Ever since the con­clu­sion of vote-count­ing in last year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the num­ber sev­en­teen has tak­en on a spe­cial mean­ing to Democrats.

That’s the num­ber of seats Democ­rats need to win next year to get back the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and rel­e­gate the Tea Par­ty extrem­ists who con­trol the House Repub­li­can cau­cus to true minor­i­ty status.

Win­ning that many seats would be a tall order, but it is not impos­si­ble or unfea­si­ble. After all, Democ­rats won thir­ty one seats with good can­di­date recruit­ment and favor­able elec­toral head­winds just sev­en years ago.

A new set of polls con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for MoveOn.org and released this evening finds that if an elec­tion were held today, a major­i­ty of vot­ers in sev­en­teen dis­tricts held by Repub­li­cans would vote for a Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date. Here’s Jim Williams of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling on the findings:

The sur­veys, com­mis­sioned and paid for by MoveOn.org Polit­i­cal Action, show Repub­li­can incum­bents behind among reg­is­tered vot­ers in head-to-head con­tests with gener­ic Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers in 17 dis­tricts. In four oth­er dis­tricts, the incum­bent Repub­li­can falls behind a gener­ic Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date after respon­dents are told that the Repub­li­can incum­bent sup­port­ed the gov­ern­ment shutdown.

In only three dis­tricts do Repub­li­can incum­bents best gener­ic Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers after vot­ers are told the incum­bent sup­port­ed the gov­ern­ment shutdown.

Democ­rats must pick up 17 seats to win con­trol of the House. These poll results make clear that if the elec­tion were held today, such a pick­up would be well with­in reach.

This is big news. Grant­ed, the elec­tion is not being held today, and the polls com­mis­sioned by MoveOn did not test head to head matchups. But it sug­gests the Repub­li­can Par­ty is in greater dan­ger of los­ing the House than either its oper­a­tives or well known polit­i­cal prog­nos­ti­ca­tors have been will­ing to admit.

The sev­en­teen dis­tricts are most­ly slices of the fol­low­ing blue states: Cal­i­for­nia, Col­orado, New York, Flori­da, Iowa, Illi­nois, Michi­gan, Neva­da, Ohio, Penn­syl­va­nia, Vir­gina, and Wis­con­sin. There’s also one Ken­tucky dis­trict in the mix.

The spe­cif­ic dis­tricts are CA-31, CO-06, FL-02, FL-10, FL-13, IA-03, IA-04, IL-13, KY-06, MI-01, MI-07, MI-11, NY-19, OH-14, PA-07, PA-08, and WI-07.

I’ve been unable to fath­om why Democ­rats have not been aggres­sive­ly pro­mot­ing the idea that they could retake the U.S. House in 2014. They cer­tain­ly need to start doing so now. Democ­rats do not need Repub­li­cans to self-destruct in order to win, as we saw last year, and they should not act as though they do.

Yes, ger­ry­man­der­ing has made the House tougher to con­test. Yes, incum­bents tend to get reelect­ed. Yes, Repub­li­cans will not go down with­out a fight.

But that does­n’t mean recap­tur­ing the House is impos­si­ble. It is very pos­si­ble, but only if Democ­rats believe it to be. Pro­gres­sive activists who are sick and tired of Repub­li­can obstruc­tion hurt­ing this coun­try have every rea­son to want to make a big Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry a real­i­ty in 2014. Think of all the issues Amer­i­ca is unable to make any progress on due to the House being held by Republicans.

The U.S. House has flipped back and forth before. Con­sid­er the elec­toral his­to­ry of the late 1940s and ear­ly 1950s, fol­low­ing the death of Pres­i­dent Roosevelt.

In 1946, Pres­i­dent Tru­man’s first midterm elec­tion, Democ­rats were sound­ly beat­en in House elec­tions, after hav­ing been in con­trol for more than a decade. In fact, that might even be an under­state­ment: A total of fifty-five seats went to the Repub­li­cans, the Democ­rats’ largest defeat since 1908. It was a without.

Despite los­ing bad­ly, the Democ­rats were able to ful­ly reverse the dam­age in just two years, win­ning sev­en­ty-five seats in 1948 to recap­ture the House.

They held it in 1950, despite los­ing twen­ty-eight seats.

In 1952, con­trol of the House flipped back to the Repub­li­cans when Ray­burn and his cau­cus lost a fur­ther twen­ty-two seats. But they took nine­teen seats back in the fol­low­ing 1954 midterms, trad­ing places in the House with the Repub­li­cans for a third time. After that, they held the major­i­ty for forty years.

We live in a dif­fer­ent time now, but by study­ing Amer­i­can polit­i­cal his­to­ry, we can see that it is not unprece­dent­ed for the two major par­ties to repeat­ed­ly trade con­trol of the House sev­er­al times with­in the span of a decade.

The Democ­rats lost the House under Tru­man and got it back; they lost it again when Eisen­how­er was elect­ed, but then they got it back.

In 2008, Democ­rats large­ly held on to the gains made in 2006 when Oba­ma was elect­ed, but got tak­en to the wood­shed in 2010. They made up some of the lost ground in 2012. Now the ques­tion is: Can they fin­ish the job and get the House back in 2014? My answer: Absolute­ly. But before Democ­rats can con­vince vot­ers in key dis­tricts across the coun­try to elect Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates, they need to con­vince them­selves that they can win big in a midterm year.