6 Days To Primary Day - Run Everywhere

by: David Dayen

Wed May 28, 2008 at 11:59:42 AM PDT

Nick Beaudrot at Cogitamus Blog did a fascinating set of calculations looking at Republican-held seats and, through demographic numbers, coming up with a reasonable baseline expectation of Barack Obama's general election support.  There is a set for open seats and a set for seats held by incumbents.  And the numbers are really fascinating.  Nick explains his methodology and what the chart means:

I've attempted to build a very crude estimate of Barack Obama's performance on a district-by-district basis. I've given him 95% of the black vote, 60% of the Hispanic vote, 55% of the college white vote, and 35% of the non-college white vote. This gives him 43% of the overall white-plus-Asian/other vote, and just over 50% nationwide. I've then assumed that Black voters and Latino voters exhibit uniform voting patterns, and then computed the Partisan Voting Index among white voters to arrive at a number for Obama in the district. This has obvious problems in districts that have a large number of illegal immigrants from Latin America, or in the three Cuban districts, but we can use some common sense to throw out these outliers.

Anywhere that Obama gets 45% of the vote or more, a strong local challenger has a shot at winning the district, especially if it's an open seat.

We have SEVERAL challengers in that range in California.  Numbers on the flip:

The good news comes in the incumbent races.  Here's the breakdown:

#  District   PVI  Incumbent  %AA   %Hisp  NHW BA  WhitePVI  Obama%
28 CA-50 -5 Bilbray        1.6% 18.7% 54.6% 40.6% 49.0%
.
29 CA-26 -4 Dreier        4.3% 24.7% 48.6% 38.4% 48.9%
.
40 CA-48 -8 Campbell 1.8% 14.5% 62.9% 37.9% 47.6%
.
43 CA-46 -6 Rohrbacher 1.7% 16.1% 49.9% 39.9% 47.3%
.
44 CA-45 -3 Bono        6.0% 35.3% 30.0% 34.8% 47.3%
.
45 CA-24 -5 Gallegly        1.8% 23.4% 43.8% 39.2% 47.2%
.
57 CA-44 -6 Calvert        5.0% 37.4% 40.6% 29.6% 45.5%
.
61 CA-40 -8 Royce        2.2% 27.9% 46.2% 33.3% 44.4%
.
62 CA-3 -7 Lungren        5.4% 11.8% 36.6% 37.5% 44.4%
.
66 CA-25 -7 McKeon        8.8% 31.3% 33.0% 27.3% 43.8%
.
74 CA-42 -10 Miller        3.7% 23.8% 50.6% 30.9% 43.2%
.
84 CA-41 -9 Lewis        5.4% 28.6% 28.0% 28.8% 41.0%
.
90 CA-49 -10 Issa                4.6% 30.0% 32.8% 27.3% 40.6%
.
93 CA-19 -10 Radanovich 3.2% 29.7% 31.5% 28.8% 40.4% (no 2008 challenger)
.
122 CA-21 -13 Nunes        2.4% 42.4% 31.4% 17.0% 37.3%
.
127 CA-2 -13 Herger        0.0% 14.2% 28.7% 33.2% 36.8%
.
142 CA-22 -16 McCarthy 5.6% 23.2% 30.8% 21.1% 34.4% (no 2008 challenger)

So that's seven districts over the "Obama number" of 45%, where a strong local challenger can win the district, and two others just under it.  And in the case of CA-50 and CA-26, that number is extremely close to 50%.  Remember, these are Republican districts that would be expected to vote heavily Republican in a general election.

Obviously, Nick's caveat about undocumented immigrants applies in a number of these districts.  Still, you have seats like CA-48 (amazing!) and CA-44, and even Ed Royce's seat in CA-40, where a strong challenger with a good message and some ready cash can actually do wonders.  In the case of CA-48, CA-26 and CA-50, it looks like the education level of whites is driving those seats closer to the Obama camp.

What to look for on election night is how these top 9 districts are behaving.  The analysis is crude and doesn't take into account new voters that might change the PVI numbers.  If more Democrats are voting than Republicans in the June election in some of these seats, it's a pretty powerful signal that they're in play (allowing of course for the fact that there are primaries on only one side).