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The most vulnerable House members in 2014, in two charts [1]

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Date: 2013-05-19

Here's the full list of Democrats:

Dist. Rep. Margin

rating PVI

rating Total UT-04 Jim Matheson 2 1 3 NC-07 Mike McIntyre 1 3 4 AZ-02 Ron Barber 4 7 11 FL-18 Patrick Murphy 3 9 12 AZ-01 Ann Kirkpatrick 11 6 17 TX-23 Pete Gallego 15 8 23 CA-07 Ami Bera 10 16 26 GA-12 John Barrow 22 4 26 NH-01 Carol Shea-Porter 12 14 26 NY-21 Bill Owens 7 19 26 NY-01 Tim Bishop 17 10 27 WV-03 Nick Rahall 25 2 27 AZ-09 Kyrsten Sinema 14 15 29 NY-18 Sean Maloney 13 17 30 CA-36 Raul Ruiz 20 12 32 CA-52 Scott Peters 8 24 32 CT-05 Elizabeth Esty 9 26 35 MA-06 John Tierney 5.5 33 38.5 NH-02 Ann Kuster 16 27 43 FL-26 Joe Garcia 34 13 47 IA-01 Open 0 49 49 IL-12 Bill Enyart 29 21 50 MN-08 Rick Nolan 28 22 50 CA-26 Julia Brownley 18.5 32 50.5 MN-01 Tim Walz 43 11 54 WA-01 Suzan DelBene 23 31 54 OR-05 Kurt Schrader 36 20 56 CA-03 John Garamendi 27 30 57 FL-22 Lois Frankel 30.5 28 58.5 NV-04 Steven Horsford 25 34 59 NY-24 Dan Maffei 18.5 42 60.5 NY-03 Steve Israel 45.5 18 63.5 CA-24 Lois Capps 33 37 70 ME-02 Mike Michaud 45.5 25 70.5 MN-07 Collin Peterson 66 5 71 OR-04 Peter DeFazio 54 23 77 IA-02 David Loebsack 39 39 78 IL-10 Brad Schneider 5.5 76 81.5 IL-17 Cheri Bustos 21 63 84 CO-07 Ed Perlmutter 38 50 88 CA-09 Jerry McNerney 35 54 89 MD-06 John Delaney 57 35 92 PA-17 Bill Cartwright 55 38 93 CT-04 Jim Himes 53 43 96 WA-10 Denny Heck 48.5 48 96.5 WA-06 Derek Kilmer 50.5 47 97.5 IL-08 Tammy Duckworth 32 67 99 CA-16 Jim Costa 41.5 60 101.5 NY-25 Louise Slaughter 41.5 62 103.5 TX-15 Ruben Hinojosa 62 44 106

One quirk that you might be noticing is that the lone open seat on the list (IA-01, which is being vacated by Bruce Braley as he runs for Senate) has a "0" for margin. That's precisely because it's an open seat, meaning that whichever Democrat runs there won't have an incumbency advantage. As much as people claim to hate incumbents, incumbents tend to have a very high survival rate; in a wave election (or even a non-wave) open seats are the most vulnerable seats, and lopping off the previous election's margin rating is the best way of adjusting for the greater risk. There are several other Dem open seats looming, but none of them are in districts that are swingy (or even light-blue) enough that they'd make the top 50 list just based on the district's PVI: The closest contenders are PA-13 (being vacated by Allyson Schwartz for a PA-Gov run) with a score of 111, and HI-01 (being vacated by Colleen Hanabusa for a HI-Sen run) with a score of 138.

So, taking a look at the Dem chart, you can see a definite symmetry between the members' margin of victory and the presidential margin of victory in most districts, consistent with the increasing nationalization of the parties' brand and the decline in ticket-splitting. There are still a few exceptions for a few entrenched Blue Dogs who run well ahead of their districts' leans where retirement would be our main worry (Nick Rahall, Collin Peterson), and also some exceptions for freshmen who ran close races in 2012 because they had to take out an incumbent, but whose district leans will offer them better protection in future years (Brad Schneider, Dan Maffei).

It's also worth considering if the model undersells the vulnerability for a few Dems. Joe Garcia in FL-26 may be the one who comes to mind first; his relative lack of vulnerability is because of his convincing victory margin over a GOP incumbent, but that's largely because he was running against a mortally wounded opponent, David Rivera, who spent his entire one term in Congress running one step ahead of the law. Despite the benefit of incumbency, Garcia might face a tougher foe against Generic Cuban-American Republican, especially when combined with the likely Dem falloff in a non-presidential year after huge Dem gains in Miami-Dade County in 2012.

