Sunday Strategy: The GOP's Likely, But Narrow, Majority
Can The GOP Get A Red Wave?
Here is an incomplete list of things my first pass at House projections includes that are favourable to Republicans:
· Andy Harris and Yvette Harrell hold their (substantially less favourable) seats
· The GOP gain Ron Kind’s old seat in Wisconsin
· Both the Ohio and North Carolina gerrymanders hold up to court scrutiny and the GOP get 13 and 11 seats, respectively
· The GOP win the Biden +7 Washington 8th, the Biden +2 (proposed) Virginia 2nd, the Biden +5 Colorado 8th, the competitive South Texas seat, and whatever form the current Minnesota 2nd takes
· The GOP lose no seats in Michigan and gain a seat in Pennsylvania (converting the current 9-9 delegation to a 10-7 GOP one)
· The New Hampshire GOP passes their proposed map and wins the GOP seat they’ve drawn themselves
· The Maine GOP beats Jared Golden and the New Jersey Commission turns the current unsafe 10-2 Democratic map into a safer 9-3
· Arizona mapmakers give the GOP two more seats, which is the current best intelligence from the independent commission
· The GOP don’t have to draw a second VRA seat anywhere in the South/they get a 5-1 by the Governor down in Louisiana
You want to know how many seats the GOP end up with, with all those assumptions? 224.
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This is not an argument Democrats will win the House.
Let me be very clear – this is not an argument that the Democrats win the House. Many, if not most of those things, are currently more likely than not to happen, and Democrats are probably going to lose the House. I don’t really want to argue about how likely any of those individual things are to happen – we’re a year out, and we don’t have finalized maps everywhere, and there’s a lot of guessing inherent in this counting exercise. I get it. But it’s noteworthy how the GOP have a fairly narrow path from here.
Now, in fairness, Democrats have a narrow path too – with this round of redistricting, the elimination of competitive seats has meant that in the short term neither party will have a particularly large House majority, and for 2022 and 2024 it is likely the same 20-ish seats will decide the majority both times. This will be less true towards the end of the decade as trends in downstate Illinois and the DFW Quad threaten the gerrymanders both states have passed and the map widens again, but for now, it’s a very narrow playing field. And nobody seems to have clocked this.
Tweak my assumptions a bit – the Florida GOP get 19 seats in 2022, not the 18 I have penciled in, maybe the Tennessee GOP do end up cracking Nashville, maybe the Missouri GOP end up cracking Kansas City – and you can get it up to around 230, but the only way the GOP can get above 230 is if Democrats go limp in New York, or the California Commission ends up going back on their previous work, which positioned Democrats to make a couple of gains. And here’s the thing – we know New York isn’t going limp.
The best reporting out of New York is that House Democrats will have a 23-3 edge, and while that map might end up being a 22-4 in 2022 if the map has a weakness somewhere, that boost to Democratic chances basically wipes out all of the GOP’s chances of getting a House majority the size of Pelosi’s 2019-21 one, and it means that the chances they have a tiny one like the one Pelosi has now goes up quite a bit. Say the North Carolina Supreme Court orders the 11-3 North Carolina map redrawn into a 9-5 or a 8-6, or the Ohio Supreme Court tosses the 13-2 and draws a 10-5, that 225 seats becomes precariously close to 218.
Now, all of this is irrelevant if Joe Biden’s approval stays stuck in the mud, because in that case then the GOP will win 13 seats in California probably and then Jenn Wexton probably also loses in Virginia, and the line of trouble probably doesn’t stop at Biden +6 seats and starts to get to Biden +9s, which Wexton’s seat is (on the current draft). That said, if his approval ticks up, the GOP are in some trouble here, especially if state courts find violations of their laws in some of the states with the most aggressive gerrymanders.
The math works for a narrow Democratic majority, actually, even if I sort of don’t believe it (and would be very very hard). Washington 8th is a Biden +7 seat with a Democratic incumbent, so giving it to the GOP is probably wrong, as is giving the GOP the left-trending, but still only Biden +5 Colorado 8th, and we don’t know that Minnesotans will toss Angie Craig from the 2nd district up there. The idea the President can be this unpopular and still win the House seems absurd, if I’m going to be quite frank, but then I go through the seat map and it’s possible – but again, I barely believe it. For once, I find the data I built to be unbelievable, but because it is too favourable for Democrats. I don’t really believe it, but I can’t find my error.
The GOP will probably win the House because they’ll find a path to 218 seats. Getting Democrats there is a very difficult road, though not impossible, and I’m also not really up to being a Democratic optimist after the fall I had. But while I’m quite sure the GOP will get their majority, I’m also fairly confident Democrats will have a very sizable minority and will have a very good shot at winning the House back in 2024, assuming it is lost next year. And after all the doom and gloom about redistricting and all that? Frankly, I’ll take it.