates each. The gender balance was M 70 / F 30 for a long time, but in the last weeks, it has moved more and more in the direction of M 72 / F 28.

Moved from bi-party shutout or competitive race to unopposed race by one party: MS-02
Moved from unopposed to bi-party complete shutout: IL-18 (In spite of the fact that Illinois' filing deadline has come and gone)
Unopposed races now with a contender in both major parties: CT-01,KS-02, SC-07, TN-05, TN-09, WA-07

So, with these changes in mind, there are now 83 unchallenged races (19.1% of the HOR), as follows:

3 races where no candidate from any major party (complete shutout) has entered into the race (PA-09, PA-12, UT-03), all in Republican-held districts. When you see the massive margins for the Rs in two of these three districts, then I would say that it is a matter of time before the incumbent declares. In other words, nothing earth-shattering to see here. The incumbents are simply taking their time.

30 races where no Democrat has entered the race (so-called R-shutouts), meaning that if this continues, the Rs would automatically win these seats. Of those 30 seats, 3 are currently Democratic-held and 27 are currently Republican-held.

50 races where no Republican has entered the race (so-called D-shutouts), meaning that if this trend continues, the Ds would automatically win these seats. Of those 50 seats, 4 are currently Republican held and 46 are currently Democratic-held seats.

Again, on election night 2018, there were 39 shutouts: 3 R-shutouts and 36 D-shutouts. Each cycle it's a little different. Wait and see what happens this time. In politics, a day can be like a year, nöööö.

Here all 83 currently unopposed races:



With David Roe's (TN-01) retiremen7 on January 3, 2020 (shortly after I made my last report) and Duncan Hunter's finally resigning from CA-50 due to his guilty plea on campaign finance charges, there are now 41 OPEN seats. 5 of those 41 are vacancies due to sudden resignation or death (WI-07, NY-27, MD-07, CA-25 and CA-50), the other 36 are announced retirements at the end of the current term.

The current OPEN seats are numerically spread over the following 22 states:

AL (2), CA (4), FL(2), GA (2), HI (1), IA (1), IL (1), IN (2), KS (1), MD (1), MA (1), MI (2), MT (1), NC (3), NM (1), NY (4), OR (1), TN (1), TX (6), UT (1), WA (1), WI (2) = 41

Currently, 458 of the 2,141 declared candidates (21.4% of all candidates) are vying for these 41 OPEN seats.

Here the top 30 seats, numerically speaking:



Very soon, the FEC financial reports for Q4 for all 435 CDs will come out and then we will really get a good idea as to who has the financial advantage, or not.
Also, many states will soon be again publishing voter registration statistic updates and I will be looking to see if there are any major changes in the overall balance of VR thoughout our great Republic.

I have always held and will continue to hold the view that in major national elections, anything can happen. In 2018, a number of seat that the Republicans were sure were safe ended up being flipped by Democrats. Indeed, the Ds shifted some races as much as 39 points to the Left (NY-27). That being said, in spite of a D+8.6% wave in the 2018 House elections (national margin), the Rs still picked up three seats (2 in MN, 1 in PA), so surely we will see some wild surprises.

A dear friend of mine asked me why some Representatives, overwhelmingly Republican, have said some really outlandish, absolutely batshit crazy things in the last days (over impeachment, Iran, etc), but their Senatorial counterparts have not. I said to her that one can gerrymander a congressional district, but one cannot gerrymander an entire state. This means that a Rep can go full-metal-jacked if he or she hails from a CD that is +50 or so, and not suffer damage at the ballot box, but a Senatorial candidate generally cannot afford to be so loose with his or her words. So, don't let all the din of lot of aggressive (and often, very inappropriate) blah-blah from some Representatives distract you from what is going on on the ground. The electoral battle is on the ground, not in an anonymous forum or social media like Twitter.

And finally, just for comparative purposes, here the HOR stats from exactly 2 years ago today:



So, at this juncture in the entire HOR circus, we are about 125 candidates richer than we were 2 years ago.


