Democrats Have A Chance To Win One Of The Reddest Districts In The Country | FiveThirtyEight

Despite all that, the “Classic” version of FiveThirtyEight’s House forecast currently gives Ojeda’s GOP opponent, state Delegate Carol Miller, around a 9 in 10 chance of winning — making

West Virginia’s 3rd one of the districts where our forecast most disagrees with election handicappers. Our “Lite” forecast, which tries to rely as much as possible on the polls, has her as

only a 3 in 5 favorite, though — it agrees with the handicappers.

Still, when it comes to control of the House, every seat matters, no matter how short-lived the victory may be. After all, political winds change and a district might shift — either

naturally or through redistricting — in a way that could make it easier to retain. Plus, the winning candidate could become a particularly formidable incumbent. Case in point, the

longest-serving winner in the table above was Democratic Rep. Dennis Moore, who won the R+12 Kansas 3rd in 1998 and then five more times. From 1998 to 2008 — the years Moore sought office —

the Kansas 3rd’s partisan lean ranged between R+9.5 and R+13, yet Moore managed to hold off the GOP each time. He retired in 2010.

For Democrats, the West Virginia 3rd may be a reach, but as we’ve seen in previous elections, it’s one Democrats could still grab on Election Night.

FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean is based on how a district voted in the past two presidential elections and state legislative elections. In our formula, 50 percent of the weight is given to

the 2016 presidential elections, 25 percent to the 2012 presidential election and 25 percent to state legislative elections.

This also includes GOP incumbents who resigned, leaving a seat vacant.

The district also has ancestrally Democratic roots: Democrat Rep. Nick Rahall served for 38 years before Jenkins defeated him in 2014, and the district was Sen. Joe Manchin’s

strongest-performing congressional district in his last Senate bid.

Using our partisan lean calculations from 1998-2018, we identified seats where the winning House party differed from the party that the district leans toward.

We looked at the districts where each party has at least a 5 percent chance of winning — that is, seats that are not “Solid” for one party — and found only the West Virginia 3rd could break

the record for a crossover flip

But Sekula Gibbs did win the concurrent special election in November to serve out the last few months of DeLay’s term, a race Lampson didn’t compete in.

One exception was Republican Rep. Steve Southerland, who lost re-election in 2014, a good Republican cycle.

Redistricting prior to the 2016 election dramatically altered the partisan makeup of the Florida 2nd, and Democratic Rep. Gwen Graham opted against seeking a second term.

This includes vacant seats in the House. In those cases, I assigned the party that previously held the seat to the district.

Geoffrey Skelley is a senior elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight. @geoffreyvs