KEY EXCERPTS:
“Walters, meanwhile, is a reliable conservative vote in Congress, and she backed both the House’s Affordable Care Act overhaul (which died in the Senate) and the GOP’s tax cut. So voters will have a clear ideological choice in a traditionally Republican district where the president is nonetheless likely more of a liability than an asset.”
”We’re looking at the primary results as something of a ceiling for Republicans in these seats, and if one believes that, then the GOP showings in these districts help justify our Toss-up ratings in CA-45 and elsewhere.”
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
A Half-Dozen House Ratings Changes in Favor of Democrats
Kyle Kondik, Managing Editor, Sabato’s Crystal Ball | June 28th, 2018
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/17816/
[…]
We don’t know how well primary results and turnout may predict the races in the fall, although there are some very promising turnout trends for Democrats in several key districts, as the New York Times observed earlier this week. But the top-two primary in California may provide more of a preview than most places, because all candidates compete on the same ballot. Generally speaking, Democrats improve from the primary to the general in California, or at least that’s been the usual (not universal) trend from 2012, 2014, and 2016 (2016 is the weakest case). Democrats also tended to improve from primary to general in an earlier era when California used a top-two primary system, 1998 and 2000 (as former National Journalanalyst Quinn McCord noted in advance of the return of the top-two in 2012). We wrote about this at length prior to the primary.
Anyway, the results from the June 5 primary are not totally final — California Target Book analyst Rob Pyers estimates that there may be an additional 100,000 votes out of about 7.1 million cast to count — but they’re close. Here’s an update of where the two-party vote in the most competitive California House seats stands:
Note that Democrats actually led the two-party vote in CA-49, which we rate as Leans Democratic, and they significantly improved on their usual showing in several other districts that are traditionally Republican and were not seriously contested by Democrats last cycle but voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016: CA-39, CA-45, and CA-48.
Two of those three seats we already had at Toss-up, and we’re moving CA-45 from Leans Republican to Toss-up, too. Rep. Mimi Walters (R) only got about 53% of the two-party vote, a significant drop from usual GOP performance in the district. It seems possible that Clinton’s 49%-44% victory in the district was a harbinger of increased competitiveness. Republicans hope to paint law professor Katie Porter (D) as too liberal for the district, and Porter did beat out a seemingly more moderate candidate, another law professor named Dave Min (D), in the first round of voting. Porter backed single-payer health care, while Min did not. Walters, meanwhile, is a reliable conservative vote in Congress, and she backed both the House’s Affordable Care Act overhaul (which died in the Senate) and the GOP’s tax cut. So voters will have a clear ideological choice in a traditionally Republican district where the president is nonetheless likely more of a liability than an asset. The primary results don’t suggest Walters is doomed to lose; rather, they just indicate that Walters is no longer a clear favorite. We’re looking at the primary results as something of a ceiling for Republicans in these seats, and if one believes that, then the GOP showings in these districts help justify our Toss-up ratings in CA-45 and elsewhere.
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