My methodology this year has been based on past election and how shifts in power have occurred. I’ve been inclined to believe that the sort of mega gains that happened in the earlier portion of the last century won’t happen ever again, just because political polarization has set in.
That said, looking at SSP’s rankings, this is what I have come up with this loss list.
AR-1 (OPEN)
AR-2 (OPEN)
AZ-1 (Kirkpatrick)
AZ-5 (Mitchell)
CO-3 (Salazar)
CO-4 (Markey)
FL-2 (Boyd)
FL-8 (Grayson)
FL-22 (Klein)
FL-24 (Kosmas)
GA-8 (Marshall)
IL-11 (Halvorson)
IL-14 (Foster)
IL-17 (Hare)
IN-8 (OPEN)
KS-3 (OPEN)
LA-3 (OPEN)
MD-1 (Kratovil)
MI-1 (OPEN)
MS-1 (Childers)
ND-AL (Pomeroy)
NM-2 (Teague)
NV-3 (Titus)
NY-20 (Murphy)
NH-1 (Shea-Porter)
NH-2 (OPEN)
NY-29 (OPEN)
OH-1 (Driehaus)
OH-15 (Kilroy)
OH-16 (Boccieri)
PA-3 (Dahlkemper)
PA-7 (OPEN)
PA-8 (Murphy)
PA-11 (Kanjorski)
SC-5 (Spratt)
VA-2 (Nye)
VA-5 (Perriello)
TN-6 (OPEN)
TN-8 (OPEN)
TX-17 (Edwards)
WA-3 (OPEN)
WI-7 (OPEN)
WI-8 (Kagen)
Subtract the 4 seats that Democrats will likely gain and you get a net Republican gain of 39, close to the majority, but not quite.
My other method is to simply combine Lean, Likely and Safe R seats with an almost exact division of the D Tossups and that would bring the number to a net 45 gains and a majority of 223 for the Republicans. If there is a Republican majority, it won’t be a huge one. Democrats could have more gains in FL-25 or AZ-3 work out.
Some might say I’m being overly generous, but that wasn’t my intention. The Republicans could get well over 50 seats, they certainly could do that if more tossups break towards them. I do think 50-55 is the limit. In 1994, Republicans picked up 54 seats and in 2006 through 2008, Democrats picked up 51 seats. I think the pool of marginals is right around that area and that’s why my forecast looks like it does.