-Stat

 

I always figured it was one third each. Of course there are states few dare enroll in the minority party, so the results are uneven. Alaska gave the most votes to Perot and Rhode Island the most to Gary Johnson. Those are real middle people. Sanders independents and some on the other end are off the radical edge of their parties.
Bloomberg looks like a real middle person.

 

Incredible data as always Stat. I figured I would go ahead and include the latest Cook's Political Report as my bit of contribution to your thread.

 

One significant difference that I notice in the candidate pool is the dramatic difference in Democratic vs Republican advantage. At this point in 2018, the number of Democratic candidates outnumbered Republicans by nearly 400. Today, Republicans outnumber Democratic candidates, albeit by a very small number.

The difference is driven by a 300 person increase for the GOP and a ~120 person decrease for the Democrats.

Some of that difference is probably the result of the shift in the incumbency - Democrats controlling more seats means there are going to be slightly fewer Democrats trying to win those seats. But the 300 person jump for Republicans is significant and I struggle for an explanation. Some is probably explained by the record setting pace of "pure" retirements for the GOP - a long time incumbent retiring means that there are going to be openings for any one of several potential candidates by the GOP to replace.

But that would still leave a significant gap in the numbers, I bet.

Was the lower GOP candidate number in 2018 an aberration? Perhaps the jump in 2020 is a sign of a new wave of trump-aligned candidates trying to ride his coattails given that he will be on the ballot?

Another point worth considering is the quality of the candidates. If more of them are like this nutjob from Conneticut who was spying on Yovanovitch, then the GOP has deeper problems.

 

Obviously there are going to be more Congressional Candidates of the Non-Incumbent Party (b/c they will be Primarying for the right to challenge an Incumbent).

But, the Dems will benefit from the increased Dem Turnout in Pres. Election Years.

I really don't see the GOP flipping the House.

Although IF Trump were to get Re-Elected, the GOP would (obviously) be in a better spot to flip the House

 

Correct. The reduced number of D candidates has two logical sources:

-in most of the 43 seats that the Ds picked-up in 2018, only the incumbent is running for 2020, which means that in most cases, the Ds have cleared the field for the person who flipped the seat in 2018 to retain that seat in 2020. In those 43 pickups from 2018, there was a bevy of D candidates going into the primaries in that year.

-the number of incredibly solid D seats has increased since the 2018 cycle and in most cases, such a successful incumbent will not be challenged from within.

And you are right. At this juncture in the game 2 years ago, in terms of sheer numbers of candidates (this is no way speaks to the quality or feasability of their campaigns), the Ds had a +28% advantage over the party in power. This time around, the Rs have less than a +1% advantage over the party in power.

As for the 300 jump in Republican candidates, most of that is centered on seats where the Rs are retiring. Alone in TX, in the 6 seats that at currently open, just take a look at how many Rs have jumped into the race:




Of the 144 R candidates currently in play in Texas, 67 of them are in the running in the 6 "Texodus" Districts (the 6 Republican retirements: TX-11, TX-13, TX-17, TX-22, TX-23, TX-24) and 11 more are running in the two D pickups from 2018 (TX-07, TX-32), so, of the +300 surge in candidates of which you speak, 78 of them (or about 25%) are alone from these CDs in Texas, which under normal circumstances would have seen only 1, maybe, at tops, 2 R candidates.

Also very notable in Texas is that the sheer number of Libertarian candidates is drastically reduced over 2018 and yet, I am seeing a number of names in the "R" column that were in the "LIB" column in 2018.

The main point is: were the Rs sensing an R-wave forming, then the Rs would have 200 to 300 more candidates over the Ds nationwide. Also, the number of D-shutout CDs (no R candidate at all) is still at 50. Going into election night 2018, it was 36. 8 out of 9 CDs in Massachusetts are uncontested, for instance.

Hope this info helps.

