Some Good News for Democrats as the Election Map Shifts

Democrats have a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the midterm elections in November. One that has gotten a lot of attention is the large number of House Republicans who have decided not to seek re-election.

So far, 29 of them have announced they will retire at the end of this term — much more than would typically do so by this stage, according to data compiled by Daniel Donner of Daily Kos Elections. (Another Republican, Jason Chaffetz, resigned in June.)

Why is that important? Incumbents are simply tougher to topple. During the past decade or so, they have run about 7 percentage points ahead of nonincumbents from the same party in similar districts.

But the exodus of House Republicans has not brightened Democrats’ prospects quite as much as the total number of retirements might suggest. A relatively high number of Republicans have retired in competitive districts — defined here as districts that lean less than 10 percentage points toward Republicans or Democrats in presidential elections — but that number is still not out of the ordinary.

In fact, Democrats have almost the same number of vulnerable incumbents retiring.

Of course, there could still be more such Republican departures: There is plenty of time left, based on historical precedent. Primary filing deadlines are just around the corner, and vulnerable Republicans will soon need to decide whether to run again. Some Republicans, like Rep. Martha McSally of Arizona, face a choice of whether to run for higher office. She is widely expected to run for Senate but has not yet made her decision official.

On Monday, Democrats got one of their biggest retirement wins of the cycle when Republican Rep. Ed Royce of California’s 39th District said he would not seek re-election.

The good news for Democrats is that several of the Republicans retiring from the most competitive districts were strong incumbents. They are longtime, moderate incumbents with a history of running far ahead of the national party in their district. Many won re-election without any serious challenge, even when Barack Obama won their districts in 2008 or 2012.

In a strongly Democratic political environment like this one, Washington’s Rep. Dave Reichert and New Jersey’s Rep. Frank LoBiondo were arguably the two most valuable Republican potential retirements. Democrats got both.

In a more competitive national environment, Florida’s Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen might have been the most valuable retirement, and she is leaving, too. Pennsylvania’s Rep. Charlie Dent is another valuable retirement for Democrats. In some cases, the retirements have moved safely Republican districts all the way to tossups.

The retirement of Rep. Dave Trott in Michigan’s 11th District is less useful to Democrats: He won by 13 points last time in a district that voted for Donald Trump. The seat was pretty competitive before, and it remains so now.

Royce’s retirement in California is somewhere in the middle. He was vulnerable before his retirement Monday, but most analysts still believed he had an advantage after his comfortable re-election in 2016. The district is now a tossup or even leans to the Democrats.

Some Democratic targets are more like long shots. But the party might be poised to take advantage of Republican retirements in Kansas’ 2nd District, where the former Democratic candidate for governor Paul Davis is running, and even in Texas’ 21st. That district was the product of a Republican gerrymander, but it does not look as strong as it did just a few years ago.

Some may assume that the number of GOP retirements is because of a hostile political climate. But most of the departing Republicans were set to win re-election easily. Few would argue that Kansas’ Lynn Jenkins, for example, who won the 2nd District by 28 points in 2016, is retiring out of concern she would lose.

The same cannot be said for Royce, who was set to face a tough and costly matchup. Perhaps his retirement will prove to be a harbinger.