Cook's Partisan Voting Index is a tool to examine the partisan voting make up of each voting district. Basically, how much does each district tilt towards Republicans or Democrats. Some of this can be modified by the powers of incumbency, but waves tend to wash away those powers. Given how unpopular the GOP's legislative agenda is, I don't think incumbency is going to be a bulwark against the coming blue wave.
Democrats hold an 11% advantage in the generic ballot. To give you some perspective, Alabama has a PVI of +14 towards the GOP, and Doug Jones was able to eek out a win there.
So, what do we see? Let's take the PVI GOP +5 districts. These are districts that barely tilt Republican. Many of them are in blue states like California, New York and New Jersey. I think we can count on 80% of those states flipping to the Democrats. That's 40 seats of the 50 that have a PVI tilt of 5% or less. I could easily see that number creep up to all 50, but let's keep it at 40.
If we go up to a PVI of GOP+10, that adds 56 more seats. Lets be conservative and say that Democrats win 20 of those.
That's 60 seats. Democrats need 24 seats to get the House majority.
On the Senate side, the following states have elections in 2018 that have a GOP PVI of +5 or less:
Arizona (potentially two open seats)
Florida (D-inc)
Nevada (R-inc)
Ohio (D-inc)
Pennsylvania (D-inc)
Wisconsin (D-inc)
What about 10 points?
Indiana (D-inc)
Mississippi (R-inc)
Missouri (D-inc)
Texas (R-inc)
The two most endangered Democrats are Jon Tester (R+11), Joe Manchin (R+19) and Heidi Heitkamp (R+17). But incumbency has some advantages when the wave is headed your way.
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