Each week, The Caucus reviews every race on our board to make sure the rating still matches where we see the contest. We moved six races this time, every one of them toward Democrats. All six are House seats.

Consistent public polling released in the last three weeks moved three of them. Third-quarter fundraising, which closed Sept. 30, moved two more. The sixth is Pennsylvania’s 16th, and the case there is that the national environment is deteriorating so much for Republicans that even recently safe seats could be at risk.

Here’s what changed:

• Iowa’s 1st moves from Toss up to D Advantage. Christina Bohannan has lost this seat twice, by 6.8 points in 2022 and by just two-tenths of a point in 2024, when she finished 49.8 to Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’s 50.0. She has raised $7.05 million this cycle against Miller-Meeks’s $7.21 million, including $2.7 million in the third quarter. Outside groups have put $9.56 million into the district. In the week ending Sept. 30 the two sides filed just under $2 million between them and came within $170,000 of each other.

• Pennsylvania’s 7th moves from Toss up to D Advantage. Bob Brooks, a firefighter who won a crowded May primary, led Rep. Ryan Mackenzie 45-40 in the Franklin & Marshall poll and raised $2.5 million in the third quarter. Mackenzie took this seat from former Democratic Rep. Susan Wild by a single point in 2024, 50.5 to 49.5, and the district went for Trump by three. What moved us was the impact of outside money. The Congressional Leadership Fund spent $1.1 million against Brooks in one week at the end of September. Every Democratic group spending in the district combined for $388,000 over the same seven days, and Brooks looks to be holding his lead anyway.

• Maine’s 2nd moves from Expected R to R Advantage. A University of New Hampshire poll taken Sept. 17-21 had Matt Dunlap ahead of former Gov. Paul LePage 51-45 among 627 likely voters, with a 3.9-point margin of error. The favorability numbers explain the gap: LePage sits at minus 14 net with only 3% of voters unable to rate him, so there is almost nobody left for him to introduce himself to. Dunlap is at plus five with 20% still unfamiliar. Democratic Rep. Jared Golden is retiring from a district Trump won by nine, and he held it in 2024 by six tenths of a point.

• Arkansas’s 2nd moves from Safe R to Expected R. Chris Jones has run statewide before, as the Democratic nominee for governor in 2022, so he starts with name recognition most challengers in a reach seat never build. An August poll from Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College had him level with Rep. French Hill, inside the margin of error. The fundamentals are unchanged, though: Hill won by 17.8 points in 2024 and has raised $4.42 million to Jones’s $1.17 million. What is new is that outside groups have put $1.32 million into a district nobody planned to spend in.

• Missouri’s 2nd moves from Safe R to Expected R. Remington Research Group, a Republican firm with a solid record, released a survey on Sept. 26 putting Rep. Ann Wagner at 43 and Fred Wellman at 42 with 12% undecided. Wagner has held this seat since 2013 and won it by 11.8 points in 2022 and 12.0 in 2024. An incumbent that well-established polling at 43 in her own party’s survey made us re-examine our rating. On the downside for the Democrats, nothing else has: outside groups have spent $75 in MO-02 all cycle, and Wagner has raised $3.53 million to Wellman’s $1.16 million.

• Pennsylvania’s 16th moves from Safe R to Expected R. Nothing inside the district changed. Justin Wagner has raised $67,000 against GOP Rep. Mike Kelly’s $1.17 million, and no outside group has filed a dollar here. This is a rating about the top of the ticket. Gov. Josh Shapiro led Stacy Garrity by 16 points among likely voters in the Inquirer/New York Times/Siena poll in late August, with 60% of voters viewing him favorably, and Pennsylvania has no Senate race this year to split attention or money. A popular governor running that far ahead on a quiet ballot lifts turnout in places Democrats don’t usually contest, and the 16th is one of them. Kelly won by 27.4 points in 2024 and is still the favorite. We no longer think the seat is completely out of reach if the environment keeps moving.

(Photo: Bob Brooks, via Vote Bob Brooks Facebook)