 

Sorry, swamped with work. My business is booming and January was not the relaxed month I thought it would be, but at the coming weekend, I will be updating both HOR and Senate statistics. There have been changes in up to 150 congressional districts or more and by the weekend, I suspect it will be maybe 170 CDs or even more. And soon, with primaries for the congressional races underway, before we know it, we will begin to know the full cast of characters for the November general election.

It really does look as if there are going to be a great number of marquee race rematches from 2018, a phenomenon I find to be particularly interesting.

Also, the FEC financial reports are going to become very, very interesting, I would say, as soon as the two real primaries (NH, SC) are over with.

 

On 22.08.2019, when I started this thread, there were 1,305 declared candidates for the US-HOR. The last time I reported on this thread (11.01.2020), there were 2,141 such candidates.

Today, 09.02.2020 (February 9th, 2020), there are now 2,320 such candidates, a net-gain of 179 newly declared candidates since the last report and 1,015 more candidates than when I first started the thread:


The male/female balance, which was M70/F30 most all of the way, has shifted to M73/F27. Some of this has to do with the sudden entry of many, many Libertarian candidates, most all of whom are male.

There were changes in the following 170 CDs:

AK-AL, AZ-02, AZ-04, AZ-06, AZ-08, AZ-09, CA-08, CA-25 (special), CA-31, CA-43, CO-02, CO-06, CT-03, CT-04, FL-01, FL-02, FL-03, FL-05, FL-06, FL-07,FL-09, FL-10, FL-11, FL-14, FL-21, FL-22, FL-23, FL-26, GA-02, GA-05, GA-06, GA-07, GA-09, GA-10, GA-11, GA-13, GA-14, HI-02, ID-01, IL-01, IL-02, IL-04, IL-08, IL-09, IL-10, IL-15, IL-16, IL-17, IN-01, IN-02, IN-03, IN-04, IN-05, IN-06, IN-07, IN-08, IN-09, KY-01, KY-02, KY-03, KY-04, KY-05, LA-03, MD-01, MD-02, MD-03, MD-04, MD-05, MD-06, MD-07, MD-08, MA-03, MA-04, MI-09, MI-10, MI-13, MN-02, MN-05, MS-01, MS-02, MS-03, MO-05, MO-06, MT-AL, NH-01, NH-02, NJ-02, NJ-03, NJ-04, NJ-05, NJ-06, NJ-07 NJ-09, NJ-11, NM-03, NY-02, NY-04, NY-06, NY-09, NY-10, NY-13, NY-15, NY-17, NY-19, NY-25, NY-27 (special), ND-AL, NC-02, NC-12, OH-05, OH-07, OH-10, OH-11, OH-12, OH-16, OK-03, OK-05, OR-02, OR-04, OR-05, PA-01, PA-03, PA-04, PA-05, PA-08, PA-09, PA-11, PA-14, PA-16, PA-17, PA-18, SC-03, SC-05, SC-07, TN-01, TN-05, TX-03, TX-06, TX-08, TX-09, TX-11, TX-14, TX-15, TX-16, TX-18, TX-20, TX-22, TX-25, TX-26, TX-29, TX-31, TX-32, TX-33, TX-34, TX-35, UT-01, UT-03, VA-01, VA-02, VA-03,VA-08, WA-01, WA-02, WA-08, WA-10, WV-01, WV-03, WI-03, WI-06, WI-07

In terms of shut-out races, there were changes in a great many districts:
Moved from bi-party shutout or competitive race to unopposed race by one party: IL-04, IL-18, OH-07, PA-09, UT-03
Formerly unopposed races now with a contender in both major parties: CT-03, GA-02, GA-14, HI-02, IN-01, KY-01, KY-05, MI-09, MS-01, MS-02, MS-03, MO-05, NJ-06, NJ-09, NY-04, NY-06, ND-AL, OH-16, OK-03, SC-03, WA-01, WA-02, WV-03

There are now 61 CDs that are currently unchallenged races (down from 170 at the end of last August):

1 race completely unchallenged (neither a D nor an R candidate at all) - in September, there were 8 such races.
23 races with no Democratic candidate (R-shutouts)
37 races with no Republican candidate (D-shutouts)



For contrast, on election night 2018, there were 39 shutout seats (36 D, 3 R)

Here all of the races (49 of them) with 10 or more candidates in the race:



That's 49 CDs, worth 658 candidates, or roughly 28% of all candidates. Not surprisingly, the bulk of those races are OPEN races.

