WASHINGTON — Expectations that Democrats would significantly expand their majority in the House of Representatives by 10 to 15 seats haven’t panned out, though they will likely maintain their majority.
So far, Democrats have flipped only three seats, two of which were likely to be won after court redistricting made those North Carolina districts more blue. The third seat was won by Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux, who won in a tight race for Georgia’s 7th Congressional District after Republican Rep. Rob Woodall retired.
The election contrasts starkly with the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats flipped the House by gaining 40 seats. Currently, there are 232 Democrats and 197 Republicans in the House. So far, 204 Democrats and 188 Republicans have been elected, with 43 races yet to be called.
“Tonight, House Democrats are poised to further strengthen our majority — the biggest, most diverse, most dynamic, women-led House majority in history,” House Chair Nancy Pelosi said in a news conference ahead of election night.
Days earlier, the Cook Political Report projected that Democrats would gain 10 to 15 seats because of President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic, his unpopularity in the suburbs, his impeachment and his handling of racial issues.
Despite Democrats raising more than $300 million for progressive candidates across the country, they’ve lost six House seats.
The blue wave of 2018 was undone in states like Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Minnesota and Virginia. Republican Nancy Mace won against Democrat Joe Cunningham in a Democratic leaning-district of South Carolina. Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who defeated Republican Dave Brat in 2018, lost to Nick Freitas.
Native American Republican Yvette Herrell won in a rematch against Democrat Xochitl Torres Small in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District, considered a Democratic toss-up, after Herrell claimed in advertisements that Democrats stole the seat with fraudulent ballots. Conservative Democrat Rep. Collin Peterson, who voted against Trump’s impeachment, has represented his toss-up Minnesota district for about 30 years. He lost to former Lt. Gov. Michelle Fischbach. Freshman incumbent of Iowa, Democrat Abby Finkenauer, who flipped the 1st congressional district in 2018, was unseated by Republican Ashley Hinson. In one of the most competitive races in the country, Kendra Horn, who in 2018 was the first Democrat to represent Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District in 44 years, lost to state Sen. Stephanie Bice.
Two Florida House seats, which were flipped by Democrats in 2018, were retaken by Republicans. South Florida first-term incumbent Rep. Donna Shalala was defeated after she ran against Cuban American journalist Maria Elvira Salazar for the second time, though the district was rated likely Democratic by the Cook Political Report. In Florida’s Democratic-leaning 26th district, Republican Carlos Giménez, former Mayor of Miami-Dade County, won against Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
Texas, with six House seats vulnerable after Republican incumbents retired, was a strong focus of House Democrats. Though Democrats flipped several Texas districts in 2018, they weren’t able to do so in 2020. In the majority-Hispanic 23rd Congressional District, expected to turn blue, Republican Navy veteran Tony Gonzales will succeed Will Hurd, the only Black Republican in the House. In the Houston suburbs, a shifting demographic landscape considered a Republican toss-up, Fort Bend Sheriff Troy Nehls defeated Sri Preston Kulkarni, who narrowly lost against incumbent Pete Olson in 2018. In suburban Dallas-Fort Worth, Beth Van Duyne, a Republican former mayor, won by 1 percentage point against Candace Venezuela, who would have been the first Afro-Latina member of Congress. Freshman incumbent Rep. Chip Roy, in a Republican tossup district, defeated Democrat Wendy Davis, a former state senator who filibustered an anti-abortion bill in 2013.
Two Democratic incumbents were unseated in New York. Max Rose, who in 2018 was the first Democrat to win over the Staten Island district since 2010, lost to Nicole Malliotakis, a Trump-backed Republican. Claudia Tenney won back a seat she lost in 2018 to Anthony Brindisi.
A competitive race in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, which has in recent years been trending blue, is too close to call. So is New Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District, where incumbent Jeff Van Drew, who switched from Democrat to Republican because of Trump’s impeachment, faces Amy Kennedy. In California, moderate Republican David Valadaois is close to unseating T.J. Cox for the Central Valley House seat.
Republicans, on the other hand, flipped seven seats. No GOP incumbents have been unseated.
Where did Democrats go wrong?
“My sense is that, for some voters, they may not have been particularly content with how the Democratic House led caucus worked, may not have felt that they dealt with the virus or the economic stimulus as effectively,” said Richard Eidlin, national policy director at Business for America.
Lonna Atkeson, political science professor at the University of New Mexico, attributes the increased Republican wins to a higher Republican turnout in 2020 than in 2018, and she said Republicans were likely more mobilized because of Trump’s reelection campaign.
“While we don’t know whether Donald Trump will be the winner of the presidential election, he did better himself. And all of the other levels of government were pulled along in elections where Republicans did quite well,” said John Fortier, director of governmental studies at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Democrats also may face more competition because more people are split ticket voting, Atkeson said, which means that voters not voting for Trump may still vote for Republican representatives.
Eidlin attributes the changes to the majority of Americans looking for the political process to work better. “[Americans] are somewhat frustrated by the lack of progress in Congress,” he said. “People are looking for more comity – a way to collaborate and deal with the debt and deal with the virus and deal with climate change.”
“What may well have happened is that Democrats kind of hit their high watermark in 2018,” said Matthew Wilson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University. Wilson said Democrats “took all of the low hanging fruit” in 2018 after making big gains based on Republican weakness in the suburbs.
They were too ambitious this election, he said, trying to flip districts that lean red. “If you are a Republican who survived 2018, that meant that either your district was pretty favorable to the party, or you were a particularly good and astute campaigner,” Wilson said.
Wilson said a really worrying sign was Democratic underperformance among Latino voters, especially in states with high populations of Latinos like Texas and Florida. “That, I think, made a difference in a variety of close races,” Wilson said. The top of the Democratic ticket, Joe Biden, doesn’t strongly resonate with Latino voters, either, he said.
“Democrats fell into a trap of thinking of Latino voters too monolithically. They sort of assumed that all Latino voters or the vast majority of Latino voters are highly race conscious, very concerned about immigration, view themselves as marginalized people of color. And that’s true of some Latinos, but there’s a very significant minority of Latinos who don’t think of themselves that way at all,” Wilson said.
Fortier expects the changes will cause House Democrats to be much less ambitious about the type of agenda they’ll be able to pass into law. “And the governance will look more like it does during divided government,” he said.
Will this race be as record-breaking as 2018?
The 2018 congressional race was a historic win for women and minorities. Over 100 women, most of them Democrats, were elected. This election, a record-breaking 100 GOP women are running, at least five of whom have won so far in states like Florida, New Mexico and South Carolina.
New Mexico made history by becoming the first state to elect all women of color to the House, including Deb Haaland, Teresa Leger Fernandez and Yvette Herrell.
There have been other firsts as well. Cori Bush, a pastor, became Missouri’s first black congresswoman. New York Democrats Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres became the first two gay Black congressmen. At 25, Republican Madison Cawthorn became the youngest elected member of Congress after beating Democratic Rep. Moe Davis for a House seat in North Carolina left vacant after Mark Meadows resigned to become White House chief of staff.
QAnon scored its first victory, too. Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, supporter of the far-right conspiracy theory, won by a large margin in Georgia.
Several victories have been unprecedented.
Democrat and longtime educator Jamaal Bowman won by an incredibly large margin, 66 percentage points, against Republican challenger Patrick McManus.
“I’m a Black man who was raised by a single mother in a housing project. That story doesn’t usually end in Congress,” he tweeted after his victory. “But today, that 11-year old boy who was beaten by police is about to be your next representative.”