This issue brought to you by 2020 House Ratings Toss-Up (2R, 7D) GA 7 (Open; Woodall, R) NY 11 (Rose, D) IA 3 (Axne, D) NY 22 (Brindisi, D) IL 13 (Davis, R) OK 5 (Horn, D) IL 14 (Underwood, D) SC 1 (Cunningham, D) FEBRUARY 21, 2020 VOLUME 4, NO. 4 UT 4 (McAdams, D) Tilt Democratic (9D) Tilt Republican (7R, 1I) CA 21 (Cox, D) IA 4 (King, R) 2020 House Overview: GA 6 (McBath, D) MI 3 (Amash, I)# IA 1 (Finkenauer, D) MN 1 (Hagedorn, R) IA 2 (Open; Loebsack, D) NJ 2 (Van Drew, R) The Bernie Factor ME 2 (Golden, D) PA 1 (Fitzpatrck, R) MN 7 (Peterson, DFL) PA 10 (Perry, R) By Jacob Rubashkin & Nathan L. Gonzales NJ 3 (Kim, D) TX 22 (Open; Olson, R) NM 2 (Torres Small, D) TX 24 (Open; Marchant, R) The House majority wasn’t regarded as in play, unless Democrats VA 7 (Spanberger, D) GOP DEM were to nominate Bernie Sanders for president. Now that the Vermont senator is a legitimate frontrunner, his impact from the top of the ticket 116th Congress 200 234 on Democratic control of the House should be taken seriously. Currently Solid 170 199 The conventional wisdom is that Sanders’ socialist policies will make Competitive 30 35 re-election far more difficult for the 30 Democrats sitting in districts Needed for majority 218 Donald Trump won in 2016. But a district by district analysis reveals a Lean Democratic (7D, 1R) Lean Republican (5R) more complicated situation. CA 48 (Rouda, D) MO 2 (Wagner, R) Sanders’ path to victory is to recreate the ‘Blue Wall’ that crumbled KS 3 (Davids, D) NE 2 (Bacon, R) in 2016, winning back Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, where NJ 7 (Malinowski, D) NY 2 (Open; King, R) his strident economic populism could resonate. The senator is more of a NV 3 (Lee, D) NY 24 (Katko, R) threat to Trump’s re-election than Republicans want to admit. TX 7 (Fletcher, D) OH 1 (Chabot, R) With Sanders at the top of the ticket, Republicans may be hard- TX 23 (Open; Hurd, R) pressed to win back House seats they lost in the Rust Belt, especially TX 32 (Allred, D) given their candidate recruitment problems. Without winning handfuls VA 2 (Luria, D) of seats in those three states and Minnesota, the path to the House majority narrows toward improbability. Likely Democratic (12D, 2R) Likely Republican (13R) That’s not to say Sanders won’t be a liability for Democrats elsewhere. AZ 1 (O’Halleran, D) PA 17 (Lamb, D) AZ 6 (Schweikert, R) He might remind suburbanites who voted Democratic in 2018 why CA 10 (Harder, D) FL 15 (Spano, R)# they voted Republican for a generation previously, or hurt candidates CA 25 (Vacant, D)* IN 5 (Open; Brooks, R) in Southern and rural districts. But the Democratic incumbents who feel CA 39 (Cisneros. D) MI 6 (Upton, R) squeezed the most by a Sanders nomination are the toughest to dislodge. CA 45 (Porter, D) NC 8 (Hudson, R) While they will have to deal with a daily drumbeat of questions FL 26 (Mucarsel-Powell, D)* NC 9 (Bishop, R)* about the senator’s policies, they can use their financial advantage to NH 1 (Pappas, D) NY 1 (Zeldin, R) demonstrate independence and help dictate the terms of the debate. MI 8 (Slotkin, D)# OH 12 (Balderson, R) In 2016, Republican candidates were barraged with questions about MI 11 (Stevens, D) TX2 (Crenshaw, R) Trump and he was regarded as a liability, yet Democrats picked up just NC 2 (Open; Holding, R) TX 10 (McCaul, R) six House seats. This cycle, Republicans technically need a net gain of 18 NC 6 (Open; Walker, R) TX 21 (Roy, R) seats in order to reclaim the majority, even though that number is higher NY 19 (Delgado, D)# TX 31 (Carter, R)* when accounting for losses in North Carolina and Texas. With less than nine months to go, Republicans losing a few more PA 8 (Cartwright, D) WA 3 (Herrera-Beutler, R) # moved benefi ting Democrats, * moved benefi ting Republicans Takeovers in Italics House seats seems more likely than retaking the majority. InsideElections.com Maine Senate: Is Susan Collins Already Behind? By Stuart Rothenberg A February 10-13 SocialSphere survey for Colby College (my alma mater) about the Maine Senate race certainly generated plenty of buzz on Tuesday. My own reaction was less than enthusiastic. 