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 mirages. [Update: PA is being declared a win for McCormick though Democrat election-deniers refuse to concede; Nevada did what it always does to Republicans, though at least Trump won there.]
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:
Here are the districts which have been called and which have flipped from Democrat to Republican:
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) Scott Baugh gave it a good shot in this D+3 district. No GOP pickups in CA this year but only minimal losses.
ME-2 (Golden) Golden pulls it out again, unfortunately. He is the most "moderate" Rat in the House, though.
WA-3 (Perez) Southwest WA rejects a good conservative for the second time in a row; Perez holds on.
- CO-8 (Caraveo) One of the top GOP House targets finally comes through almost a week after election night.
OH-9 (Kaptur) Got the Ohio Senate seat, but the GOP really blew it in OH at the House level, where +2 was quite possible.
- AK-at large (Peltola)
NV-3 (Lee) Another close-but-no-cigar, as so often happens in Nevada.
- 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) Would have been a big upset, but the Rat was so repugnant that it almost happened.
CA-9 (Harder) The GOP didn't really try hard here, but came close anyway.
Here are the other potential losses for Republicans:
- NY-4 (D'Esposito) D'Espo has bitten the dust; the GOP needs all possible seats, but good riddance to this scumbag.
- NY-19 (Molinaro) Molinaro went down too in the bloodbath in NY; GOP frosh lost 3 of 5 (4 of 6 if you count Santos).
- CA-13 (Duarte)
CA-22 (Valadao) An unexpectedly early and positive result!
- CA-27 (Garcia) It was never reasonable to think that ALL vulnerable Republican incumbents in CA were going to win, as we have noted since 2022.
CA-41 (Calvert) But this one did; good for Calvert for defeating a particularly slimy and hateful Democrat.
- 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) Another lost seat. The 2022 (R) win here was an obvious fluke right from the start.
CO-3 (open seat) The Rat spent more ($15 mill) than any House challenger in the COUNTRY. And still lost. Ha ha.
IA-1 (Miller-Meeks) By a razor-thin margin, MMM has been declared the winner.
AZ-1 (Schweikert) A good conservative holds on to his seat.
AZ-6 (Ciscomani) This moderate-to-somewhat-conservative freshman wins a second term.
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 (DD) 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.
At one point on 11/6 DD saw a possible R+2 outcome in the House; they are predicting R-1 as of the evening of 11/8 and have been sticking to that number ever since. R-1 means they keep control, 220-215.
Update 11/9: DD shows 11 House races uncalled and the GOP needs only to win 2 to maintain control; DD believes they will win 4 of the 11. Evans (R) is now ahead of Caraveo (D) in CO-8; Ciscomani (R) is clinging to life in AZ-6 and Begich (R) is ahead but still short of the necessary 50% in AK. All other undecided seats are in CA and Republicans lead in some of those too.
Update 11/10: Golden may not win in ME-2 after all -- with all ballots counted he has fallen below 50% and therefore the race will be decided by Rigged Choice Voting just like it was in 2018 when that scheme was first used in Maine. Golden is still likely to win, but apparently not 100% certain at this point.
Update 11/11: Most media called it on Sunday but now everybody says that Republicans have picked up CO-8. AZ-6 is still too close to call and they're all asleep in Alaska, where vote totals haven't moved in a long time. Republican incumbents will probably lose no more than 2 seats in CA (we hope) and there will be no pickups there, but in the end the House should stay (R).
Update 11/12: It's over (as far as who will run the House) -- Republicans hold CA-41 and AZ-6 but lose CA-27. A net of minus-1 there may not sound impressive, and it's not, but it is sufficient to reach the 218 threshold; they are at 219 with possibly 2 more wins yet to come (AK and CA-13). If those wins materialize we'll wind up exactly where we started, with Republicans having a 221-214 advantage. That outcome may also sound unimpressive, but given the number of marginal districts which had to be defended, merely breaking even isn't bad at all and a slightly better outcome than realists like us projected for them.
So far Trump has named 2 incumbent GOP House members to his administration, which will necessitate special elections in FL-6 (Waltz) and NY-21 (Stefanik). Those special elections should be easy wins for the Republicans.
Tags:
2024
House?
We'll find out in December
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