Where The Race For House Control Stands 8 Months Out
As the race for control of the House comes into focus, can Democrats retake the majority and elect Hakeem Jeffries Speaker of the House?
With Super Tuesday behind us, we now enter the final 8-month stretch of the 2024 campaign. And as the solidifying Biden v. Trump top of the ticket re-match dominates headlines and primary night coverage, the fight for Congress is coming into relief as well.
I wrote in November that while it was an uphill climb for Democrats to hold onto the U.S. Senate this year, there is a path. And now, a couple developments this week have likely made that path a bit smoother. Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s announcement that she won’t run for re-election raises Democrat Ruben Gallego’s chances of defeating Kari Lake in Arizona in November.
In California, Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey advanced to the general election in November. Because Schiff will not be going up against a Democrat in California’s expensive media markets and should have a glide path to election against Garvey, that frees up Senate funds to be used elsewhere.
But in this essay, I’m going to focus on the House of Representatives, which has seen its own twists and turns of late.
Thanks to the recent special election in New York’s 3rd district, which sent Tom Suozzi back to Congress last week, the Republicans’ majority stands at a slim 219R-213D with three vacancies. This means Republicans can only afford to lose a net of 2 seats.
This would seem to make Speaker Hakeem Jeffries a pretty good bet come next January, especially in a presidential year. But what are the factors at play and how have recent court cases and redrawn district lines changed the game?
Redistricting Ups And Downs
In 2022, while the red wave never materialized nationally, the ultimate irony was that Republicans overperformed in blue states like California and New York. In fact, the gains Republicans made in New York alone accounted for their majority-making margin.
To help mitigate these gains ahead of 2024, Democrats got an assist from Republicans who ousted one of their own, lying liar George Santos, resulting in a net gain of 1 Democratic seat with Tom Suozzi’s special election win, taking the GOP majority from 220-212 to 219-213.
Next, New York Democrats challenged the pro-GOP district lines and won in the state Supreme Court. After a panel-drawn map was rejected by the Democratic-led legislature, they drew their own maps, which are widely seen as shoring up NY-3’s Suozzi and NY-18’s Pat Ryan, while making NY-22, which encompasses Syracuse, a likely flip to Dems.
Two other incumbent Republicans who won in 2022, Mike Lawler in NY-17 and Marc Molinaro in NY-19, are now seen as toss-up seats, which can easily flip in a strong Democratic year. Taken together, this would undo the gains Republicans made in 2022 in New York.
But not all news on the redistricting front was good for Democrats.
For example, in North Carolina, after their state Supreme Court flipped from liberal to conservative, the new majority allowed the state’s Republican legislative majority to re-gerrymander the state after non-partisan maps gave their congressional delegation an even 7D-7R split in the 2022 election. After the new Republican gerrymander, GOP candidates are expected to easily win 10 of the state’s 14 seats, with 3 seats favoring Democrats and one toss-up. That means a net loss of 3 or 4 seats for Democrats in North Carolina alone.
In another blow to Democratic redistricting hopes, Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court refused to take up a challenge to the state’s Republican congressional maps, despite their gerrymander allowing 6 Republican seats and just 2 Democratic seats in what is an evenly divided state. Thanks to the flipping of the state Supreme Court from conservative to liberal, the court overturned Wisconsin’s legislative district maps, ruling them unconstitutional, which led the legislature to pass fairer maps drawn by Democratic Governor Tony Evers. The challenge to the congressional maps, however, was refused by the court in a unanimous unsigned decision.
That leaves redistricting more or less a wash, with some likely gains in New York for Democrats, some clear seat losses in North Carolina, and the Wisconsin maps unchanged.
Fallout From The Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act Ruling
In a surprise ruling last year, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), holding that Alabama must redraw its congressional district lines to allow for a second minority opportunity district, rather than cram Black voters into just one district, thus diluting their electoral power. In a state where more than 25% of the population is Black, the Court rightly ordered the legislature to redraw maps to create a second Black district out of the seven that were drawn.
This new AL-02 majority Black district, whose primary was on the ballot for the first time on Super Tuesday this week, should net Democrats +1 seat in the House, with the state delegation going from 6R-1D to 5R-2D.