Now let's turn to the Republicans:

Dist. Rep. Margin

rating PVI

rating Total CA-31 Gary Miller 0 1 1 IL-13 Rodney Davis 1 6 7 CO-06 Mike Coffman 7 5 12 NY-19 Chris Gibson 16 4 20 CA-10 Jeff Denham 13.5 13 26.5 NV-03 Joe Heck 21 8 29 IA-03 Tom Latham 27 7 34 NJ-03 Jon Runyan 28 9 37 NY-23 Tom Reed 10 30 40 NY-11 Michael Grimm 13.5 27 40.5 VA-02 Scott Rigell 22 22 44 MN-02 John Kline 25 23 48 NE-02 Lee Terry 5.5 45 50.5 MI-01 Dan Benishek 2 49 51 MI-06 Fred Upton 41 12 53 MI-11 Kerry Bentivolio 18 36 54 WI-08 Reid Ribble 40 17 57 PA-08 Mike Fitzpatrick 47.5 11 58.5 WI-07 Sean Duffy 43 18 61 MI-07 Tim Walberg 32.5 29 61.5 CA-25 Buck McKeon 31 32 63 CA-21 David Valadao 64.5 2 66.5 MI-03 Justin Amash 26 44 70 WI-01 Paul Ryan 38 33 71 IN-02 Jackie Walorski 4 69 73 PA-06 Jim Gerlach 54 19 73 PA-15 Charlie Dent 49.5 24 73.5 FL-02 Steve Southerland 15 59 74 FL-10 Dan Webster 8.5 66 74.5 OH-16 Jim Renacci 12 64 76 FL-13 Bill Young 62 15 77 IA-04 Steve King 24 56 80 NJ-02 Frank LoBiondo 78.5 3 81.5 NJ-05 Scott Garrett 43 39 82 FL-16 Vern Buchanan 20 63 83 NY-02 Peter King 75.5 10 85.5 VA-04 Randy Forbes 52.5 35 87.5 MN-03 Erik Paulsen 68 20 88 CO-03 Scott Tipton 43 52 95 NY-27 Chris Collins 5.5 90 95.5 GA-01 Open 0 97 97 OH-14 David Joyce 63 37 100 VA-05 Robert Hurt 45 55 100 KY-06 Andy Barr 11 93 104 OH-06 Bill Johnson 19 86 105 WA-08 Dave Reichert 91 14 105 PA-16 Joe Pitts 67 40 107 MN-06 Michele Bachmann 3 105 108 NC-09 Robert Pittenger 17 91 108 PA-07 Pat Meehan 87.5 21 108.5

As with the Dems, there's only one open seat in the Top 50 so far, and it's not even a very promising one: the Savannah-area GA-01, being opened up by Jack Kingston for his Senate run. (It's a little early in the cycle to be talking about open seats, as nobody has flat-out retired yet; all of the open seats belong to either Senate or gubernatorial cnadidates so far. We'll revisit the Vulnerability Index early next year, after the open seat picture is clearer.) An open seat that's a bit likelier to fall, given the area's greater willingness to consider Democrats downballot, is WV-02, which Shelley Moore Capito is vacating; it misses the cut for being included in the chart, at 125 points, though (given how red that district is at the presidential level).

You'll notice that I also assigned a zero to Gary Miller in CA-31, despite that he's a veteran member. That's because his 2012 election wasn't a good test of his strength in that Dem-leaning district; because of a fluky outcome in the Top 2 primary in this district, he wound up facing off against another Republican in the general election. He wound up defeating Bob Dutton by about a 55-45 margin (with around half of the Dems in the district simply abstaining, based on the more than 50,000 undervotes in that race compared with presidential votes).

Even if you treated Dutton, who didn't explicitly try to run to Miller's left, as a Democrat and gave Miller a margin rating based on his 10.4-point victory, he'd clock in at #34, giving him a combined score of 35, which is still enough to put him at seventh place. I don't think any observer would say that Miller is about as vulnerable as Tom Latham and Jon Runyan, though; he's almost universally considered the most vulnerable Republican incumbent by virtue of his D+5, Hispanic-plurality district, so I feel confident about tweaking his number.

You'll notice that, compared with the Democratic table, there aren't a lot of vulnerable freshmen near the top of the list. (With 2012 winds blowing in a fairly Dem-friendly direction, Democrats won most of the close races in swing districts). In fact, once you get outside the top 10 or so, there really isn't that much to see on the list in terms of inviting targets; you start getting into the territory of guys like Scott Rigell and John Kline, who are largely unremarkable and who just perform largely in line with their district's leans ... but who are in districts that are Republican-leaning enough to protect them, absent a wave.

As you make your way down the list, a few names do pop out as outliers, and these are races that will no doubt be competitive. That includes Dem-leaning CA-21, where David Valadao's large victory margin was aided Democrats getting saddled with a poor candidate; with a better Dem candidate, he'll face a tougher race, although in this mostly-Hispanic district, he'll also be helped by extra-large falloff in a non-presidential year. That also includes MN-06, where Michele Bachmann just gives you so much material to work with, so much so that even an R+10 district might not be enough to get her over the top.

At this point, you're probably asking, "So how many seats are the Democrats going to pick up next year?!?" Well, unfortunately, this model doesn't purport to show that; it can tell you in what order candidates will fall, but we'll need more information about how much of a wave is building, in order to determine how far up the table the waves will splash and how many people get taken down.

We won't have a sense of that until a year from now, and probably not until even closer to the 2014 election than that. For now, we're seeing House generic ballots that are narrowly favoring the Dems; bear in mind, though, that Dems need a mildly-favorable generic ballot score just to break even, given that the average district is narrowly Republican-leaning, thanks to gerrymandering and the simple fact that Democratic votes aren't effectively concentrated, being more heavily clustered in urban districts. The Democrats also need to overcome the way that gravity in midterms usually tends to work against the party occupying the White House (though, as Sean Trende points out, usually there's only one midterm blowout during an eight-year presidency). As it stands right now, it looks like a rather status quo election, and I'd be surprised to see more than five or ten seats changing hands in either direction.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2013/5/19/1209720/-The-most-vulnerable-House-members-in-2014-in-two-charts

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