Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The off-year elections were good for Democrats, but...
Of the 39 seats Democrats are competing for, 28 are in districts that Trump won by five or more percentage points.
A gerrymandering spree instigated by Trump has narrowed the number of truly competitive seats, furthering a trend that was already underway in recent elections as the nation has become more polarized. That has not affected the race for the Senate, which Republicans are favored to hold.
Just 36 races in this year’s election are rated competitive by the Cook Political Report, compared with 49 races at the same point in the 2018 cycle. Half of the seats rated competitive by Cook this year are already held by Democrats, leaving the party even less room to gain ground.
“Democrats will have a very narrow but viable path to the majority. That’s a different scenario than 2006 or 2018, when Democrats put a ton of Republican-held seats in play,” said David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at the Cook Political Report. “There’s so little elasticity in U.S. House elections these days compared to prior eras.”
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Democrats believe they have effectively neutralized Republican efforts to pick up additional seats through gerrymandering in Texas, Ohio and North Carolina by gaining seats of their own in California and Utah. The Indiana Senate rejected a partisan gerrymander last month, and Democrats are still exploring whether they could pick up seats in Virginia, Illinois and Maryland. Wasserman said the post-gerrymandering landscape remains “pretty equitable to both parties.”
