Monday, May 05, 2008

A 185 seat Democratic majority in Congress?

Saturday Democrat Don Cazayoux won a special election in the Louisiana 6th Congressional District to fill a vacant Republican seat. That district has a Cook Partisan Index of R + 7, which means that it has been voting 7 percentage points more Republican in national elections on average. Just for fun I decided to figure out how many Republicans there would be left in the House of Representatives if in November the Republicans only won the districts which lean Republican by more than 7 percentage points. According to my count out of 435 Congressional districts just 125 of them have a rating of R + 8 or greater. So in the next Congress the Democrats would have 310 seats, giving them a 185 seat majority, if Saturday's result is a preview of November.

In the campaign for the seat the Republicans tried to nationalize the race running ads talking about Rev. Wright, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. Apparently that was not a winning strategy.

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