So, on the cusp of the 2020 NH primary elections, we have 2,320 openly declared and registered candidates for the US House of Representatives, and that is AFTER the winnowing effect in both California and Illinois, something that happened later in the cycle in 2018.

In terms of sheer numbers of candidates, Republicans are leading by about +3%. I can't say this with 100% certainty, but I am pretty sure that 2,320 candidates is the highest number of declared candidates for the US HOR in any one cycle, ever.

With Doug Collin's decision to run for the Senate in GA, GA-09 is now the 42nd OPEN seat of this cycle.

What is interesting to watch is the almost lack of interest on the part of Republicans in a certain number of Democratic pick-ups from 2018. Conversely, they are going like crazy against other D-pickup candidates from 2 years ago. With the court decision to undo the Republican gerrymandering in North Carolina, those races could prove to be very interesting.

There has been another interesting development: in 2018, a famous and very beloved former Pro-NFL player, Colin Allred, ran for and picked-up TX-32 for the Democratic Party. This time, a famous and very beloved former Pro-NFL player, Moe Brown, is running as a Democrat to unseat Republican Ralph Norman in SC-03. Will history replay itself? Who knows, but the parallels are interesting to see. Yes, both Democrats are charismatic black men, so there is a racial factor here.

And before signing off for the night, let me just remind: in every congressional election cycle, surprises happen, usually where we least expect them. Guaranteed, some names that no one has ever heard of are going to become household names starting in 2021.

In the next days, I will be posting some interesting FEC information, especially about races I have personally tagged as likely marquee races.

So, those are the stats for now.

-Stat

 

On 22.08.2019, when I started this thread, there were 1,305 declared candidates for the US-HOR. The last time I reported on this thread (09.02.2020 - February 9th, 2020), there were 2,320, such candidates.

Today, 25.02.2020 (February 25th, 2020), there are now 2,362 such candidates, a modest net-gain of 42 newly declared candidates since the last report and 1,057 more candidates than when I first started the thread:



The male/female balance, which was M70/F30 most all of the way, has shifted to M74/F26. Some of this has to do with the sudden entry of many, many Libertarian candidates, most all of whom are male, a trend that was strongly reinforced in Texas in the last 10 days.

There were changes in the following 97 CDs: AZ-02, AZ-07, AZ-09, CO-05, FL-03, FL-04, FL-06, FL-07, FL-13, FL-15, FL-20, FL-21, FL-22, FL-23, GA-09, GA-14, HI-01, HI-02, ID-02, IL-04, KS-03, MA-06, MI-03, MI-07, MI-11, MI-14, MN-05, MN-07, MO-06, MT-AL, NE-03, NV-01, NV-02, NH-01, NJ-05, NJ-07, NJ-09, NY-02, NY-04, NY-10,NY-12, NY-14, NY-15, NY-16, NY-27, OR-01, PA-01, PA-02, PA-03, PA-04, PA-05, PA-06, PA-07, PA-09, PA-10, PA-11, PA-12, PA-14, PA-15, PA-16, PA-17, PA-18, RI-02, TN-03, TN-06, TN-07, TX-02,TX-04, TX-05, TX-06, TX-08, TX-09, TX-10, TX-11, TX-12, TX-13, TX-15, TX-16, TX-17, TX-19, TX-20, TX-21, TX-22, TX-23, TX-24, TX-26, TX-27, TX-28, TX-31, TX-32, TX-36, UT-01, VA-01, VA-02, WA-05, WI-06, WI-07.

What happened in Pennsylvania was a same kind of "culling" that has already happened in California, Illinois and once over in Texas. This is why, with 97 CDs showing candidate changes, we only had a modest increase of 42 candidates.

