News-Record.com

Back when voter registration closed, I asked the Board of Elections for a spreadsheet with each Congressional District broken down by party affiliation. The numbers will move somewhat between now and Election Day because of those who will register during early voting, but the percentages should hold up pretty well.

Click here for my handy-dandy spread-sheet, doctored up somewhat since the SBOE sent it along.

The thing that should jump out at you is that where one party has a majority of voters in the district - cases where more than 50 percent of voters are registered to one party - their party holds and is likely to keep that Congressional seat.

Cases where a party holds a plurality - they have more voters than the other guys but not more than 50 percent - is a good but NOT perfect predictor of which party holds the Congressional seat.

As an example: In the districts that claim pieces of Greensboro, Democrats have majorities in the 12th and 13th Congressional Districts and those districts are held by Reps. Mel Watt and Brad Miller, both Democrats. Further, it is unlikely that either of those men are going to lose their seats this year and if they do expect their losses to be picked apart by political scientists and the national media for months.

In Greensboro's other Congressional District, Republicans hold a plurality of voters and Republican Howard Coble has held the seat for the better part of two decades. It's important to know that there are plenty of Democrats who vote for Coble because they've met him or he's provided them some constituent service or they just like his style. Also, more than 20 percent of the voters in the district are unaffiliated, which means they may have political leanings but they're not showing their hands for whatever reason. A loss by Coble to challenger Teresa Sue Bratton would be surprising but you could, maybe, construct an argument for it in the context of a national wave - but writers like me would be using words like "stunning" to describe the upset.

The two districts in North Carolina that have run counter to party registration advantage are the 3d Congressional District, a Democratic leaning district held by Republican Walter Jones, and the 8th Congressional District, a Democratic leaning district held by Robin Hayes.

In the 3d, the Democratic plurality is relatively weak, only 42 percent. That leaves plenty of independent voters for Jones to win over. Historically, Democrats down there are moderate-to-conservative, which means they are open to voting Republican for national offices. And Jones has taken some cross-party/moderate stands as of late, possibly endearing him to some Democrats. For example, earlier this year he was one of only three Republicans who voted to hold Joshua Bolten and Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress for failing to testify and provide documents relevant regarding the firing of federal prosecutors.

Hayes nearly lost his 8th District seat two years ago and the registration numbers tell me he's darned closed to the tipping point. Democrats are within rounding error of having a majority of voters in the district, while Republican voters make up only a quarter of the district. That means if unaffiliated voters break even slightly against Hayes, he could be in big trouble. And, of course, this is the one Congressional race in the state where either national political party is dumping big money.

Based on the numbers and historical voting patters, the only Congressional district I would expect to see flip this year would be the 8th, where Hayes may lose to school teacher Larry Kissel. Numerically, a Jones loss in the 3d shouldn’t be a surprise but I think there is more going on locally there than the numbers reflect. Any other incumbent losses would be surprising.

Local to Greensboro, the numbers and historical trends say that Coble will win but maybe not with the 60-plus-to-70-plus percent of the vote he is used to pulling down. Bratton has given Coble a good run, but something fundamental in the numbers or the campaign that I just do not see right now would need to change in a hurry for her to pull off the upset.