How Many Republicans Are in the House of Representatives 2020

Pebrero 20, 2022 Mag-post ng isang Komento

2020 was non supposed to be a good twelvemonth for Firm Republicans. The polls pointed to a Democratic-leaning electoral environment, Democratic candidates were outraising Republicans in about competitive seats, and the GOP had to defend a host of open seats that Republican incumbents had abandoned.

Withal, contrary to expectations, including their own, Republicans managed to gain seats even as the Democrats held onto their majority. Votes are still being counted, but based on contests projected by ABC News, Republicans have netted six seats so far, and they may still flip a few more.

Just peak-line numbers about seats gained and lost tin can only tell us then much. Let'southward expect at some of the major takeaways from the 2022 House elections.

Where the rest of the 2022 races stand | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast

Republicans outperformed expectations

Coming into the 2022 election, FiveThirtyEight'due south forecast only gave Republicans nearly a ane in six shot of picking upward half dozen or more than seats, and if the GOP gains more as-yet-uncalled seats in the coming days, the party'southward haul could become even more unlikely.

It'south non simply the flipped seats that are impressive, though. Not a single Republican incumbent has lost in the races where nosotros know the outcomes thus far. Amid the outstanding contests, only California Rep. Mike Garcia, who won a May special election, appears to exist in danger of losing.

[Related: The Polls Weren't Great. Only That's Pretty Normal.]

Open-seat races have also been friendly to Republicans, despite the large number of GOP incumbents who retired or left office ahead of the 2022 election. The GOP had to defend 35 open up seats compared to the Democrats' 13, but of the 33 Republican-held open seats projected so far, only three have gone for the Democrats. And two of those Democratic wins were in North Carolina seats that the GOP had written off after a courtroom-ordered redistricting made the districts heavily Democratic.

GOP women made large gains

While the majority of the Republican caucus will still exist men come 2021, in that location will be far more Republican women in Congress than at that place were this twelvemonth. So far, it looks similar at to the lowest degree 26 GOP women will be in the House adjacent year, surpassing the record of 25 from the 109th Congress. That'due south thanks in function to the record number of non-incumbent Republican women — fifteen — who've won Firm contests. And it'southward also because of how well Republican women did in tight races. The table below shows the Republican women who ran in Autonomous-held Business firm districts that were at to the lowest degree potentially competitive,¹ according to FiveThirtyEight's forecast. As of this writing, seven of them have won.

GOP women have flipped several Democratic seats

Republican women running for potentially competitive Democratic-held House seats and the status of their race every bit of 4:30 p.m Eastern on Nov. 11

District	Candidate	Electric current Margin	Projected	GOP flip
MN-07	Michelle Fischbach	R+13.2	✓	✓
NM-02	Yvette Herrell	R+7.eight	✓	✓
OK-05	Stephanie Bice	R+four.1	✓	✓
FL-27	Maria Elvira Salazar	R+2.vii	✓	✓
IA-01	Ashley Hinson	R+2.half dozen	✓	✓
CA-48	Michelle Steel	R+2.0	✓	✓
SC-01	Nancy Mace	R+1.3	✓	✓
NY-11	Nicole Malliotakis	R+15.8
NY-22	Claudia Tenney	R+11.0
CA-39	Immature Kim	R+1.iii
IA-02	Mariannette Miller-Meeks	0
NY-18	Chele Farley	D+3.0
TX-15	Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez	D+2.9	✓
AZ-01	Tiffany Shedd	D+3.4	✓
PA-07	Lisa Scheller	D+3.7	✓
IL-17	Esther Joy Male monarch	D+3.viii	✓
TX-32	Genevieve Collins	D+six.0	✓
FL-xiii	Anna Paulina Luna	D+6.ane	✓
IL-06	Jeanne Ives	D+6.half dozen	✓
OR-05	Amy Ryan Courser	D+vi.seven	✓
OH-13	Christina Hagan	D+seven.five	✓
NC-01	Sandy Smith	D+8.3	✓
GA-06	Karen Handel	D+ix.2	✓
KS-03	Amanda Adkins	D+9.seven	✓
NJ-11	Rosemary Becchi	D+9.viii	✓
CA-03	Tamika Hamilton	D+10.9	✓
PA-04	Kathy Barnette	D+xviii.8	✓
CA-36	Erin Cruz	D+22.one	✓

It's not all bad news for Democrats

While it was unquestionably a good nighttime for Republicans, Democrats yet held onto most of the seats they won in 2022 and volition continue to be the majority political party in the House. That's in office considering they retained nearly of the suburban districts they picked up in 2018.

