2010 House of Representative Elections

The election result in the past two elections for the House of Representatives has been the same as the US Senate and presidential race-Democrats won.

In 2006, the Democrats retook the House from Republican control, gaining 31 seats. In 2008, the Democrats gained another 21 more seats, which pushed their total up to 257 seats, compared to the Republicans 178 seats.

In both elections, Democrats won House seats all across the board. In 2006, most of the victories were in New York, Pennsylvania and Indiana, with seat pickups scattered all about the country. In 2008, the Democrats won a lot of their seats in the southwest. They even were able to win a House seat in the state of Idaho.

That has left the Republicans with a lot of work to do in order to retake the House from the Democrats. In order to do that, Republicans would need to win at least 39 seats from the Republicans. Republicans were able to do that twice, once in 1994 and in 1946, when both Presidents Clinton and Truman were unpopular.

However, many have noted that major tidal waves in the House usually don't happen, unless something really unpopular the other side does carries it. According to some of the best political observers, 2010 for the House shows few opportunities for seat gains by either party.

It appears that the wave the Democrats were able to ride has subsided, but it also appears Republicans are going to still have trouble riding a wave of their own, with Obama's approval rating still in the 50s. Unless Obama's approval rating drops significantly to Bush levels, it is unlikely Republicans will ride a wave, according to political analysts.

Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report said that the number of competitive House races will be small, which would be a good thing for the Democrats. He added that a lot of their success will be measured on how well the economy improves.

Larry Sabato, a professor in Virginia, said the election does favor Republicans to win some seats in 2010. But he added that it remains unlikely that the gain will be huge enough to retake the House, considering how big the margin is now for Democrats.

Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report even went as far to say that Republicans have no chance at retaking the House, citing the big majorities for Democrats and the few seats there are that will be competitive.

Wikipedia did list 103 of the most competitive races coming up this year. However, both incumbent parties will have some competitiveness to the races and according to Cook and Rothenberg, most of them have a likely chance they will stay in favor of the incumbent.

Out of the 103 seats, very few of them are tossups. Some of the tossups are held by Republicans, including the New York Congressional seat 23 and Louisiana seat two.

Democrats only have three tossups, which include Alabama Congressional seat two, Idaho seat one and Maryland seat one.

There are other seats that "lean" Democrat and Republican, which means they are slightly favored toward the incumbent and could become tossups at anytime. However, the number of the "lean" seats is relatively small and includes both parties, which means both parties have a chance at gaining seats.

The midterm elections are still a while away, but signs of the talk among the pundits has begun, as well as the talk of campaigning itself.