50. Housework

It is 50 days until the next U.S. congressional midterm election.

My post yesterday asking you to “support and vote for” Democrats in seven closely contested races for the U.S. Senate should have been clearer.

Point one, obviously, you can only vote in a Senate race that’s happening in your state, if there is one. However, you can support all the candidates. I follow them all on Twitter and am quick to retweet their best. It’s a little thing, but I like to think it might help.

Point two, by all means, support the other 28 Democrats running for Senate. (Yes, there are 35 due to special elections in Minnesota and Mississippi.) I did not list the 23 who are considered likely to win or the five who are considered likely to lose (relying on projections from fivethirtyeight.com).

Continuing with that way of looking at where to concentrate our efforts, let’s examine some of the more interesting races for the House of Representatives.

As I said yesterday, don’t take predictions like fivethirtyeight’s too seriously. They’re saying (as of early Monday afternoon) there is an 82.3 percent probability Democrats will take control of the House, that there’s a good chance they can even gain 38 seats or more. (They need to pick up 25 seats to take control of the House.)

Don’t take that for granted. Remember we went into the 2016 general election with everybody from Donald Trump on up feeling it was a lock for Hillary Clinton.

Before we run through the 48 House races that are closest, I’ve a question for you. Do you know which district you vote in? If not, you can find it on your voter registration card. If you’re not registered, click this link and take care of it. If you are registered, it will confirm that fact and tell you what district you’re in.

The following list of the closest House races is alphabetized by state. I’m printing only the Democrats’ names to avoid confusion. Therefore, if your district has an incumbent Republican fighting for his or her seat, you won’t see that name, which is why you need to know your district or at least your Democratic nominee.

Eighteen races are considered toss-ups, so your influence in them could be particularly effective. Each name is linked to that candidate’s Twitter account.

Gil Cisneros, California’s 39^th District.

Diane Mitsch Bush, Colorado’s 3^rd.

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Florida’s 26^th.

Brendan Kelly, Illinois’ 12^th.

Cindy Axne, Iowa’s 3^rd.

Paul Davis, Kansas’ 2^nd.

Amy McGrath, Kentucky’s 6^th.

Gretchen Driskell, Michigan’s 7^th.

Elissa Slotkin, Michigan’s 8^th.

Joe Radinovich, Minnesota’s 8^th.

Andy Kim, New Jersey’s 3^rd.

Antonio Delgado, New York’s 19^th.

Kathy Manning, North Carolina’s 13^th.

Danny O’Connor, Ohio’s 12^th.

Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, Texas’ 7^th.

Gina Ortiz Jones, Texas’ 23^rd.

Leslie Cockburn, Virginia’s 5^th.

Kim Schrier, Washington’s 8^th.

You know, that’s enough for today. You have your work cut out for you to check your voter registration and then follow these 18 candidates. Tuesday, we’ll go over another batch of races that right now are not quite as close.