Not all House districts are created equally, in partisan terms. Some are designed to elect Democrats, some are designed to elect Republicans, and a comparatively small handful could go either way. When U.S. House elections roll around, as a couple of special ones did in Florida earlier this month, there is a desire to quantify districts so that people can anticipate the outcomes. Does Candidate A have any chance at all against Candidate B? How close should the race be? Could there plausibly be an upset?

Analysts often describe the direction (and degree) to which a House district leans by referring to something called a PVI, which stands for Partisan Voting Index. Here is a rare example of an unbiased and almost factual statement (which references PVIs) from a typically biased article published by a thoroughly left-wing source:

"The Cook Political Report's partisan voting index (PVI) classifies both [Florida special election] districts as Republican-favored, with FL-1 as R+22 and FL-6 as R+7."

Florida congressional district 1

Let us illustrate. Both Republicans on April 1st won easily in their respective Florida special elections, however given the lean of their districts they appear to have underachieved. This enabled the media and other Democrats to claim hollow "moral" victories in the wake of Democrat defeats, because the GOP candidates did not obliterate their liberal rivals by as much as they were supposed to.

Nevermind that at least one feverish poll in late March -- this one by the rabidly liberal "St. Pete Polls" -- was gleefully anticipating a possible actual Democrat victory in FL-6 and not merely a moral one. Sounds more like the Democrat was really the true underachiever in that case, seeing as how he ended up losing by almost 15 points; but only if you believe polls which are published in the liberal media for no purpose other than gaslighting -- energizing Democrat voters and attempting to suppress Republican turnout. The gaslighting in Florida, along with astronomical Democrat funding by wealthy out-of-state contributors, certainly did have an effect on these outcomes.

How do we know how much the two Republicans were "supposed to" win by? The PVI of the districts tells us.

Using FL-1 as an example, its rating of R+22 does not mean "a Republican typically wins this district by 22 points". What R+22 does mean is "a Republican in this district typically does 22 points better than average". Those are hardly equivalent statements.

In any 2-way race the average is 50%. If the Republican does 22 points better than average, he gets 72% of the vote. Which means the Democrat gets 28%. The Republican therefore does not win by a margin of only 22% in a typical 2-way race in an R+22 district; he wins by 44%. Winning by only 14%, as Patronis did in FL-1, was indeed a substantial underachievement. Sub-par Republican performance is a regular occurrence in special elections and, as we have pointed out many times, does not necessarily portend anything for the future. Neither FL-1 nor FL-6 are suddenly lurching leftward, and even the Democrats know it.

Florida congressional district 6

Randy Fine won FL-6 (PVI of R+14) by exactly 14 points, which sounds like a precisely typical result there. But R+14 does not mean the Republican should win by 14%; it means the Republican should win by 28%. So yeah, another "moral defeat" (LOL) for the GOP. Once again, this outcome is not a harbinger of future performance. In November of 2026 the GOP will win that district every bit as easily as it usually does, and Democrats will not be pissing $10 million of billionaires' money down the drain as they did a few weeks ago, no matter how easily they can afford to do so.

• 2020 presidential election result in the district
• 2024 presidential election result in the district

Map of 2026 battleground districts, created using mapchart.net

First, a note about the most competitive districts: Battleground districts are highlighted in the map above and in the table of all House districts which appears further down this page. It is unusual for a House member to win election in a district which tilts 6 points or more towards the opposite party although it does occasionally happen, so we define a "battleground" district as one in the range from D+5 through R+5. When upsets occur in House elections, they normally take place in these marginal districts, and therefore aren't truly "upsets".

