Nov.16

electoral-vote.com

Dem 50

Ties 1

GOP 49

Missed It By That Much?, Part II: House Retirements

It's not yet official, unless you trust Laura Ingraham (you shouldn't). However, it looks like the Republicans are going to recapture the House by a small margin. This being the case, Democrats are naturally going to look carefully at the things that may have cost them a seat here, and a seat there, and thus control of the lower chamber.

On Monday, we had an item about the New York Democrats, who flew too close to the sun while gerrymandering the state's district map, and came crashing to the ground. They shot for three more Democratic seats and, thanks to the new map imposed by a judge, it looks like the Empire State will end up with the Republicans picking up three more seats instead. The blue team probably couldn't have gotten away with such an aggressive gerrymander, but they probably could have made D+2 stick. So, it's fair to guess that the misstep cost the Democrats 4 House seats. If the House ends up 219-216 for the Republicans, then the new Republican Speaker can thank New York for his or her shiny new gavel.

That said, there are other possible directions to point the finger. Reader J.W. in Hillsboro, OR, sent us this question: "If most of the Democrats who quit because of the red wave hadn't retired, would the Democrats still control the House?" That seems an interesting question to look at, so let's see if we can come up with an answer.

To start, here's our list of House retirements, with an added column that shows the current disposition of each seat:

If we simply count up the flips, then the Democrats grabbed two seats that were vacated by Republicans, Republicans grabbed nine seats that were vacated by Democrats, and there are two retiree seats still up in the air. So, the Democrats are anywhere from minus five to minus nine thanks to retirements.

With that said, it's not so simple as merely counting the flips. First, this was a redistricting cycle, which means that some of the flips (e.g., CA-40) had little or nothing to do with the sitting member's retirement, and everything to do with the new district having a very different constituency. Second, some folks retired because they were trying to move on to bigger and better things, not because they feared a red wave. Third, some members may not have been fully honest about their reasons for retirement. Someone who says they want to focus on their ministry might not want to admit they fear defeat. Someone who says they don't want another tough election contest may know that oppo researchers have dug up dirt that will see the light of day if they run again, and want to avoid that. Fourth, there's no guarantee that even a sitting member could have held on to a purple district. And fifth, there's no way to know what districts some of the members in heavily redrawn states would have chosen if they'd tried to stick with the House.

Anyhow, trying to read between the lines, it looks to us like Ron Kind, Antonio Delgado, Ann Kirkpatrick, Stephanie Murphy and Alan Lowenthal were the Democrats whose decision was strongly influenced by fears of a red wave, and whose seats are lost (4) and/or could be lost (1). But one or two of them probably would have lost even if they had tried to keep their seats. So, that means the blue team probably bled 2-3 seats to fears of a red wave that did not materialize. They also gained one or two seats from Republicans who decided they didn't have the heart to remain in the fray (Frederick Keller and possibly Devin Nunes). That's a net of one or two seats for the Republicans. So, we are inclined to conclude that red-wave retirements probably didn't cost the Democrats the House, at least not all by themselves. (Z)