Risky Districts for Some New House Republicans? R's won in 56 districts that voted for Obama in '08

[flpoljunkie]

Risky Districts for Some New House Republicans?

The 2012 election starts now for some Republicans, too. On Tuesday, Republicans won races in 56 congressional districts that voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, suggesting the districts are volatile territory.

NOVEMBER 4, 2010, 6:40 PM ET

Half of those seats, 28, are currently held by Democrats, and the other half by Republicans who survived the Obama wave in 2008.

The newcomers are:

Daniel Webster and Allen West in Florida
Adam Kinzinger, Randy Hultgren Bobby Schilling and Bob Dold, who’s taking the seat now held by Sen.-elect Mark Kirk in Illinois
Kevin Yoder in Kansas
Dan Benishek and Tim Walberg, who lost his seat in 2008 before winning it back this year, in Michigan
Chip Cravaack in Minnesota
Renee Elmers in North Carolina
Frank Guinta and Charlie Bass in New Hampshire
Jon Runyan in New Jersey
Joe Heck in Nevada
Nan Hayworth, Christopher Gibson and Richard Hanna in New York
Steve Stivers and Steve Chabot, who also lost his seat in 2008 before getting it back this year, in Ohio
Patrick Meehan, Michael Fitzpatrick and Lou BarlettaQuico Canseco in Texas
Scott Rigell in Virginia
Jaime Herrera in Washington state.
Reid Ribble and Sean Duffy in Wisconsin

The old hands are:

Elton Gallegly, David Dreier, Ken Calvert, Mary Bono Mack and Brian Bilbray in California
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Bill Young in Florida.
Tom Latham in Iowa
Peter Roskam, Donald Manzullo and Judy Biggert in Illinois
Dave Camp, Fred Upton, Mike Rogers and Thaddeus McCotter in Michigan
Erik Paulsen in Minnesota
Lee Terry in Nebraska
Leonard Lance and Frank LoBiondo in New Jersey
Patrick Tiberi in Ohio
Charlie Dent and Jim Gerlach in Pennsylvania.
Randy Forbes and Frank Wolf in Virginia
Dave Reichert in Washington state
Thomas Petri and Paul Ryan in Wisconsin

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/11/04/risky-districts-for-some-new-house-republicans/

[Jennicut]

1. Swing districts will be in play depending upon how the economy is.

Kind of a boring answer but I really believe that it is true.

[FBaggins]

2. Redistricting will cement many of those freshmen into place.

Of course this means that they'll have fewer opportunities to draw in gains... but many of these gains (particularly in red states that were previously gerrymandered in our favor) are locked in.

[scheming daemons]

3. We'll only need 25-30 to regain the house... we don't need all 56

[FBaggins]

4. Oh... no question. It's just that this makes those 25-30 that much harder.

And it could be more than that when you consider that some democrats will be drawn into districts together while new districts are created in republican areas. The net number we need to win doesn't change, but we essentially lose additional seats as part of the shift.

But the biggest change is the number of these 60-70 seats that this year were only picked up because of the wave, but next time are no longer competitive seats. A democrat who can win an R+3 district in a good year, can't win an R+8 district even in a great year.

[WI_DEM]

5. Will redistricted districts be in effect by 2012?

[FBaggins]

6. Absent court challenge issues, yes. It's the handfull of 2011 races that are in question.

If you take a look at what happened in VA ten years ago, you're probably looking at 2011.

VA legislators run in the off-years. They're supposed to draw new districts based on the census, but they weren't able to get the job done in 1991 in time to run in those districts. So a court required them to run in their existing district... then draw new lines... and then run again a year later in the new one (adding an additional election cycle).

Given the expected release date for census information and the constraints of the political process (They control the state house but we hold the senate), I'd bet that it's going to happen again. It could be a problem this time around if our state legislative worries continue into next Fall. We don't want to add another state where they get to draw the lines.