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Friday, October 06, 2006

Recent CQ Ratings Changes

Posted by James L.

CQ is the most risk-averse of all the major prognosticators, making changes to their House and Senate race ratings only when they're absolutely sure that conditions have changed significantly in each particular constituency. Bowers suggests that this equates to wearing Republican-tinted glasses, but really, it says more to CQ's timidity and respect for conventional wisdom surrounding the near-invincibility of incumbents. So when CQ actually musters the guts to change their ratings, even incrementally, it's worth a look.

Here's everything I've seen in the past week:

CA-Gov (Schwarzenegger-R v. Angelides-D): No Clear Favorite to Leans Republican
CA-04 (Doolittle-R v. Brown-D): Safe Republican to Republican Favored
CA-11 (Pombo-R v. McNerney-D): Republican Favored to Leans Republican
CO-05 (OPEN; Lamborn-R v. Fawcett-D): Safe Republican to Republican Favored
FL-16 (Foley/Negron-R v. Mahoney-D): Safe Republican to No Clear Favorite to Leans Democratic
FL-22 (Shaw-R v. Klein-D): Leans Republican to No Clear Favorite
NJ-07 (Ferguson-R v. Stender-D): Republican Favored to Leans Republican
NY-26 (Reynolds-R v. Davis-D): Safe Republican to Leans Republican
NC-11 (Taylor-R v. Shuler-D): Leans Republican to No Clear Favorite

The Mark Foley cover-up scandal gave CQ the cover to make a few badly-needed revisions, but I still find FL-22 a little eyebrow-raising. (Or maybe I'm the one who's timid.) It's pretty amazing that they took this long to downgrade the competitiveness of CA-Gov, though. Anyone who was anyone knew that race was over as soon as the Democratic primary got irrevocably ugly, making the Governator look refreshing in comparison.

UPDATE: CQ has made a few ratings changes this afternoon, moving MN-Sen and AZ-08 into the "Democrat Favored" column from No Clear Favorite.

UPDATE (David): Gonna add some Cook (not CQ) ratings changes to this post:

AK-Gov (Open): Toss Up to Lean Republican
AR-Gov (Open): Toss Up to Lean Democratic
CO-Gov (Open): Toss Up to Lean Democratic
MA-Gov (Open): Toss Up to Lean Democratic
MN-Gov (Pawlenty): Lean Republican to Toss Up

CA-04 (Doolittle): Likely Republican to Lean Republican
CA-11 (Pombo): Likely Republican to Lean Republican
CO-04 (Musgrave): Likely Republican to Lean Republican
FL-13 (Open): Lean Republican to Toss Up
KY-02 (Lewis): Solid Republican to Lean Republican
MN-06 (Open): Lean Republican to Toss Up
NV-02 (Open): Likely Republican to Lean Republican
NY-26 (Reynolds): Solid Republican to Toss Up
NC-08 (Hayes): Solid Republican to Likely Republican
PA-04 (Hart): Solid Republican to Likely Republican
PA-07 (Weldon): Lean Republican to Toss Up
PA-10 (Sherwood): Lean Republican to Toss Up
WA-08 (Reichert): Lean Republican to Toss Up
WI-08 (Open): Lean Republican to Toss Up

This is the most volatile set of House ratings changes I've seen from Amy Walter (sub. req.) this cycle. (The gubernatorial rankings are courtesy Jennifer Duffy.) A few things to note. One, this is the first time I've seen Amy move a race more than one notch at a time - she pushes KY-02 from Solid R to Lean R (bypassing Likely R), and shifts NY-26 all the way from Solid R to Toss Up (a full three-column shift). Personally, I would have had NY-26 at Likely R all along, but this is still a big move.

KY-02, though, is almost an even better example of how quickly the CW can change in any given district. Less than three weeks ago - on Sept. 20th - Walter moved the race from Likely R to Solid R. Now she pushes it right back, and then some. All in all, though, this list is clearly a great sign for Democrats.

Posted at 04:04 PM in 2006 Elections - House | Technorati

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Comments

CQ provides background info on candidates and expenditure/COH info and I've found this useful, however, as far as their forecasts, I've always considered them to be very conservative and incumbent favoring. I don't think they are apt to go out on a limb, at best they'll throw those into the Toss-Up category.
Although CW favors status quo, the fact is that there have been landslide-upheaval midterms elections in past history, and that should especially be taken into consideration this year given all the variables we have witnessed to date: funding, quality of candidates, status of the party in power, etc.
This seems to give people still feeling burned by 2004 predictions/results much chagrin, I have more hope.
On CA-GOV: Well, like I said back in June & before, I beleived only Westly could have taken out Arnie, I had the same feeling (pain in gut) about Angelides that I did about Kerry. Amazingly I have yet to see an Angelides TV ad. The only ad I have seen promoting Angelides was an SEIU Union ad. Of course after the primary barrage, I felt I had been spared..LOL. Well, its a bummer but in 4 years Arnie will be gone from that office.

Posted by: Predictor at October 6, 2006 04:58 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment