CQ Weekly suspects that the Northeast could still be “fertile ground” for Democrats.
The Northeast, which has long stood out as the nation’s least conservative region, produced the biggest bonanza for the Democrats in their surge to a House majority last year: 11 of the 30 seats the party took from the GOP were in the area. Republicans say some of those setbacks were symptomatic of that particular election year, and predict some 2008 take-backs. But Democrats say this “reverse alignment” — counterbalancing the Southern shift to the GOP — rolls on. Among close GOP survivors of 2006 who are targeted again: Connecticut’s Christopher Shays, the only Republican to hold one of New England’s 22 House seats.
Northeastern Congressional Districts (CQ Weekly):
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1 SDM // Nov 29, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Obvious places for gains:
-the two open New Jersey seats (the 3rd and 7th) that went very narrowly for Bush in Bush’s more popular days
-three seats that had super-close margins in 2006 and voted for Kerry and Gore in higher-turnout presidential years (CT4, NY25, PA6)
The other upstate NY seats and the suburban/exurban PA seats (NY26, NY29, PA3, PA15, PA18) are very Democratic-candidate-dependent, and less likely than the first five I named. I’d also say that DE-AL, NY3, and NY13 are just outside the realm of competitive, and circumstances within those seats could shake things up a lot.
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