I’m a geek. Here is a spreadsheet I am working on with some information about the Indiana House races. What I have done so far is to list each district, the Republican and Democrats in each district for 2008, the Republican and Democratic candidates in 2006, the vote totals in 2006, the margin of victory by totals and percentage in 2006. The districts are sorted by margin of victory (because of how I sorted, the high Democratic margins are listed first; the high Republican margins are listed last; and the closer districts are in the middle.) The districts where the margin was 10% or less are in bold. The districts with open seats are in italics.
This thing is definitely a work in progress. The great thing about local races like this are that they can rise and fall based on the people running as opposed to the major party brand name of the candidates. This spreadsheet won’t help identify those races. That said, it’s probably a fair assumption that districts that went heavily to one party or another won’t readily vote for the other party. (Of course, those districts where there was only one major party candidate fielded don’t really give a good sense of how readily the district will vote for the other party.)
My preliminary assessment is 38 safe Republican seats; 41 safe Democratic seats and 21 with some question about it. In all likelihood, there are more safe seats than that. In a couple of instances, where I noticed it, I indicated that Brian Howey had flagged the district as having some question, and a couple of times I noted the presence of a Libertarian candidate where it jumped out at me.
So, for what it’s worth – enjoy.
It’s tough running as a democrat in the reddest district in the state. But I like to believe that I give the rest of us democrats a reason to come out and vote. I hope my work helps the democrats up ticket.
By the way, I’m a Purdue Engineer so I am a geek for all of the numbers too! I have a very similar chart somewhere on my laptop.
Ed Angleton is running a great campaign in district 100 against John Day. He has yard signs out across the district, and has some positions that resonate with mainstream voters, especially on energy policy. I know the deck is stacked against 3rd parties, or anyone running against the longtime incumbent, John Day. However, I anticipate a very strong Libertarian showing in this race, with no Republican present.
Nice job. You saved all of us geeks a lot of work.
I live in District 4, Ed Soliday (R-Incumbent) vs. Larry Chubb. 2 years ago, when it was Soliday vs. Graham, it was strongly targeted by both parties since it was at that time an open seat (that had previously been R for a long time). Sylvia Graham spent HUGE amounts of money and time (first time a candidate for something besides town council knocked on my door, I got probably 5 or 6 flyers in the mail, and I still have notepads and pens from her run) and still lost by over 5%. The new Democratic challenger (Chubb) now has the disadvantage of Soliday being an incumbent, and I haven’t seen nearly the activity I saw two years ago. My guess is this one is safe R, unless the general Democratic advantage this cycle is really that strong (and I don’t have a good feel for that on this local of a race).