It is never preferable to be in the minority party in a legislative body. But as far as minorities go, House Republicans are in a pretty good spot.
Between the trend of midterm elections usually favoring the party that is not in the White House, a closely divided House, and a party apparatus ready to continue their expectations-exceeding 2020 strategy while Democrats rework theirs, Republicans are on track to winning back the House in 2022.
“It has the makings of what could be a good year for the Republicans when it comes to the House,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
President Biden’s approval rating is around 53%, and while he is not underwater, history indicates he would need to bump that rating up by at least 10 points in order to have a shot at gaining seats. Gallup analysis found that even presidents with approval ratings of 50% during the midterm elections averaged a loss of about 14 House seats from their own party.
That would be enough to bump Republicans back into the majority. Democrats have the slimmest House majority since 1930, currently 221 seats to 210 GOP seats (four vacancies include two Republicans who died, one Democrat who joined the Biden administration, and one razor-close election with a Republican representative-elect who has yet to be seated).
Republicans in the 2020 cycle shattered the expectations of analysts who forecasted Democrats to gain House seats in 2020. Not a single Republican incumbent lost the election, and they picked off 13 incumbent Democrats.
Some of the Democratic incumbents who survived blasted the far-left wing of the Democratic Party for giving Republicans fuel to campaign on fears of socialism and “Green New Deal” politics. “If we run this race again, we will get f—ing torn apart again in 2022,” Virginia Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger reportedly said on a Democratic conference call just after the election.
This cycle, Democrats debuted a strategy that tries to harness some of the same kind of opposition energy that drove voters to the polls in 2020, but for their own purposes: negatively define Republicans early, tying them to conspiracy theories and elevating the more fringe members of the party, such as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who the House removed from committee posts last week over her past embrace of conspiracy theories such as QAnon.
In a press release last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week identified Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy as “(Q-CA),” as if he is in the party of Q. The DCCC released targeted ads saying that certain Republicans “stood with Q, not with you” when they did not vote to impeach former President Donald Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, which happened two weeks before he left office.
Fact-checkers noted that many of those Republican members still criticized Trump or called for a censure despite not voting to impeach Trump and have denounced QAnon.
“House Democrats thought last cycle was bad, and they’ve already shown they aren’t remotely prepared for 2022. We are going to relentlessly remind voters of Democrats’ job-killing, socialist agenda and the fact they would rather defund the police than get kids back in the classroom,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Michael McAdams told the Washington Examiner.
The NRCC has not yet made public its list of congressional district targets for 2022, but it is likely to include the several Democrat-held districts that Trump won.
But it is not all smooth sailing for Republicans.
The GOP will also have a large defensive map, including defending incumbents in some congressional districts that Biden won — California Reps. David Valado, Mike Garcia, and Young Kim hold seats where Biden won by 10% or more, according to data compiled by Daily Kos Elections — and races that were close last time are expected to be close again.
And Republicans are losing a major factor that helped them make gains in 2020: Trump at the top of the ticket.
“No one can turn out those rural white voters as well as he can,” Coleman said. “Once he was off the ballot in Georgia, the biggest turnout drops were, you know, in the district but Marjorie Taylor Greene represents.”
Coleman is studying whether 2022 may be “a different type of midterm” in terms of party coalitions, with the Republicans again reshaping without Trump at the top of the ticket.
Another complicating factor will be the result of the 2020 census and redrawing of congressional district maps, likely drawing a handful of members from both parties out of safe district seats. Some analysts expect redrawn maps to benefit Republicans, but it is unlikely that seats are redrawn enough to give Republicans enough seats to avoid dozens of close races that will determine the balance of power in 2023. Those unknowns are keeping forecasters from rating House races or making predictions about 2023 control.
“Redistricting could probably net them a few seats which could potentially be the decisive” when it comes to control of the House, Coleman said, adding that “to some extent, all of this is going to be on hold” until the new maps are drawn.
Republicans may benefit in a public relations sense, too, from a lower rate of incumbents abandoning their congressional careers. By this point last cycle, the first of what would eventually be 26 House Republicans had announced retiring from public office, contributing to the perception that Republicans in the age of Trump remained vulnerable. So far, all Republican House members are staying put.
