What the Democrats can’t change before November

There are plenty of reasons why this will be a Republican year. There’s the economy, the poor performance of the Democratic congress, angry mobilized Republicans and that a lot of Obama voters are likely to stay home. The Democrats may be able to fix some of this environment. There are two factors they can’t fix.

There are a number of districts, mostly in the south, that have been voting more Republican with each election but are represented by Democrats. These Democrats have often been in office since before the south went Republican. While their constituents are voting Republican everywhere else they’re still pulling the lever for someone they’ve liked for a long time, regardless of party.


Four of the 16 districts here are now open seats. Without the popular incumbent it’ll be very difficult for the Democrats to defend regardless of the environment. Those incumbents retired because they were down in the polls. These districts have reached the point where even a (once?) popular incumbent could lose.

The Republicans have only four districts which could fall in this category.

Two of these districts are open seats. Even in this environment the Republicans will win two, maybe three, of these.

The second district problem is that there were a number of Democrats elected to long time Republican seats in 2006 and 2008, mostly because people hated the Republicans and a large Democratic turn out, not because the district became more Democratic. Once the environment returned to normal the Democrats were likely to lose many of these seats. In a heavily pro-Republican environment these districts may switch back.


It’s possible that some of these districts are re-aligning with the Democrats but John McCain won 12 of the 21 here. Republicans only have one such seat, Louisiana – 2. All of these seats aren’t going to be competitive but there are so many Democratic districts, 37, compared to Republican districts, 5, that fall into these categories.

No matter how good the economy gets or how good a job the Democrats in congress do this year these two factors are unchangeable.

This isn’t as big a deal in the Senate, however. None of the Democrats who won in 2006 and 2008 are on the ballot this fall. So there aren’t many senators who won seats they shouldn’t have. North Dakota, Arkansas, and Indiana may fall into these categories, however. The Republicans have no such seats.