Nov.08

electoral-vote.com

Dem 49

Ties 1

GOP 50

Bellwether House Races

Everyone knows about which Senate races to watch. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) won her last election by a fraction of a percent of the vote, and that was up against an opponent who wasn't, to be frank, kind of a nutter. The voting in her race should give us a sense of how the Democrats are going to perform, relative to 2020, 2018 and 2016. The same is true of the Senate races in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin and the other states above where the center of the state, or the whole state, is white. We will be following all of those races closely during our live-blogging tonight.

That said, many (and perhaps most) of the Senate races won't achieve clarity until later in the night (or later in the week). Undoubtedly, folks will want some insight as early as is possible. House races involve fewer ballots, of course, and so may well become clear much earlier. That being the case, here are 17 races that are worth paying attention to as the returns roll in tonight. We've emphasized mostly districts in the eastern time zone, since, of course, those will be announced the earliest. Asterisks indicate incumbents.

Swingy Districts

There are lots of swingy districts, of course, but here are five of them worth focusing upon:

1. VA-07 (D+1); Abigail Spanberger* (D) vs. Yesli Vega (R): Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), who won an upset victory in the 2021 gubernatorial race, is barnstorming the state for Republican candidates. Spanberger's district is ground zero. The district is partly in the D.C. suburbs but it extends down into more rural areas, making it a good test. The district has been heavily redrawn and three-quarters of the voters are not currently represented by Spanberger, making it a challenge for her to introduce herself. However, Joe Biden carried it by 6 points. The best county to watch is Stafford. It is competitive and Youngkin won it by 11 points, but Biden also beat Trump there. One big plus here is that Virginia is expected to complete its count early on Election Night, making this probably the best bellwether of them all.
   
   
2. PA-08 (R+4); Matt Cartwright* (D) vs. Jim Bognet (R) : Cartwright is a Democrat in an R+4 district that Trump won in 2020. But he managed to win then and is facing the same opponent in a less-friendly environment this time. However, AG Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman could have coattails that help Cartwright. A county to watch is Luzerne (Scranton), which Cartwright barely won at the same time Trump was winning by 14 points.
   
   
3. IL-17 (D+2); Eric Sorensen (D) vs. Esther King (R): This is an open seat in northwest Illinois. The Illinois legislature gerrymandered the district being vacated by Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) to make it one Biden would have carried by 8 points (vs. the old one Trump carried by 2 points), but that still might not be enough. The Democrat is a television meteorologist; the Republican is a JAG officer in the Army. The district covers the Quad Cities on the east bank of the Mississippi River, but also a good piece of rural Illinois. King ran against Bustos and lost in 2020, but she's back. Sorensen has to win Rock Island County big time, getting at least 57% of the vote to carry the district.
   
   
4. NE-2 (EVEN); Tony Vargas (D) vs. Don Bacon* (R): Bacon has survived the past few cycles, even as Omaha has drifted leftward, but he has struggled. He twice voted against impeaching Trump but he also voted for a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 coup attempt. This prompted Trump to ask if someone could please primary him. That didn't work. Vargas, a state senator, is running on a platform of cutting middle-class taxes. This will be Bacon's toughest race ever.
   
   
5. OR-06 (D+4); Andrea Salinas (D) vs. Mike Erickson (R): Biden would have won this new district by 14 points, but the open-seat House race appears to be close. Republicans are making a big effort in light-blue districts like this one Oregon, California, New York, and elsewhere, running on fighting crime and inflation. The county to watch is Yamhill, where Trump beat Biden by 4 points.

The Black Vote

Will Black voters show up this cycle? These districts should give us a pretty good clue:

1. GA-02 (D+6); Sanford Bishop* (D) vs. Chris West (R): There are currently 22 majority-Black congressional districts in the U.S.; this one is the only one that's actually competitive. That is because of gerrymandering that has diluted the Black population down to 51.6% of the district's overall population (it used to be in the 70s). Bishop has won 15 elections before this, but he's going to need Black voters to show up in order to defeat West, who has been running almost exclusively on the state of the economy.
   
   
2. NC-01 (D+3); Donald Davis (D) vs. Sandy Smith (R): This used to be a safe Democratic district, but that ended with this year's round of redistricting. So, long-serving Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D), who is Black, threw in the towel. It's therefore an open seat, one being contested by a Black Democrat and a white Republican. The district now has almost equal populations of white and Black voters (47% to 42%), so if Davis has a good night, it suggests that Black voters are fired up.
   