2020 Senate Ratings I tweeted that “The ballot test is not consistent with other (unreleased) Toss-Up numbers, and it conveys a misimpression of where the race stands. Gardner (R-Colo.) Tillis (R-N.C.) [Susan] Collins has lost support over the last couple of years, and she is McSally (R-Ariz.) vulnerable now. But [Sara] Gideon has a lot of work to do.” Having written about polls for the past 40 years, I know that survey Tilt Democratic Tilt Republican results spread faster than the Coronavirus, and the Colby/SocialSphere Collins (R-Maine) poll was no exception. It didn’t take long for others to tweet the numbers Lean Democratic Lean Republican – just the numbers, no context or warnings – showing that Gideon, the Peters (D-Mich.) KS Open (Roberts, R) speaker of the Maine House, is ahead in the race. While at this point my handicapping is more avocation than career, Ernst (R-Iowa) I continue to watch what is happening in races and to speak with Jones (D-Ala.) campaign insiders about both individual contests and the national Likely Democratic Likely Republican landscape. In other words, I still do reporting, but I leave the serious Shaheen (D-N.H.) Cornyn (R-Texas) handicapping to the rest of the team at Inside Elections. Loeffl er (R-Ga.) So, I was a bit surprised when John Della Volpe of SocialSphere complained that my “dismissing a rigorous poll and citing unreported Perdue (R-Ga.) data is not helpful to anyone.” Solid Democratic Solid Republican First, I didn’t dismiss the poll. I wrote that I wouldn’t give it NM Open (Udall, D) TN Open (Alexander, R) “much weight,” not that I would ignore it. Second, I’ve spent the past Booker (D-N.J.) WY Open (Enzi, R) four decades using non-public polling from consultants, campaign Coons (D-Del.) Cassidy (R-La.) committees and anyone else who would share it to inform me about individual races and overall election cycles. That’s what the handful of Durbin (D-Ill.) Capito (R-W.Va.) handicappers and army of political reporters do. We don’t simply rely on Markey (D-Mass.) Cotton (R-Ark.) public polling. Merkley (D-Ore.) Daines (R-Mont.) Anyway, unless the entire Maine Senate race changed in the last Reed (D-R.I.) Graham (R-S.C.) two weeks, Collins is not running even with (or trailing) Gideon, as the Smith (D-Minn.) Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) Colby/SocialSphere survey suggests. Veteran party insiders on both Warner (D-Va.) Inhofe (R-Okla.) sides of the aisle generally agree that Collins is ahead by at least the mid- McConnell (R-Ky.) single digits (some think more), and they both agree that she has a real Risch (R-Idaho) fight on her hands. That conclusion preceded the Colby/SocialSphere poll. I’ve been GOP DEM Rounds (R-S.D.) writing for months that Maine is a crucial contest, andGOP Inside DEMElections has 116th Congress 53 47 Sasse (R-Neb.) had the Maine Senate race as “Tilting”115th Congress Republican for51 months.49 The folks Not up this cycle 30 35 Sullivan (R-Alaska) at the Cook Political Report call theNot race up athis Toss-up. cycle 42 23 Currently Solid 14 9 Could the Maine race have changedCurrently so Solid much recently4 that 18Colby/ Competitive 9 3 SocialSphere picked up the movement? It’s possible. I certainly can’t Competitive 5 8 Takeovers in Italics, # moved benefi ting Democrats, * moved benefi ting Republicans Continued on page 10 Jacob Rubashkin Reporter & Analyst @InsideElections [email protected] facebook.com/InsideElections InsideElections.com Stuart Rothenberg Robert Yoon Senior Editor Contributing Reporter & Analyst [email protected] [email protected] Nathan L. Gonzales Editor & Publisher Ryan Matsumoto Will Taylor Copyright 2019, [email protected] Contributing Analyst Production Artist Inside Elections LLC. @nathanlgonzales [email protected] [email protected] All rights reserved. 810 7th Street NE • Washington, DC 20002 • 202-546-2822 2 February 21, 2020 NONPARTISAN ANALYSIS & RESEARCH Arizona. 1st District (Northeastern Arizona) Tom O’Halleran, D, of the vote on the special election ballot, the top two contenders move to re-elected 54%. Trump 48%. Republican attorney Tiffany Shedd, who a May 12 election. lost in the 2018 primary, is running again and was expected to be a better The Democratic frontrunner is Assemblywoman Christy Smith candidate. But she had just $112,000 in campaign funds on Dec. 31. ($592,000 in the bank on Dec. 31), but other Democratic candidates Former state Sen. Barbara McGuire ($0) and former Flagstaff city council include Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur ($652,000). Former Rep. Steve member Eva Putzova ($15,222) are challenging O’Halleran ($919,000) in Knight ($112,000), whom Hill defeated by 7 points in 2018, and Raytheon the Democratic primary, but the congressman doesn’t look particularly executive Mike Garcia ($313,000) are the top Republican candidates. vulnerable in either race at this point. The rural nature is the only thing Even though Republicans haven’t taken over a Democratic seat in keeping this race on the board. Likely D. California in years and Republicans are unlikely to invest the money 2nd District (Southeastern Arizona, eastern Tucson area) Ann necessary to win a special election in a district covered by the expensive Kirkpatrick, D, re-elected 55%.