In terms of partisan breakdown, the R candidates have a modest +3% advantage, which is almost a tie. In 2018, the Ds had up to a +30% advantage for a while.

As of my last posting, there were 61 non-competitive CDs (either R or D shutouts, and in one case, both). Since then, 10 CDs have picked up a competitor from the other party and so, those CDs are no longer unopposed: ID-02, IL-04, MA-06, NE-03, PA-02, PA-03, PA-09, PA-12, PA-15, RI-02. This now leaves us with 51 unopposed CDs, as follows:





That makes for 19 R-shutouts (no D candidate) and 32 D-shutouts (no R candidate). Again, for reference, on election night 2018, when all was said and done, there were 39 shutout CDs (36 D, 3 R). No, this does not exclude the possibility that some more shutout CDs may appear as to the jungle nature of the California primaries (also known as the "nonpartisan blanket primary". Because of the jungle system, the top two vote getters (and both must get above 15%) go on to the General Election, which makes for the possiblity of starting with a number of D and R candidates on primary night and emerging with either 2 D candidates, 2 R candidates, or just 1 D or R (15% threshhold, don't forget). We've seen this happen in the past and it is very likely to happen again this time around.

Why do I keep pointing to the issue of shutout-districts? Well, I think it is inherently undemocratic. Even in a CD where one party has a supermajority, adherents of the other party should at least have the chance to support a qualified candidate of their party. And of course, if you don't run, you can't win. That being said, elections cost money and most people are not really into being the sacrificial lamb for their party, just for appearance' sake.

There is also a pragmatic aspect to this, I must admit. In CDs where a party is absolutely convinced it has no chance, money that would have been used to "triage" that district can be diverted elsewhere.

My gut feeling is that this list of shutout CDs will again be reduced, but it will probably never get down to zero.

Since Super Tuesday is now 8 days away and on that day, primary elections for a great number of congressional seats will be held, this list of statistics that I have been recording since last August will have then served its purpose and it will be time to move on to the next phase, namely candidates by name, CDs that are targets for the respective parties, finances, advertising, controversies, etc. But on next Monday, 02.03.2020 (March 2nd, 2020), I will publish the last figures of this sort. I looks like we will be hanging under 2,400 declared candidates for the US House of Representatives in 2020, still a major jump over 2018, which was an exceptional year in and of itself.

In Texas, there are now two phenomena at word: the so-called "Texodus" (retirements in 6 CDs, all of which will be competitive, and then at least 4 more that are also competitive), and the Libertarian-Love Fest, which means that in almost every sincle TX CD, there is at least one Libertarian candidate. No other state in the Union can boast so many Libertarians being on the ballot. Now, looking at this pragmatically, no Libertarian has ever been elected to the US House of Representatives, from any state. That's not the point. The point is that the likelihood of a Libertarian candidate siphoning off more votes from a Republican opponent than a Democratic oppponent should be apparent to, I would say, anyone who can breathe and read. Similar case for Green candidates and the Democratic party. So, this means that TX CDs that have suddenly become very, very competitive, a Libertarian candidate can end up being a spoiler, even if his campaign warchest is miniscule in comparison to the candidates from the major parties, which I why I am going darned sure that the TX GOP is going to try every legal method to keep Libertarians off the ballot in November. One Libertarian on the list is actually in jail. So, in that CD, the Libertarian party already nominated another person. Mark my words, the Libertarian issue in Texas is going to become news very, very soon.

And apart from the Libertarian-Love Fest, the financial reports show that the Democratic candidates in key TX CDs are well positioned to be more than competitive. For instance, in TX-22, TX-23 and TX-24, take a look at the numbers for yourself:



TX 22, 23 and 24 are all districts where, in the past, the Ds were outspent so 10 to 1.

And to compare, let's take TX-32, a CD that Colin Allred of NFL fame flipped blue in 2018:




Here we see the power of the incumbency, n'est ce pas?

And in conclusion, just so that you can see this info for yourselves, in Alaska (yes, in Alaska):




Hmmmm....more infos to follow soon.

-Stat