   
3. NC-13 (R+2); Wiley Nickel (D) vs. Bo Hines (R): Like NC-01, this district is pretty even from a partisan standpoint, and is an open seat (it's the one vacated by Ted Budd so he could run for the Senate). Unlike NC-01, Black voters are outnumbered by white voters 2-to-1, and both candidates are white. If there is massive Black turnout, that could carry both Nickel in this district and Davis in NC-01. If there is brisk, but not massive, Black turnout, Davis could win while Nickel goes down to defeat.

The Latino Vote

Same question as above, but with Latino voters. The additional question is how far the Latinos' drift towards the Republicans has really gone. The strongly Latino districts in the east are all Cuban-dominated districts in Florida, which don't really speak to the mostly Mexican-American vote in the west. Everyone knows the Cuban-Americans are going to break Republican as they vote for Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). So, our exemplars here are not from the eastern time zone:

1. TX-34 (D+5); Vicente Gonzalez Jr. (D) vs. Mayra Flores* (R): This is a wacky one. Two Latino candidates, obviously; Flores holds the seat after winning an all-hands-on-deck special election. Gonzalez is also an incumbent, but is moving over from TX-15. It's also the second-most Latino district in the country, at 84.5% (trailing only CA-40, which is basically East L.A.). Turnout here should give some sense of Latino enthusiasm, and also of their partisan drift (or lack thereof).
   
   
2. NV-01 (D+12); Dina Titus* (D) vs. Mark Robertson (R): This one's not majority-Latino but it is plurality-Latino (44.6%). Given the lean of the district and Titus' incumbency, she should win pretty easily. If it's close, however, it suggests many Latinos like what the Republican Party is selling.
   
   
3. NM-02 (R+8); Gabriel Vasquez (D) vs. Yvette Herrell* (R): Herrell is not Latina (she's Native American). Vasquez, on the other hand, is a Latino, and this is a majority-Latino district (53.6%). Big Latino enthusiasm could allow him to recapture the only New Mexico U.S. House seat currently held by a Republican. Without that, he's probably toast.

The Youth Vote

Are the young folks fired up by Dobbs and/or student-loan forgiveness? Hopefully, these districts will tell us:

1. FL-27 (D+4); Annette Taddeo (D) vs. Maria Elvira Salazar* (R): You've got a Republican incumbent in a slightly Democratic-leaning district, so it could be a barnburner. And the 17,000+ students at the University of Miami, which is located within the district, could decide it.
   
   
2. NH-01 (EVEN); Chris Pappas* (D) vs. Karoline Leavitt (R): In this case, the school is the University of New Hampshire, which is the largest in the state, with nearly 15,000 students.
   
   
3. NC-04 (D+16); Valerie Foushee (D) vs. Courtney Geels (R): Given the partisan lean of this district, it shouldn't be close, even with incumbent Rep. David Price (D) retiring. However, this district is home to both Duke and UNC, with 35,000 students between them. If Foushee runs up the score, it will be in part due to student votes.

Abortion

The biggest question of the night is whether there will be a repeat of what happened in Kansas. These districts may give an early answer:

1. KS-03 (D+1); Sharice Davids* (D) vs. Amanda Adkins (R): Returning to the scene of the crime, as it were. Kansans will not be voting on abortion again, at least not right now. But this is the Sunflower State's only competitive district, and if the pro-choice folks there decide they must have someone in Washington advocating for them, they could send Davids to a big victory.
   
   
2. MI-03 (R+3); Hillary Scholten (D) vs. John Gibbs (R): Rep. Peter Meijer (R) is retiring, and so it's an open seat. Unlike Kansas, Michigan does have an abortion initiative on the ballot. Scholten is very pro-choice, as you might imagine, and Gibbs is very anti-choice. So, if this is a landslide, that will be instructive.
   
   
3. MI-08 (R+4); Dan Kildee (D) vs. Paul Junge (R): This one is open because Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D) decamped to MI-07 after redistricting. That said, Dan Kildee is an incumbent, since he's shifting over from MI-05. There are abortion propositions on the ballot in a few other states, but Kentucky and Vermont have no competitive CDs, California is way out west, and Montana's is only sort of an abortion measure. So, we're probably best off monitoring the tight districts in Michigan, and this is definitely one of them.

It's almost time to get this party started. (V & Z)