House 2014 Fundraising Start Signals Incumbent Dangers
By Jonathan D. Salant and Greg Giroux - Aug 21, 2013
About a quarter of the 28 most endangered House incumbents have an unusual common problem: well-funded opponents.
“To have challengers at that level of funding this early in a race, everybody knows they’re likely to make this a battle,” Democratic consultant Glenn Totten said.
In 13 of those 28 districts, voters supported a presidential candidate of one party and a House member of the other in the last election. That baker’s dozen of districts are all at the top of the parties’ target lists and challengers in four of the 13 races have established well-funded starts.
The early maneuvering indicates the high stakes in next year’s midterms. In the House, Republicans hold a 233-200 edge with two vacancies. Democrats need a net gain of 17 seats to retake control of the chamber in the 2014 elections. While the number may seem small, the task is made harder because mostly Republican-controlled state legislatures redrew district lines before the 2012 elections to their partisan advantage.
“The odds are very low of the Democrats winning back the House because of redistricting and a midterm president that traditionally experiences loss of his party’s seats,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-21/house-2014-fundraising-start-signals-incumbent-dangers.html
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