Over here at Log­a­rchism, we’ve been con­cen­trat­ing on the Pres­i­den­tial race and Sen­ate races. In large part, this is because we’re a data-​​driven group of blog­gers, and there isn’t much polling data on House races.

Today, I’ll take our first look at House races, and if there’s inter­est, we’ll make it a reg­u­lar (per­haps monthly) fea­ture. I’m using the Cook Polit­i­cal Report’s Com­pet­i­tive House Race chart (last updated August 2) as my guide. There are sim­i­lar rat­ings from other polit­i­cal sci­en­tists, for exam­ple Larry Sabato’s Crys­tal Ball (last updated July 11), The New York Times (last updated date unclear) and the National Jour­nal’s Hot­line (updated July 18).

The elec­tions for the 111th Con­gress took place in Novem­ber 2008. The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the 111th Con­gress ended with 255 Democ­rats and 179 Repub­li­cans, with one Repub­li­can vacancy (shown in white on the chart).

The elec­tions for the 112th Con­gress took place in Novem­ber, 2010. In that elec­tion, 193 Democ­rats and 242 Repub­li­cans were elected. Thus, the 2010 elec­tions resulted in a loss of 62 Demo­c­ra­tic seats, with the Repub­li­cans gain­ing by the same amount, of course.

The House now stands at 191 Democ­rats, 240 Repub­li­cans, with four vacant seats (two from each party).

Based on the Cook Polit­i­cal Report rank­ings, here’s a graphic show­ing the recent his­tor­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion of the House, and how the House races are cur­rently rated by Cook:

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