The president\u2019s party has lost an average of 25 U.S. House seats in Trump-era midterm elections. Given that Democrats only have an edge on the generic ballot and in party affiliation, so far, they look like they\u2019re on track for an “average” night.<\/p>\n
Republican redistricting wins change that calculation. The GOP is likely to bank about a dozen seats from new district boundaries drawn by Republican-controlled state legislatures, up to nine of those in Florida<\/a> and Texas alone.<\/p>\n Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom<\/a> scored his party an extra three to five seats after voters approved his gerrymandering referendum, but overall, the GOP won this battle in what now looks like a redistricting “forever war.”<\/p>\n WHERE TRUMP, GOP VS DEMOCRATS REDISTRICTING BATTLE HEADS NEXT IN WAKE OF KEY COURT RULINGS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Together, this adds up to a small Democratic lead in the House. They start with 211 races in their categories, or seven short of the 218 they need for a majority. If they win more than a handful of toss-up races, they will have enough to flip the chamber.<\/p>\n There is enough room for the Republicans to maintain control on a good night for the party. Since toss-up races tend to be won and lost together, they could even improve on the slim majority they currently enjoy.<\/p>\n Redistricting is at the heart of many key races this year, but the top of the ticket in each state, candidate quality and ground game are still important themes. Here are five districts to watch.<\/p>\n The 17th district, up in the Hudson Valley, is the quintessential median district: a place that, on any given day, could swing in either direction.<\/p>\n Voters elected Republican Mike Lawler here by 6 points in 2024, but also voted<\/u><\/a> for former Vice President Kamala Harris<\/a> by 0.3 points, making it one of the rare \u2018crossover\u2019 districts of that election, and arguably the top target for Democrats in a more favorable political environment.<\/p>\n The party got moderate and combat veteran Cait Conley through the primary, despite competition from a progressive challenger, and she\u2019s charted a center-left, anti-Trump course to flip the district. She\u2019s one of the top 10<\/u><\/a> fundraisers in competitive districts this quarter.<\/p>\n Lawler won\u2019t go down without a fight. He has Trump\u2019s endorsement but disagrees with him at times, including<\/u><\/a> over his refusal to sign a bipartisan housing bill.<\/p>\n This is a competitive race in a blue-leaning year, so it starts at Lean D.<\/p>\n Democrats fought hard to elect Gov. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania<\/a> in the last midterms. This time, they\u2019re in the driver\u2019s seat. Shapiro has the support of 53% of voters in a July poll<\/u><\/a>, and the GOP isn\u2019t likely to invest in flipping it.<\/p>\n The House is a different story. The Keystone State is tied only with California<\/a> for the largest number of highly competitive districts: four across the state, all on the east side.<\/p>\n MIKE JOHNSON PREDICTS GOP COULD GAIN UP TO EIGHT SEATS IN MIDTERMS, DEFYING HISTORICAL TRENDS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The seventh district is notable for its candidates: Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, the Republican who flipped the district in 2024 and whose mother, Milou, is a popular state representative in the Lehigh Valley, and Bob Brooks, a local firefighter who enjoys the endorsements of both Shapiro and Senator Bernie Sanders.<\/p>\n The race offers a clear look at whether a Democrat who seems to have unified both wings of his party can also appeal to White working-class voters who have swung toward the GOP during the Trump era. It\u2019s a toss-up.<\/p>\n Republicans took a knife to North Carolina\u2019s district boundaries last year<\/a> to make this seat, in the northeast corner of the state, more Republican.<\/p>\n Under the new lines, the district has fewer Black voters, and that includes the seat\u2019s current congressman, Rep. Don Davis, a moderate Democrat whose home in Snow Hill was moved to the 3rd district.<\/p>\n Davis is still running in the first district these midterms (congresspeople don\u2019t have to live in the districts they represent), where he will face Republican and retired Army Colonel Laurie Buckhout, a pro-Trump conservative who is leaning into her military experience.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a close race by many measures, including fundraising, with both candidates raising $1 million in the last quarter.<\/p>\n Republicans will flip the seat on a good night, to be sure. But in what looks like a favorable cycle for Democrats, it\u2019s not yet clear that the GOP has an edge. It starts as a toss-up.<\/p>\n Alabama\u2019s second district is currently home to Rep. Shomari Figures, a Democrat who flipped the seat for the first time in over a decade after a federal court ordered the state to redraw it with a higher Black population in 2023.<\/p>\n He probably won\u2019t occupy it much longer.<\/p>\n After the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling to narrow a key provision of the Voting Rights Act<\/a> in April, Gov. Kay Ivey restored the original map; White voters now make up nearly two-thirds<\/u><\/a> of the district\u2019s population.<\/p>\n Figures is still running; he\u2019s likely to face Trump-endorsed state Rep. Rhett Marques in the general election in a race that the National Republican Congressional Committee is investing<\/u><\/a> in.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a redistricting win for Republicans, and a Likely R pickup in the forecast.<\/p>\n Other redistricting efforts might not yield such clear-cut results.<\/p>\n In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 new map<\/a> could yield up to four more Republicans in November, but it depends on what kind of night the GOP has across the country.<\/p>\n As the Wall Street Journal pointed out<\/a> in April, “making a blue district more Republican means making a red one less Republican.” (Florida\u2019s 26th district is a great example of the latter, though it\u2019s still ranked Solid R in this forecast.)<\/p>\n The delicate balance has also meant creating new Democratic-incumbent districts that, yes, have more GOP-leaning voters in them, but not so many as to guarantee a flip.<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s 14th district is a perfect case study. Under its new lines, it would\u2019ve voted<\/u><\/a> for President Trump by 11 points in 2024. Given Florida\u2019s rightward drift, it would usually start as a likely GOP pickup.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not the case this year. Incumbent Democrat Kathy Castor doesn\u2019t have a competitor yet, but she has<\/u><\/a> $1.5 million in cash on hand and support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, so she\u2019s not out of this fight.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a Lean R race.<\/p>\n Tomorrow, the full governor\u2019s forecast, with rankings for Iowa, Michigan, Georgia<\/a>, Nevada, Ohio, Wisconsin and 30 other states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The president\u2019s party has lost an average of 25 U.S. House seats in Trump-era midterm elections. Given that Democrats only have an edge on the generic ballot and in party affiliation, so far, they look like they\u2019re on track for an “average” night. Republican redistricting wins change that calculation. The GOP is likely to bank … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}