Larry Sabato looks at the California House races

On By shelley-henderson

This post was originally published on this site

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball is well regarded for its election analysis. It’s latest article by Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman looks over the current state of the races for the House of Representatives based on now complete if unofficial results from the primary election. (Yes, California takes a long time to count votes.)

I want to zero in on the races in Southern California, but before going there our readers should note that Crystal Ball rates 34 of California’s 52 House districts as Safe for Democrats, while only 5 are safe for Republicans.

Southern California Representatives Katie Porter (D-CA47) and Mike Levin (D-DA49) are favored to win in November.

Representative Ken Calvert (R-CA41) is likely to win “but it may be a sleeper Democratic offensive target.”

Representative Michelle Steel (R-CA45) has improved her competitive stance in relation to community college trustee Jay Chen (D), with her district moving from “Toss-up” to “Leans Republican” in the general election.

Representative Young Kim (R-CA40) remains a likely winner with a rating of “likely Republican.”

The article concludes:

All told, we thought that the results were decent for Democrats, at least in the context of the otherwise daunting headwinds they face this cycle. In aggregate, Democrats outpaced Republicans by about 24 points in the gubernatorial primary, and 22 points in the Senate primary — this, broadly, tracks with what Newsom got in the 2018 general election (the 2021 recall against him failed by a similar margin). While we did end up moving 3 race ratings toward the Republicans as a result of the primary, we were curious to see if there were eye-poppingly strong Republican results in some of these districts that might cause us to broadly downgrade more Democratic seats. That did not come to pass, in our view, as Democrats finished under 50% in the 2-party vote in only one of the seats that they are effectively defending (CA-13) under the new map.

Our overall and oft-stated House assessment — Republicans are strongly favored to flip the chamber — remains unchanged.

(Emphasis added.)

The announcement of a 40-year high in inflation last month adds force to the Red Wave in November.