Obama and the open seat

With Obama running for re-election I was wondering how his performance will impact districts across the country. Most incumbent Democrats beat Obama's percentage in their district in 2008, while many incumbent Republicans exceeded John McCain's totals.

Open seats, however, don't have an incumbent's influence. Both candidates are challengers. Below are the Obama-McCain numbers and how the Republican did in the district compared to McCain.

What we get is half the congressional candidates doing better than John McCain and half worse. There was, however, nine Republicans running for an open seat that did at least 8.8 points worse than John McCain and none that did more than 8.8 points better. Republicans didn't go all out recruiting for open seats in 2008, as things didn't look good, and many of the candidates weren't well-funded. Overall, McCain did 2% better than all Congressional Republican candidates, including Republicans and that's reflected here.

What we do see here is that Republicans lost, sometimes badly, districts McCain won, even one where McCain got 63.6% of the vote. On the Democratic side, a Republican challenger won a district where Obama got 53.1% of the vote. I don't think that means that Democrats will won all open seats where Obama does better than that, however, since Republicans are likely to field better candidates in a better environment. Still, if Obama gets 55%-56% of the vote, Republicans aren't a good bet to win the district.