In the 2006 House Races, the Democratic Party picked up a total of 31 seats (incl. VT-AL). Unfortunately we missed picking up seats in 19 very close contests, by less than 10,000 votes in each District. We ended up short by  88,577 votes or an average of 4,662 votes per District. By contrast our candidates won 16 seats in districts by less than 10,000 votes. We captured/held those 16 seats by a total of 82,480 votes for an average of 5,155 votes per District.
Some have asserted that if the DCCC had reacted to some of these races and provided necessary funding, we could have picked up more seats. Others have claimed that the DCCC did the best it could with the resources on hand and the fact that the RNCC had to pour money & resources into normally safe Gop Districts, benefited us Nationwide.

I'll let ya'll come to your own conclusions about that, because the purpose of this Diary is more from a Statistical/Tactical Perspective for 2008 regarding the lessons we've learned from the 2006 Midterms.
Caveat: Races won by over 10,000 votes (either side) are not included in the Parameters of this Study, though any number of those could be in play in '08, plus many other seats may be on the horizon that were not in-play in 2006.
On the same note, many of these races shown below may not be close for us in '08, but are sure to get some attention.
More below the fold, Enjoy!.