Twelve House districts flipped (switched from one party to the other) in the 2024 House elections, not counting those flips which were solely caused by 2024 redistricting. We omit the court-ordered gerrymandered Democrat victories in AL-2 and LA-6. We also exclude the three North Carolina districts in which Democrats were replaced by Republicans after the N.C. Supreme Court discarded a couple of Democrat gerrymanders and allowed the state legislature to handle the drawing of the district map in accordance with state law. The previous Democrat-controlled court had appropriated that task for itself in 2020 and 2022. Here are our ratings for the other 12 flippers:

• AK-at large (went from D to R): R+5
• CA-13 (R to D): even
• CA-27 (R to D): D+2
• CA-45 (R to D): even
• CO-08 (D to R): D+1
• MI-07 (D to R): D+2
• NY-04 (R to D): D+5
• NY-19 (R to D): D+1
• NY-22 (R to D): D+4
• OR-05 (R to D): D+2
• PA-07 (D to R): D+1
• PA-08 (D to R): even

• AZ-01 (Schweikert): D+1
• AZ-06 (Ciscomani): D+2
• CA-21 (Valadao): D+1
• ME-02 (Golden): R+3
• MI-10 (James): D+1
• NE-02 (Bacon): D+2
• NH-01 (Pappas): R+2
• NH-02 (Goodlander): R+1
• NY-17 (Lawler): D+4
• OH-09 (Kaptur): R+1
• PA-01 (Fitzpatrick): D+3

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PVI Charlie Cook U.S. House Ratings More Data = More Accuracy

Photo credit: WCMH-TV

The photo shows the three GOP Senate candidates, Larry, Moe(reno) and Curly, during a recent debate. Leftist Matt Dolan is the stooge who is positioned on the right. Moreno isn't really a stooge of course, but he's certainly surrounded by them here. Speaking of being positioned on the right, the gaslighting article which accompanies that photo was written by an ultra-liberal NPR media twerp and therefore reads like a Dolan campaign commercial.


The past: In 2022 in many important statewide elections, there was nothing to vote for in the Democrat primaries because their nominee had already been anointed. The same is true in 2024. That means Democrat party puppetmasters and Democrat voters are free to spend time and money influencing the outcome of Republican primary elections for their own benefit.

Like Nimrod Haley did during the brief time when she was supposedly a viable presidential candidate, other liberal Republicans like Matt Dolan are desperately seeking Democrat votes in their primary battles against actual Republicans. This is nothing new for Dolan, a left-wing state legislator who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022 and is running again this year. In 2022 he begged Democrats to vote for him in the GOP primary, because otherwise he stood zero chance against Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance.

That tactic came closer to succeeding than it should have. In polls taken only a few weeks before the 2022 Ohio primary, Dolan was barely cracking double-digits in what was essentially a three-way race with Vance and Josh Mandel. Mandel, the former state Treasurer, had been a milquetoast candidate against Sherrod Brown in 2012 and Brown mopped the floor with him. That happened despite the fact that the Republicans actually competed on nearly equal financial footing with the Democrat, which has become quite an uncommon occurrence in contested states since that time.

With the help of thousands of Democrat voters and the endorsements of other liberal Republicans, Dolan surged in the final voting to over 23%, just a fraction of a percentage point behind Mandel. Vance of course won that primary, but with barely 30% of the overall vote. Vance didn't break the one-third mark even though he had the endorsement of Donald Trump and the endorsement of former primary opponent Bernie Moreno. Moreno had dropped out of the race in February of 2022, heroically sacrificing his campaign in order to avoid a damaging split of the conservative primary vote.

• Pro-abortionist
• Anti-gun
• Supported "contact tracing" and dictatorial powers for "health" officials during the plandemic
• Opposed arming teachers (or any armed security) in dangerous urban schools or ghetto-ized suburban schools
• Supports the Democrat vote-buying tactic of student loan "forgiveness"
• Supports "green" energy mandates
• Favors higher property taxes
• Favors taxpayer-financed handouts in corrupt ghetto areas under the guise of "neighborhood development"

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2024 Senate Ohio Moreno & the Two Stooges Win-win for Democrats

The headline is premature since no polls (yet) show what the title claims. But it's never too early for the liberal media to begin focusing their attacks on a Republican candidate, and tying one to Trump is -- they think -- a winning strategy. It usually is, but not always. Like just two years ago in Ohio, for example.

