Is an 18 point swing enough?

I was feeling confident about Francine Busby's "near victory" in the CA-50 special election. After all, if the NRCC wants to spend five million dollars in every congressional district to get an 18% swing to the democrats, then they spend over two billion dollars, and we get a democratic house, right?

Right. But it's not the landslide you think.

I started with the 2004 House results from http://www.cnn.com/... which doesn't have percentages, but does have links to full results from each state. I'll be ignoring the presidential and senate results, since the 2004-2006 swing doesn't directly apply to them.

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas: an 18% swing gives us 0 pickups so far. This is not looking good.

California: the first pickup, CA-26, and it's David Dreier. A good start.

The rest: CO-04 and CO-07. CT-02 and CT-04. FL-13. GA-11. IL-06 and possibly IL-11. IN-02, IN-08 and IN-09. IA-01. KS-02. KY-04. LA-03 and LA-07. MI-11 and possibly MI-09. MN-02 and MN-06. NE-01. NV-03. NJ-05 and NJ-07. NM-01. NY-26 and NY-29, possibly NY-13. NC-08 and NC-11, possibly NC-05. Possibly OH-04. PA-06 and PA-08. TX-02, TX-22, TX-32 and possibly TX-19. VA-02. WA-08. WV-02. WY-01.

A total of 36 pickups, and 6 toss-ups. In the worse case, that gives 195 republicans and 236 democrats, a majority of 41, which is larger than the current republican majority. But the system is so horribly skewed, that on this change of 18% in votes cast, only 8% of the seats have changed hands.