Demographics and Elections Commentary tagged with Not likely
| 10/17/2024: 2024 Election Analysis: Will Republicans Hold the House? [RightDataUSA] |
Current U.S. House breakdown by district (Map created using mapchart.net)
1. Competitiveness
That last one is a biggie, but the others are also important. Regarding the suitability of the candidates: Democrats always try to run the most liberal candidates possible in House races, but in a marginal district they must (with the help of their army of media allies) attempt to disguise their nominee as a "moderate" because they understand that most voters in a marginal district would find an in-your-face liberal nutbucket to be repugnant. Once elected, Democrat "moderates" normally march in goose-step with their liberal colleagues. Even when narrowly in the minority as is the case today in the House, Democrats voting as a united bloc is nearly always sufficient to thwart any unwanted legislation. This happens because there are always enough liberal Republicans in the party's "big tent" to cross over and assist the Democrats whenever the Republican establishment (GOPe) desires for that to occur. Sometimes, particularly on legislation which has no chance of passing the Senate or being signed into law, the Democrat puppetmasters will permit their most vulnerable House members to temporarily leave the plantation and cast a non-liberal vote. Which they can then highlight to the voters back home as a sign of their alleged "independence" when re-election time rolls around. Of course there is no real independence; they vote as they are told to -- always. Those who control the Republican party (and especially its purse strings) also seek to run the most liberal candidates possible in House races -- even in solid Republican districts -- because the GOPe finds anyone who is even remotely conservative to be repugnant. On this topic, the leadership of both parties are in agreement. Occasionally, the GOPe is correct in running a moderate-liberal if the nature of the district is inappropriate for a nominee who is perceived as being too far to the right. Based on the above criteria, we have identified 62 districts which should be competitive this year. This list is not substantially different from the one we published over a year and a half ago, but the data associated with these districts is now up-to-date. In addition to the potential flippers, there's also one district in Washington which features two Republicans and zero Democrats running; the incumbent Republican is a Trump-hating impeachment RINO while the challenger is a solid conservative. If an upset should occur there it won't count as a GOP pickup since they already hold that seat, but it would be a welcome development nonetheless. 2. Background After the 2022 elections, Republicans controlled the House by the margin of 222-213. Since that time there have been 8 special elections held to replace representatives who retired or died. Seven of those 8 were won by the same party which originally held the seat. The lone exception occurred in New York in February when Democrats won the special election in NY-3 to replace conservative Republican George ("Miss Me Yet?") Santos. That election was necessitated when the Stupid Party decided to expel Santos from Congress in December, 2023 for allegedly being so corrupt that he might as well have been a Democrat. But he voted like a conservative which, come to think of it, probably didn't help his case with the party leadership. The have been three other resignations or deaths for which special elections have not yet been held (or will not be held), and the GOP currently has a 220-212 advantage in the House. Because two of the three vacancies exist in solid Democrat districts (NJ-9, TX-18) which will be easily retained in November, the Democrats effectively have 214 seats going into the election which means they require a net gain of merely 4 seats to seize control. 3. Belated Redistricting Congressional redistricting -- the redrawing of U.S. House district lines -- took place in all states prior to the 2022 elections, except of course in the six (Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming) which have only one district that comprises the entire state and therefore there are no district lines. After 2022 however, a handful of states redrew their districts. This will have a net effect of close to zero on the partisan composition of Congress in 2025, but will result in significant changes within the affected states. In North Carolina the Democrat-controlled state Supreme Court in 2020 (and then again in 2022) chose to illegally bypass the Republican-controlled legislature and mandated district lines which favored Democrats. In 2022 the voters of the Tarheel State delivered a GOP majority to the Court. The Court then began acting lawfully and returned the task of line-drawing to the legislature, where it belongs. As a result, Republicans will almost certainly be picking up three House seats (NC-6, NC-13, NC-14) from Democrats on election day. However this windfall will be negated by restricting-related outcomes in Alabama, Louisiana and New York. In the two southern states, partisan Democrat judges demanded that two conservative White Republicans (one in Alabama, one in Louisiana) be replaced in the House by two liberal black Democrats. Barry Moore (AL-2) and Garret Graves (LA-6) are the two Republicans who will be out of work after 2024 because of these racist court rulings. In New York, Democrats in 2022 were forced to settle for a district map that was only a slight improvement over the one from which they had benefitted in 2020; they had tried for a hyper-partisan gerrymander which would have all but eliminated Republicans (it would have been something like 22 Democrats and just 4 Republicans) from the New York congressional delegation. In March of 2024, New York Democrats tried once again to gerrymander the state's congressional districts in their favor, and they succeeded without any resistance from the GOP. We wrote about this in detail at the time it occurred. Having already picked up NY-3 in the Santos debacle, NY Democrats ensured that their pickup would not revert to the GOP in November (and it won't). Additionally, they have altered the Syracuse-Utica area district of freshman Republican Brandon Williams to severely endanger him, making it all but certain for the Democrats to go +1 in New York. At least +1. Redistricting greatly altered no other New York districts, though it did make NY-18 a little safer for liberal freshman Democrat Pat Ryan. However it always was probable that New York and California would be bloodbaths for the Republicans in 2024. That logical assertion is based on the sheer number of close (fluke) House wins which the GOP somehow achieved in those liberal states in 2022, and many close/fluke outcomes were likely to be reversed in 2024 with or without the assistance of Democrat gerrymandering. One other state -- Georgia -- redrew its lines after 2022 by a court order similar to the one which affected Alabama and Louisiana. Democrats have been fuming ever since that ruling came down because Republicans found a way to comply with the racist ruling without sacrificing any of their currently-held seats. We also wrote about that in detail at the time it occurred. Even counting New York at only -1 for the Republicans, that, along with the -2 which is guaranteed from Alabama and Louisiana means a break-even as the result of belated redistricting despite the upcoming GOP bonanza in North Carolina. 