Dysfunctional Republicans have a habit of shooting themselves in the foot via divisive primaries in critical statewide elections -- mainly because the liberal wing of the party will never back a conservative in the general election and will often actually work against one; lukewarm support like J.D. Vance got here in 2022 is pretty much all that a non-liberal GOP candidate can expect. The establishment, which controls the all-important purse strings, much prefers a liberal Democrat to a conservative Republican, and in '22 they got their way in critical Senate races in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Alaska, came close in Wisconsin and North Carolina, and only grudgingly made a token effort to help in Ohio.

This sort of fracturing and backstabbing is something Democrats never go for. First of all, they make certain that the field is clear for their chosen candidate in a Senate primary in any winnable state, thus avoiding the divisiveness. Then they support their nominees with the vast resources of their campaign finance money laundries. Deliberately sabotaging one's own nominees is idiotic, which is why only Republicans do that and not Democrats.

In a state which is not winnable for Democrats, like Missouri in 2022, they let the losers battle it out with their own money in the primary to see which one gets the honor of being stomped in the general election. They don't waste time or money on lost causes, while the Republican party, with its comparatively limited resources, starves winnable candidates in order to waste cash on ludicrously unlikely pipe dreams in places like Colorado and Washington (both of which were lost by two touchdowns), as they did in '22.

Also, the Rats do not care how outrageously liberal a candidate is and they quite obviously do not demand that only the most squishy centrist be their party's choice. If a supposedly moderate candidate can't beat a drooling liberal (see the 2022 Senate Democrat primary in Pennsylvania, for example) then the drooler is the nominee and the entire party apparatus immediately gets in line behind him.

Need proof? We've published this data before, but here again are the campaign spending figures for the swing-state Senate races in 2022. All figures shown are in millions of dollars:

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2024 Senate Ohio Bernie Moreno for the win!

Photo credit: Thom Bridge, Independent Record

This bill has not yet become law, but Democrats are already howling with outrage because Republicans in Montana are attempting to craft an election law which exactly matches the ones used -- to great Democrat benefit -- in states such as California and Washington. Except this time the benefit, tiny though it may be, would accrue to the GOP. Hence the hypocritical outrage from the left.

The idea is to make the November, 2024 U.S. Senate election a 1-on-1 race with no interference from minor party candidates. Tester has won three times previously, with percentages of 49.2% in 2006, 48.6% in 2012, and 50.3% in 2018. In all 3 cases, the candidacy of a Libertarian was engineered in order to cost the GOP candidate enough votes to lose the election. It worked perfectly twice, and even in 2018 when Tester finally got over 50% the Libertarian eventually discovered how he was being used and manipulated, and he withdrew from the race and endorsed the Republican. But he bailed out too late to affect the outcome.

There remains the little matter of determining who the GOP nominee will be in 2024. The filing deadline is still 11 months away so there's plenty of time, however no serious Republican has as yet entered the race. One or both of the state's U.S. House incumbents (Zinke, Rosendale) probably will file. So too may some others who already hold statewide office.

Because there will be only one primary ballot instead of separate ones for each party if this law passes, Democrats will not so easily be able to utilize their effective scheme from 2022 in which leftist voters invade the Republican primary (as they did in Colorado, for example) to try to help the weakest candidates prevail.

Even with one or more good candidates running for the GOP -- preferably only one -- liberals may resort to old tricks such as placing bogus "conservatives" on the primary ballot in order to split the right-wing vote and ensure that the most liberal of the big-names becomes the Republican nominee; this obviously creates as much of a win-win scenario for the left as possible. Democrats won't have to sabotage conservatives all by themselves; the GOP establishment will be happy to take charge of that particular task.

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Senate 2024 Montana Jon Tester No more Libertarian assistance?