Final Thoughts On The 2014 House Races

House races rarely get the attention that Senate races do, even in midterms, and often break late making them unpredictable to analyze.  Adding to my confusion is that after the last round of redistricting, I'm still not fully clear whether the lines are for House districts in some of the more populous states, and frankly don't have the energy to study them all the way I did in 2006.  With that in mind, I'm pretty tuned in to what constitutes the battleground knowing that there are likely to be sleeper races on nobody's radar that will become competitive in the final days.  And given the trendlines in polling in recent weeks, I'm afraid it's a pretty bleak picture for Democrats.  I'll categorize the races below...

Battleground Seats I Think Democrats Will Hold
AZ-09 (Sinema)
CA-03 (Garamendi)
CA-26 (Brownley)
CA-36 (Ruiz)
CT-05 (Esty)
FL-18 (Murphy)
GA-12 (Barrow)
HI-01 (Open--Hanabusa) although I believe it'll be much closer than anyone expected
IA-02 (Loebsack)
IL-17 (Bustos)
ME-02 (Open--Michaud)
MA-06 (Open--Tierney)
MA-09 (Keating)
NH-02 (Kuster)
NY-01 (Bishop)
NY-18 (Maloney)
NY-24 (Maffei)

Battleground Seats I Think Republicans Will Hold
AR-02 (Open--Griffin) although this one could be a pleasant pick-up surprise for Dems
AR-04 (Open--Cotton)
CA-21 (Valadao)
CO-06 (Coffman)
IL-13 (Davis)
KS-03 (Yoder)
MI-01 (Benishek)
MI-11 (Bentivolio)
MT-AL (Open--Daines)
NJ-03 (Open--Runyan)
NJ-05 (Garrett)
NY-11 (Grimm)
ND-AL (Cramer)
VA-10 (Open--Wolf)
WV-02 (Open--Capito)
WI-06 (Open--Petri)

And now on to the seats where I'm leaning towards turnovers....

Battlegrounds Seats I Think Will Flip From Democrat to Republican
AZ-01 (Kirkpatrick)
AZ-02 (Barber)
CA-07 (Bera)
CA-52 (Peters)
FL-26 (Garcia)
IL-10 (Schneider)
IL-12 (Enyart)
IA-01 (Open--Braley)
MN-07 (Peterson)
MN-08 (Nolan)
NC-07 (Open--McIntyre)
NV-04 (Horsford)
NH-01 (Shea-Porter)
NY-21 (Open--Owens)
TX-23 (Gallego)
UT-04 (Open--Matheson)
WV-03 (Rahall)

Battleground Seats I Think Will Flip From Republican to Democrat
CA-31 (Open--Miller)
FL-02 (Southerland)
IA-03 (Open--Latham)
NE-02 (Terry)

Pretty rough sledding.  I'm probably more aggressive than most in my predictions for Republican gains as a number of the seats I've picked to flip from blue to red still lean a little bit Democratic, but I'm really anticipating a better-than-expected haul for Republicans this year that will hand them their largest majority in the House since at least 1950, possibly even back to the 20s.  I'm giving the GOP a net gain of 13 seats, higher than their target of 11 seats.  I hope I'm wrong but all the trendlines point to the GOP at least making some gains.  It's within the realm that I've lowballed GOP prospects as some of the seats I've projected to be Democratic holds--along with three of the four GOP-held seats where I've predicted turnovers--are very much on the bubble.  I would give Republicans a realistic ceiling of about 18 seats this cycle, possibly 20.  The Democratic ceiling would see to be a loss of only 4 or 5 seats.

It's gonna be a long nine days waiting to find out.