4. The 62 Most-Flippable Districts These do not include the North Carolina, Alabama and Louisiana districts already mentioned above, but does include NY-22 (Williams) because it is not quite 100% certain that the district will be won by a Democrat. The following 62 districts are the ones which should be strongly sought by both parties -- but it doesn't work out that way in all cases, as we will illustrate. Several of the listed districts, mostly ones held by Democrats, are not very likely to flip despite the vulnerability of the Democrat incumbents. Or at least not nearly as likely as they should be, mainly because the GOP does not have infinite funds to work with, while the Democrats (via their "ActBlue" money laundry) apparently do. Some are finally beginning to catch on to the illegal activities of ActBlue, but it's too late to do anything about it in this election cycle and Democrats are likely to be able to purchase a significant number of House and Senate seats which might otherwise be far more tenuous. Here are the 62 most likely potential flippers, by region. The bloodiest battlegrounds are highlighted, and some which probably won't be so bloody come with brief explanations. Northeast (16):
Mid-Atlantic (3):
South (2):
Midwest (13):
Great Plains-Mountain West (8):
West (20):
As noted above, the most competitive districts are bolded. A little more (34) than half of the listed districts fit that description. Of these 34, 11 are currently held by Democrats and 23 by Republicans. That's not a good ratio. There are some others which are perhaps a small amount behind in terms of competitiveness. They are:
Three of those are currently GOP districts and three are held by Democrats. Add them to the 34 super-contested districts and the Republicans have the potential to lose 26 marginal seats, the Democrats 14. The 40 most competitive districts are mostly in states which are toss-ups at the presidential level (AZ, MI, NC, NV, PA, WI) or ones which the bumbling Word Salad Queen is guaranteed to win (CA, CO, NE*, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VA, WA). Only six of the 40 battleground districts lie in states that Trump should win (AK, IA, ME*, MT, TX). Eleven lie in the swing states and 23 are in states where Trump's probability of victory ranges from "very unlikely" to "utterly impossible". If there is any presidential coattail effect in that latter group, it is hardly going to be beneficial for GOP House candidates. [* ME-2 and NE-2 are in states which split electoral votes. Trump is likely to win ME-2 and lose NE-2, replicating the 2020 outcome in those two districts.] In these 40 districts, Democrats have raised more money in 30 of them and have spent more money in 30 of them. Republicans have the financial edge in only 10 of the 40. As we've stated several times before: there is no election in this country, at any level, in which Democrats cannot outspend Republicans (often by astronomical amounts) if they wish to do so. Money alone doesn't determine the outcome of an election, but having more than your opponent surely doesn't hurt. The results in the other districts listed above are not likely to be as close as they should be. Republicans are not trying as hard as they might in R-leaning districts like KS-3, OH-9, OH-13 and PA-7. They are also not terribly competitive in some districts which lean only slightly to the left (in the D+1 to D+4 range) such as IL-17, MD-6, MI-3, MN-2, NV-3, NV-4, OH-1, PA-17 and TX-28. These represent blown opportunities, although if a "red" wave somehow materializes there may be some pleasant surprises here. There are about a dozen districts which have not been mentioned previously but could change partisan hands in November; it would require moderate to major upsets in order to wind up doing so. Some of these are really just pipe dreams for one party or the other, and the majority of them are not even being seriously contested (financially) although some are. We enumerate them just to cover all the bases:
5. Conclusion Add it all up and the probability of the GOP remaining in charge of the House appears to be less than 50% (perhaps much less), barring a clear shift to the right between now and November 5. As we have documented, there are likely to be more tight races in Republican-held districts than there will be in Democrat-held ones. Anything can happen in a close election, in case you've somehow forgotten 2020. Even if the GOP wins as many as half of the most precarious 40 districts, which is by no means certain to happen, that would make it +6 for the Democrats and 220-215 control of the House. When Democrats rule a legislative body by even one seat, they govern with an iron fist as if they have 100% control; when Republicans face the same margins -- as they currently have in the House and will in the Senate next year -- they become even more timid than usual (they aren't really comfortable with the concept of "governing") and act as if they have control of nothing. Which, in effect, they don't. And good luck with Senate "control" anyway with traitors like Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham in the GOP caucus -- assuming that none of them switch parties after 2024. The difference between how the parties behave in advantageous situations will be quite evident beginning in January, unless the Republicans can stem the tide of potential House losses and cling to power, such as it is with a twerp like Mike Johnson in command. As spineless as the GOP leadership is, that party's control of the House at least means that the Trump agenda (assuming he wins the presidency) is not immediately D.O.A. as it would be under racist election-denying Speaker Hakeem Homeboy, and it also means we would avoid a never-ending series of Trump impeachments. Vote hard. Tags:
2024
House
"Red" wave in the House?
Not likely
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