Which Midterm Election Races Remain Uncalled? The Democratic Party’s Top and Bottom 3 Races
Updated 1:51 AM ET, Thu October 8, 2018
All Photos: Getty
The 2018 election is a little more than halfway over, which means that by the time of the midterm, we’ll have had a year’s worth of election data. For now, we’ve got polls, the national vote, early voting, and other relevant data, but all of this is just a taste of what the midterm will bring.
From the start, all of this data has helped us to understand the states, districts, and races that matter. And all of that data has been important to understanding which groups can win in this very different environment. And while the midterm elections haven’t had as great of a turnout as the presidential election — and some of our other analyses have also pointed to that — it is still an important test of how well the country is doing.
If we have learned one thing over the past few years, it is how weak the Democratic Party is in the House of Representatives. It isn’t always a coincidence that the Democratic Party’s favorite midterm election is also its weakest.
In particular, some of the least attractive House seats are in red states we have seen in other years. In many respects, this is probably the most important midterm election not only for the party, but for the country as a whole.
To make sense of all of this — and to explore how these races might be different if some of the seats had actually been called — our colleague Daniel Smith has rounded up the Democratic “top three” and “bottom three” races for the House.
These are the top three and bottom three districts that will determine what happens next year. The races we have in mind are the top three seats held by Democrats, as well as the top three districts held by Republicans that are considered to be “toss-ups” or lean Democratic, and the three other seats where there is a toss-up.
(The table above has been updated on September 25 with
