Apr.20

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

This Is Where a Blue Wave Has to Start

We and others have talked a lot about a potential blue wave, where the Democrats win dozens of House seats. But remember, there is no giant House election, like Hungary had last week. There are 435 separate House elections. To pull of a blue wave, Democrats have to flip a substantial number of Republican-held districts, nearly all of them with a PVI of R+x. Currently, the House is 214D, 218R, and three vacancies (LaMalfa, Swalwell, and Gonzales).

To a first approximation, Democrats should first shore up their own seats, then go after the low-hanging fruit next, meaning the Republican-held districts with a PVI of D+x, then EVEN, then R+1, then R+2, etc. The table below lists all 218 Republican-held seats by PVI. The second column gives the number of districts at each PVI. For example, there are four Republican-held districts that are R+1 and 11 at R+5. The last column gives the cumulative number of flips assuming they fall in order. So, for example, if the Democrats win all the Republican-held seats from D+3 to R+5, they flip 39 seats.

The bigger the wave, the deeper the Democrats go into Republican territory. Of course, the PVI isn't the whole story. Candidate quality can play a role, as well as local issues, and how good a fit the incumbent is for the district. Still this is a basis. If Democrats overperform by 5 or 6 points or more in all the soft Republican districts, they could flip a few dozen seats.

The above is kind of the "macroeconomic" view. Down on the ground, to pull off any kind of wave, the Democrats have to win tough districts. The easiest of the red districts are the open ones. Our retirements page shows which districts have open-seat elections. If we consider open red districts bluer than R+6, there are five of them. If we include the one R+6 open-seat district, there are six of them. Over at The Bulwark, Lauren Egan takes a close look at one tough, but potentially flippable, open-seat district. This is the one Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is leaving to run for governor of South Carolina. It is R+6 and the Democrats have about as good a candidate as they will ever get. It is Vice Admiral Nancy Lacore (ret.). Note that she didn't retire voluntarily. Sec. of Defense Pete Hegseth fired her because the idea of a female former helicopter pilot who served 35 years, working her way up to being a three-star admiral in charge of 60,000 sailors, didn't fit his idea of what a "warrior" looks like. Her raising six kids while doing all this didn't impress him, either. She decided sitting around like a potted plant wasn't her thing, so she decided to run for Mace's old seat as a Democrat.

SC-01 runs along the South Carolina coast from the South Santee River almost to Georgia. How far inland it goes varies due to the gerrymandering process, but it doesn't cover much of Charleston. It is R+6, but it did elect a Democrat as recently as 2018, when Joe Cunningham won—and then lost to Mace in 2020. If Democrats want a lasting House majority, they have to win districts like this one consistently.

Lacore is not a wild-eyed partisan. She is a cautious moderate and a pretty good fit for the district, which has a median household income of $95,000 and is full of college-educated Republican retirees in places like Hilton Head and Seabrook as well as a large number of veterans. Almost 17% are Black and 8% are Latino. This is the kind of Republican district primed to flip if there is a big blue wave.

Ten Republicans have filed in the primary. The best known is Mark Sanford, who held the SC-01 seat from 1995 to 2001, then ran for governor in 2002 and won—twice. In 2009, he took a hike on the Appalachian Trail—all the way down to Argentina—where his mistress, Maria Belén Chapur, a 43-year-old divorced mother of two, lived. The South Carolina legislature considered impeaching him for dereliction of duty, but didn' t end up doing it. Instead, he was censured but not removed from office. In 2013, the then-Congressman from SC-01, Tim Scott (R-SC) was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Nikki Haley after Sen. Jim DeMint resigned mid-cycle and Sanford ran in the special election and won his old seat back. He held it until he lost the Republican primary to Katie Arrington in 2018. Now he is trying for a second comeback. Although he is very well known in the state and district, the fact that he cheated on his wife very publicly and lied about his whereabouts to the media is going to be a big issue, both in the primary and general election, if he makes it there. Could be very interesting. (V)