A reminder: A net gain of five seats is not the same thing as winning five seats. A party needs at least 218 seats to win control of the House. While Republicans are trying to flip seats this year, so are the Democrats — so any GOP wins will have to be offset by any losses they incur.
That said, losses are not a huge concern for Republicans right now. Given the historical trends working in their favor and the fact that President Joe Biden’s approval rating is 40% in the latest CNN average of national polls, the national environment seems to be working in their favor. And the uptick in retirement announcements by several longtime Democratic incumbents in recent months is a telling sign they weren’t looking forward to serving in the minority.But it’s not all bad news for Democrats. The House map is not as favorable to Republicans as the majority party feared it could have been. The once-a-decade redistricting process is nearly complete (except for a handful of states), which has resulted in new congressional lines that Democrats think give them a shot at holding their majority.
Overall, the biggest takeaway from redistricting is that the number of competitive House seats has shrunk, which means that in most states, primaries — rather than general election contests — will be the main event.
Several states are hosting member-on-member primaries, in which two incumbents are running in the same district, either because their state lost a seat in redistricting or they were drawn into the same seat for partisan reasons. While those races can provide plenty of intraparty drama — and in some cases, a test of Trump’s enduring influence over the GOP — they’re mostly not expected to have any effect on the general election. In West Virginia, for example, two Republican incumbents — one who objected to certifying the 2020 presidential election and one who did not — are facing off in a heavily Republican district. Regardless of who wins the May primary, the seat is highly unlikely to fall into Democratic hands in November.Some states hold open primaries — in which candidates from all parties run on the same primary ballot with the top two or four candidates advancing to the general election. One of those states is Alaska, where former governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is running in a special election for the state’s at-large seat left vacant by the death…
Source: The midterms will decide the future of the January 6 investigation. Here’s how the race for the House looks today
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