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11/6/2024: Congrats to President Trump! He Still Needs a House [RightDataUSA]

November 5th was a wonderful night to be an American, and we get to begin enjoying the election results today!

As we had been stating all along, the "landslide" which delusionals on both sides were certain was going to happen (Virginia to Trump! Iowa to Harris! Cao wins VA Senate! Allred defeats Cruz! LOL!) was never going to materialize. But Donald Trump was able to get back to where he was on election night of 2016, and he will be the 47th President of the United States. The Senate has gone almost exactly as expected as well, with GOP pickups in West Virginia and Montana as well as a big tossup win in Ohio. Republicans may even get a bonus Senate seat or two in Pennsylvania and Nevada once all the votes are counted, although those are likely to turn out to be illusions.

But the extremely important U.S. House is still up for grabs.

As we predicted, a Trump win in 2024 could easily be accompanied by Republicans losing control of the U.S. House of Representatives. We forecast a net loss for the GOP of 2 to 8 seats and that is very likely what is going to happen -- though we won't know for sure for possibly as long as a month. Democrats need a net gain of four seats in order to seize control of the House from the Republicans. Surely they are planning for that coup by working on articles of impeachment for President Trump already.

The reason for the delay is Ballot Harvesting Month in the state of California. This is where party operatives (mostly Democrats) try to locate people who did not vote, and get them to fill out a ballot for the candidates of their choice. The party's choice, that is.

This will not affect the outcome of the races for President or Senator in California, but it will massively affect approximately half a dozen House races or perhaps even a larger number.

As this is being written on the morning after the glorious election, there are another two dozen or more House districts where insufficient votes have been counted or which are still too close to call despite nearly all votes having already been tabulated. We will enumerate these below.

Here are the districts which have been called as of Wednesday morning, and which have flipped from Republican to Democrat:

  • AL-2
  • LA-6
  • NY-22

Here are the districts which have been called and which have flipped from Democrat to Republican:
  • MI-7
  • NC-6
  • NC-13
  • NC-14

These initial districts flipped almost solely due to the effects of redistricting. In Alabama and Louisiana, racist court rulings mandated the ouster of White Republicans from the House and the substitution of black Democrats. In New York, Democrats belatedly gerrymandered the state earlier in 2024, but NY-22 was likely to be lost even without that factor. In North Carolina, an illegal Democrat gerrymander which had been in place in 2020 and 2022 was finally removed and replaced by a legitimate district map. The Michigan district was an open seat which was formerly held by Democrat Elissa Slotkin, who left to run for the Senate (and probably win, but that's not been called yet).

Here are the other potential pickups for Republicans:
  • CA-47 (open seat)
  • ME-2 (Golden) Golden pulls it out again, unfortunately. He is the most "moderate" Rat in the House, though.
  • WA-3 (Perez)
  • CO-8 (Caraveo)
  • OH-9 (Kaptur)
  • AK-at large (Peltola)
  • NV-3 (Lee)
  • PA-7 (Wild) For the first time since these PA districts were gerrymandered into existence...
  • PA-8 (Cartwright) ...the GOP takes them! They had been 0-for-2 for three straight elections.
  • MD-6 (open seat)
  • CA-9 (Harder)

Here are the other potential losses for Republicans:
  • NY-4 (D'Esposito)
  • NY-19 (Molinaro) Molinaro has been defeated.
  • CA-13 (Duarte)
  • CA-22 (Valadao)
  • CA-27 (Garcia)
  • CA-41 (Calvert)
  • CA-45 (Steel)
  • NE-2 (Bacon) Bacon has won (!). He's no bargain, but he's better than the alternative.
  • PA-10 (Perry) Perry (barely) survives as GOP sweeps the winnable eastern PA districts!
  • OR-5 (Chavez-DeRemer)
  • CO-3 (open seat)
  • IA-1 (Miller-Meeks)
  • AZ-1 (Schweikert)
  • AZ-6 (Ciscomani)
  • MI-10 (James) James won.

Republicans need to find some pickups and limit their losses in order to maintain House control. We will update this commentary as more districts are called. At the moment, Decision Desk HQ is predicting a net loss of only 3 seats for the Republicans which, if true (and their forecast is just a guess at this point) means that Republicans will maintain control by the narrowest possible margin: 218-217.

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2024 House? We'll find out in December


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