House of Representatives Overview

On Tuesday, New Hampshire, Delaware, and Rhode Island closed out the 2024 primary season that began almost six months ago. That makes this a good time to revive “Notes from Norm,” in which I share my thoughts on the fight for control of the House of Representatives and Senate. I’ll focus on the big picture in the House this week and turn to the Senate next week.

Today, Republicans occupy 220 seats in the House and Democrats have 211. Accounting for vacancies in two safe Democrat seats in New Jersey and one in Texas, as well as one safe GOP seat in Wisconsin, we can see that the current GOP majority is 221-214. Republicans will net an additional seat because redistricting changes turned three blue districts into red ones and two red districts turned into blue ones.

The highly respected forecasting firm Cook Political Report with Amy Walter currently classifies just 43 of 435 races as competitive. Of these, 23 races are for seats currently held by Democrats, and 20 for seats currently held by the GOP. Republicans have slightly more exposure in the most competitive races – those classified as “toss up” – with thirteen seats in that category to the Democrats’ ten.

With just a couple of exceptions, these 43 seats are vulnerable not because of mistakes or scandals by incumbents but because the voting patterns of the districts make them challenging for the party that currently holds them – especially in a presidential election year. All five Democrats currently occupying seats former President Trump carried in the 2020 election are in competitive races; so are fifteen of the eighteen GOP incumbents running in districts that President Biden carried four years ago.

Also pertinent: It’s easier to flip an “open seat,” one where the current member is retiring, than one held by an incumbent. Four of the 43 competitive seats are open – and all of them are currently held by Democrats.

The leader of the House GOP’s campaign committee, Congressman Richard Hudson, describes the fight for House control as a “knife fight in a phone booth” because it is intense, closely matched and waged within narrow confines. Both parties have a legitimate chance to win a majority, and it could end up being a very small majority – maybe even tighter than the GOP’s current narrow advantage.

Given that our goal is a robust GOP majority, we have our work cut out for us. RJC has already endorsed fifteen incumbents and eight challengers in competitive races, and we’ll be highlighting other key candidates in the coming weeks.

In the tough fight ahead, we need you and any friends and family you can bring along to generously support RJC PAC and our endorsed candidates. The Democrats currently lead in fundraising, so we need your help to close that gap and give our candidates the resources to maintain and expand our majority in the House.

To victory,

Senator Norm Coleman
RJC National Chairman