Of the 233 seats that Democrats held coming into the election,² 186 of them were in districts that were predominantly or partly suburban in nature, according to density categorizations by Bloomberg'southward CityLab. (This figure excludes North Carolina because CityLab has non updated its density data to account for North Carolina's court-ordered redistricting in 2019.) Thus far, Democrats accept lost seven of those seats, but they captured 1 GOP-held suburban seat around Atlanta. And cheers to redistricting, they've also won two formerly Republican seats effectually Greensboro and Raleigh in N Carolina, which reflect the party's strength in more populous areas. (ABC News hasn't projected a winner nonetheless in xi suburban races — eight Democratic-held districts and iii Republican-held districts.)

Considering of their relative success in the suburbs, Democrats kept many seats in places President Trump won in 2016. Coming into the ballot, Democrats held 30 seats in districts Trump carried in 2016, and they would've lost their majority if they'd lost more than than half of them (assuming they didn't offset the losses by gaining seats elsewhere). But they've won eighteen of them so far and picked up i from the GOP (Georgia'due south seventh Congressional District). In fact, more than than half of Republicans' gains have come in seats representing places that Trump won past a pretty sizable margin in 2016. We'll accept to await a bit before data can tell united states of america how congressional districts voted in 2020,ⁱⁱⁱ simply for now information technology seems many Republican gains were made past picking off the lowest-hanging fruit.

Republicans are well positioned to have the House in 2022

Although nosotros don't yet know the winners of some House races, nosotros can already look alee to the 2022 midterms and meet a fairly straightforward path for the GOP to capture the House. Midterm elections historically go well for the party that'south non in the White House, and the out-of-ability party is especially likely to exercise well in the Business firm, since every seat is up for election (the Senate is a more complicated story).

Since the end of Globe State of war II, the presidential party has lost an average of 27 House seats in midterm elections, equally the nautical chart below shows. No affair how many seats Democrats finish up with subsequently 2020's election — at this point, they volition probably end up somewhere in the low 220s — a loss of that magnitude would easily be enough for Republicans to retake the House.

The recent history of midterms in a Democratic president'due south offset term seems especially promising for the GOP, as well. Post-obit Bill Clinton'due south ballot in 1992, Democrats lost more than 50 seats in 1994, and after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, Democrats lost more 60 seats.

If Democrats had added five to x seats this year, they could have survived a 20-seat loss in the midterms. Instead, Republicans will probably need to win fewer than 10 seats to gain a slender bulk in 2022.

[Related: Politics Podcast: Why Polls Were Off In 2020, And Why They Weren't That Bad]

On height of this, Republicans could very well benefit from the new commune lines that volition exist drawn ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. The GOP is set up to fully command redistricting for about two-fifths of all House seats, while Democrats will only hold sway over i-tenth of them, with the remaining seats are in states with divided governments or where redistricting is done by a commission system. The Republican line-drawing advantage should help the political party draw favorable maps that could help the GOP win more seats than we might otherwise await.

Biden is set to be president. What comes next? | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast

CORRECTION (Feb. 18, 2021, 2:52 p.m.): The chart in this article originally showed Democrats losing four House seats in the 1998 midterms; they really gained four seats.

Footnotes

This excludes races where the GOP had at to the lowest degree a 99 pct chance of winning or less than a one percent chance of winning.
Including a vacant seat in Georgia's 5th Congressional Commune previously held by a Democrat.
And then far nosotros have data by county, just nosotros don't accept a complete picture of votes by district.