2022: Democrats Start The Cycle As House Favourites

Speaker Kevin McCarthy? Hold On...

After an election cycle where everyone (myself absolutely included) got over their skies and then was disappointed by a good-not-great Democratic performance, it seems like everyone is going into 2022 with a mindset to be as pessimistic as possible. There's just one problem - they shouldn't.

We don't know exact Congressional lines, but they just redrew the Pennsylvania lines a few years ago and split governmental control means they're not likely to be radically different this time around, so we can use their lines as a solid proxy for what they should be for 2022. In 2020, Biden won 9 districts, with Matt Cartwright's victory in the Trump-won 8th helping offset Democrats losing the Biden-won 1st to leave the 9-9 Congressional Delegation in place. Democrats had targeted the 1st and the 10th for gains, and Democrats - or, at least, Joe Biden - got the kinds of results they wanted in the 1st, winning it by 6%. It wasn't enough to win the seat, as Brian Fitzpatrick rode a wave of ticket splitting home to a comfortable victory. In the 10th, Biden lost it by under 3% as Trump's rural strength overwhelmed Biden's areas of strength. Cartwright, up in the Northeast of the state, also won a close battle, with the GOP getting out their rural, non-degree holders to keep his margin in the 3.5% range. If the GOP are going to have a good year in 2022, they are going to win seats like the 8th and Conor Lamb's 17th, a suburban Pittsburgh seat he won by just over 2%. If Democrats are to have a good year, then the 1st and 10th are going to be closer than they were this year at a Congressional level. Which of these is more likely? Well, let's walk through the theory of each case.

The Democrats logic is fairly simple - the share of the electorate who are white and have a degree go up in midterms, the share of the electorate who are white and don't have a degree go down, and voters in the less urban or suburban areas of the 8th and 17th won't turn out as much as voters closer to Scranton and Pittsburgh, respectively. Non-degree whites in the 10th will similarly not turn out, making it a possible flip, and while Brian Fitzpatrick is a juggernaut electorally, he faces some risk if he faces a credible primary for being insufficiently loyal to the GOP (he voted against the objections to the Electoral College, for one), either in losing his primary or in being dragged right. That could be deadly for him in a Biden +6 district that's running away from the GOP at the top of the ticket.

The GOP case is less certain - it starts with the standpoint that midterms are good for the out party, and kinda oscillates between hand waving away Georgia's very real concerns about rural white turnout without Trump on the ballot and hoping for suburban reversion that won't come. "2010 and 2014" cries are heard, without realizing that if 2014's turnout pattern came true the GOP would be dead in the water, because in 2010 and 2014, they won whites with a degree hugely, and in 2020, they lose those voters. Oh, and again, the GOP just lost Georgia in large part because their voters didn't turn out and suburban whites mostly stayed true to their party in November, but again, midterms bad or some shit.

You can argue until you are blue in the face about redistricting and gerrymandering, but California has 11 Republicans right now and that'll be probably at most 6 in 2 years time, so the effects here are likely to be minimal all in. It is unlikely in my view that the GOP will have a notional majority once we have full new lines, because, again, California exists, but even if they have 219 notional seats, they have to defend a ton of tough terrain. Nancy Mace's South Carolina 1st isn't safe and can't really be made substantially more safe in redistricting, the Texas GOP have a hell of a task in front of them as they draw lines with two entirely different coalitions in mind, to the point where they might dummymander themselves, and Colorado and Virginia represent huge problems for them moving forward as those states sprint left to the point where even notionally red seats could be in danger. And, all of these lines could get destroyed if rural, Trump-inspired voters don't turn out, which is extremely possible.

Could the GOP get these voters out? It can't be ruled out, but Georgia was held in the context of Trump still holding power, and more importantly media attention, and the GOP still didn't get their voters out to the same degree as Democrats. Singular examples can't be dispositive, but it certainly should scare the crap out of the GOP that they're facing this kind of problem even when President Trump was still ruling the news cycle. Could Republicans win the House? Of course they could - if Democrats can't solve their problems with Hispanics, or if the suburbs do continue to reward specific Republicans, or if Democrats don't get out Black voters being three of the likeliest ways they do so - but it is less likely than Democrats continuing to hold on to both chambers of Congress on this day in 2023. Despite the doomerism, I'd tentatively venture that Democrats win the House in 2022, and that it won't be all that close in the end.