The Battle for the House Moves West
While Republicans are thrilled by Donald Trump’s solid victory in the presidential contest and delighted about their new Senate majority, the fulfillment of their most avaricious dreams depends on maintaining control of the U.S. House. That’s because a House–Senate–White House trifecta will enormously streamline the legislative process compared to the constant tug-of-war and messaging battles associated with divided government. It will also unlock the magic powers of budget reconciliation, which let the majority party enact massive amounts of legislation in a single bill without the minority party being able to block it by a Senate filibuster.
As Joe Biden might say, it’s a BFD (and he would know, since most of his administration’s legislative accomplishments occurred during the two years when his party held a trifecta).
So how close are Republicans to nailing down House control? Close, but it’s by no means a done deal. The GOP went into this election controlling 220 House seats to the Democrats’ 212 with two Democratic-held seats and one Republican-held seat vacant. This means they essentially had a four-seat majority with a net gain of one more seat guaranteed by redistricting changes in the South.
Republicans have won 210 seats and Democrats 198 seats so far with 27 races not yet called, according to the New York Times. Of those 27, Democrats currently lead in 14 and Republicans in 13. Obviously enough, Democrats need to overcome some GOP leads to have any chance of flipping the House. The outstanding races mostly fall into two baskets: incredibly close contests in states where nearly all the results are in (including one each in Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska and Ohio) and contests in western states (12 in California; four in Arizona; and one each in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) with a lot of mail ballots and relatively slow counts. In Alaska, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, mail ballots that will be counted (postmarked by Election Day and received by a future deadline) are still coming in. That’s very likely where the House fight will be won or lost as these contests are resolved in the next week.
To a very considerable extent, Democratic hopes depend on a phenomenon known as the “blue shift” in late-counted mail ballots, whereby mail ballots generally, and particularly those cast near Election Day, tend to skew notably Democratic. This tendency became famous in 2018 when several California Republican House incumbents led on Election Night but lost their seats when later mail ballots were counted, spurring some GOP conspiracy theories that weren’t supported by any actual evidence. What’s unclear is whether the “blue shift” is an enduring occurrence now that California (along with Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington among the states with unresolved House races) has moved to an all-mail-ballot system. In examining the current election cycle, Politico has suggested the “blue shift” may not be a thing in California this year:
This year, observers say there’s unlikely to be a uniform red or blue shift that will tug the results in one direction in the later count.
“Now it’s kind of a regional phenomenon,” Mitchell said. “Certain parts of the state have more Republicans who only want to vote in-person, while other parts of the state have Republicans who are more than happy to vote by mail. And it will probably take many, many years for this to kind of settle itself out.”
This could matter a lot, not just in California but nationally. At present there are four House Republican incumbents (Ken Calvert, John Duarte, Mike Garcia, and Michelle Steel) plus one favored candidate in an open Democratic seat (Scott Baugh) in the Golden State with small leads as the counting of mail ballots continues. For that matter, there are three House Democratic incumbents from California with fragile leads (Jim Costa, Josh Harder, and Mike Levin). The increasingly narrow Democratic path to a majority runs through the western states and also requires quite a few wins in the tight races elsewhere. History is not on the side of that happening: No party has ever lost the White House and flipped the House in the same election. But if it did happen, it would certainly throw a monkey wrench into plans for a Republican legislative steamroller to begin the second Trump era. And it might also cost Trump vassal and House Speaker Mike Johnson his gavel.