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision, federal judges ordered new minority opportunity districts drawn in Louisiana and Georgia as well, finding that their current maps violated Section 2 of the VRA. But things have not gone quite to plan for Democrats.
After Louisiana’s state legislature passed maps that created a second Black majority congressional district, a lawsuit was filed by 12 non-Black voters challenging the maps, alleging that they violate their rights. This case is still pending, although it is currently set to be heard by a conservative-leaning court unless the venue can be changed to Baton Rouge.
Democrats were similarly stymied in Georgia. After a judge ordered the Republican legislature to redraw that state’s maps to come into compliance with the Supreme Court’s Section 2 ruling, in a characteristically sneaky move, the Republican majority created a new Black district by dismantling a majority-minority district, GA-7, which is represented by Democrat Lucy McBath. These redistricting shenanigans were okayed by a federal judge, which means Georgia’s 9R-5D advantage in Congress will likely remain as is. In 2024, Rep. McBath is running for this newly created GA-6 seat.
A similar challenge to Florida’s congressional maps is currently pending, with the current maps likely to remain in place for the 2024 cycle due to the state Supreme Court’s refusal to expedite the matter.
What This Means For November
Every election year, pollsters take a national snapshot of voters’ congressional preferences with a “Generic Ballot” question. This asks voters whether they prefer a generic Democrat or a generic Republican to gauge the likely partisan makeup of Congress on election night.
While its predictive value is hit or miss, as you can see by the chart compiled by FAIR below, the predicted winning party is usually correct.
8 months out, the 538 average has a dead heat, with Republicans with a slight .3% lead, with the most recent data point coming from a new Emerson College poll that finds Democrats with a 2-point generic ballot advantage over the GOP.
A 2024 predictive consensus House map from 270 to Win that takes into account four election forecasters including Cook Political Report, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Elections Daily, and Inside Elections, finds a dead heat as well, predicting 204 seats are Lean or are Solid Dem, 210 are Lean or are Solid Republican, with 21 toss-ups.
You can see which seats are generally considered the toss-ups in November at The Cook Political Report’s forecast page here. Cook considers 22 seats up for grabs in November, and they are evenly split between Democratic and Republican seats.
According to The Hill, Democrats are going on offense in 31 races, and defending 29 seats they see as vulnerable.
One advantage Democrats do have heading into this election season is in fundraising. Hakeem Jeffries, in his first year at the helm of the Democratic House conference, raised more than $113 million to boost House Democrats in 2023 alone, and then another $9.5 million in January. This leaves the DCCC with $52 million cash on hand.
According to racetothewh.com, which recently added fundraising to its forecast metrics, Democrats have a 53.6% chance of winning back the House in November.
Axios too has indicated that the “House leans Blue,” and for good reason:
By pursuing an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, House GOP leaders are making life awfully tough for their 18 vulnerable Republicans representing Biden 2020 districts. Threats of a government shutdown from GOP hardliners don't help either.
Indeed, it is those 18 “Biden” districts that most likely will be determinative of the House majority. Democrats will run on a record of keeping the government open and operating while the Republicans fought amongst themselves, deposed their own Speaker, threatened to blow up the debt ceiling, withheld critical aid for Ukraine, and torpedoed the bipartisan border bill because Trump told them to.
Republicans have little on their side to point to, besides Hunter Biden and other hearings that blew up in their faces, a baseless impeachment of a cabinet secretary and a failed effort to impeach President Biden, as well as an extremist agenda that is out of step with ordinary Americans.
While congressional candidates in every district around the country are not set in stone yet, all told, you’d rather be Hakeem Jeffries than Mike Johnson going into November. But it is incumbent upon all of us to remind people that a vote for any Republican candidate for the House is a vote for an extremist, reactionary, incompetent majority led by a Christian nationalist radical.
To support the Democrats’ campaign to flip the House, go to https://dccc.org.
That Congressional map is just gob-smacking, a huge sea of red, with coastal bastions of sanity, plus the odd blue seat here and there. Just a depressing graphic to ponder.
Please read Tim Alberta’s book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicalism in an Age of Extremism. I thought I understood what was going on within the Evangelical Movement, but it is far more insidious. I can read it only during daylight hours; if I read it at night, I am unable to sleep. I do highly recommend it.