GOP sees House prospects grow bleaker as districts shift to blue

Less than a month out from the midterm elections, the landscape for House Republicans grows grimmer by the day.

President Trump’s approval ratings are low and sinking. The GOP’s emergency redistricting campaign has fallen short of its goals. And the volatile economy has voters on edge and thirsty for change.

The combination has created a minefield of trouble for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other GOP leaders, who are scrambling against increasingly long odds to keep their slim hold on the lower chamber in the next Congress.

The strength of the headwinds they face has become evident in recent weeks as the nation’s top election analysts have shifted their projections for dozens of House seats — almost all of them in the Democrats’ favor.

Those changes signal that Republicans are struggling not only in purple battleground districts — the traditional combat zones where majorities are usually won and lost — but also in much redder regions of the country where Trump won easily just two years ago.

Part of that is expected. Midterm elections are historically tough for the party that controls the White House. But experts say the challenges for Republicans have been compounded this cycle by the high cost of consumer goods — which can be linked directly to Trump’s policies, including tariffs and the Iran War — and the erosion of support for the president, whose approval rating is at historic lows.

“Republicans holding on to the House would be a shock given where the overall numbers are,” Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an independent election handicapper based at the University of Virginia, said Friday in an email.

The latest wave of bad news for Republicans came on Friday, when forecasters at the Cook Political Report, another non-partisan election analyst group, moved 18 House races towards the Democrats. The highlights of that report include:

Two incumbent Republicans who were previously favored to win, Reps. Bill Huizenga (Mich.) and Rob Whitman (Va.), are now in “toss up” races, meaning they’re too close to call.

Five “toss up” races are now in the “leans Democrat” category, including four GOP incumbents — Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, and Pennsylvania Reps. Scott Perry and Ryan Mackenzie — who are now predicted to lose. (The fifth lawmaker in that group is Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a centrist Washington Democrat who has been a top target of Republicans in a district Trump carried by 3 points in 2024. Cook now has her favored to win).

Three of the more vulnerable Democratic incumbents — Reps. Tom Suozzi (N.Y.), Laura Gillen (N.Y.) and Susie Lee (Nev.) — are now “likely” to keep their seats.

And highlighting the limits of the Republicans’ redistricting campaign, the group also moved Rep. Don Davis (D-N.C.), who was thought to be drawn out of contention by North Carolina Republicans, into the “toss up” category.

Erin Covey, the Cook analyst behind the report, said the environment is such that “the most likely outcome” is that Democrats — who need to flip just three seats to win the majority — will pick up between nine and 19.

“At this point, Democrats only need to win 20% of the Toss Ups to get to a majority, assuming the seats that favor Democrats in our ratings all break their way,” Covey wrote.

The analysts at Sabato have reported a similar trend, moving more than 20 seats towards Democrats since the middle of September. Kondik, the managing editor, said much of the Republicans’ troubles can be attributed to the high cost of living.

“High prices can destroy a political coalition — it happened to the Democrats and now it’s happening to the Republicans,” he said.

Republicans are pushing back against the analysts’ predictions. They’re pointing to three factors that leave them confident they can repel a blue wave and keep control of the House next year.

First, they note that Republicans, boosted by a late spending spree from MAGA Inc., Trump’s super-PAC, have a clear cash advantage heading into the final stretch of the campaign. Second, most of the seats Democrats are hoping to flip are not in purple, 50-50 districts, but more conservative regions where Trump won by large margins. And third, the approval rating of Democrats is also well underwater.

“Voters might not like Republicans, they might not like Trump, but they don’t like Democrats. And you have to present them with a viable alternative, especially when you’re playing in this deep-red territory where they are Republican voters,” a national GOP operative said Friday by phone.

“If we turn out our base, they might hold their nose and vote for our guy, but they sure as hell are not going to vote for a Democrat,” the operative continued. “And they’re going into these districts that Trump won by 15, 20 points — that’s a huge uphill climb.”

Still, there’s no question that voters are restless, and recent polls suggest they’re ready to take it out on the party that controls all the power. A new survey, released Friday by the Pew Research Center, found that 68 percent of respondents — and 31 percent of Trump’s 2024 voters — disapprove of his performance.

Even Johnson, who has maintained throughout the cycle that Republicans will hold the House next year, recently acknowledged the possibility that he might lose the gavel.

“Heaven forbid, if we lose this majority or whatever, I don’t know what my next chapter of life is,” Johnson told Fox News last week . He quipped that he might return to Shreveport “and start a lawn business.”

On the bright side for Republicans, they’re expected to benefit from the retirement of Rep. Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat who had built his own independent brand and survived a number of tough challenges in a district Trump won by more than 9 points in 2024. That seat is now predicted to swing to the GOP.

But that pick-up is also expected to be offset by another retirement, that of GOP Rep. Don Bacon in Nebraska, where the Democrat is now favored to win the open seat encompassing Omaha.

Much of the outcome in the House could hinge on the effects of state redistricting.

Pressed by Trump, a number of GOP-led states re-drew their House maps this cycle in ways specifically designed to help Republicans. That practice, highly unusual in the middle of the decade, was intended to insulate Republicans from losing their majority by turning a number of blue seats to red.

In part, that campaign is predicted to bear fruit, as the new maps are expected to flip Democratic seats currently held by Reps. Shomari Figures in Alabama, Steve Cohen in Tennessee and Cleo Fields in Louisiana.

But several Democratic states retaliated with new maps of their own. And the gains that Republicans had initially intended are, in many cases, now much less certain given the national mood and momentum shift towards Democrats.

In Texas, for instance, where Republicans sought to bump off five Democrats, they might now get only two, as Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez are favored to win, according to Sabato’s experts, while GOP Monica De La Cruz is facing an unexpectedly tough contest. Cook analysts rank it a “toss up.”

In Florida, Republicans targeted four Democratic seats. But three of those races — including those featuring Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Kathy Castor — are in the “toss up” category, making them no slam dunk.

A similar dynamic is happening after redistricting in Ohio, where Republicans had sought to flip two seats with their new maps. But Rep. Greg Landsman (D) is slightly favored to win his race, and Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D), a long-time target of Republicans, is in a “toss up” of her own.

Ohio Republicans are also contending with a scandal surrounding Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), who is facing allegations of domestic abuse. Miller denies the charges, but the controversy has put a once reliable red seat in play.

Republicans also fell short of their pick-up goals in Missouri, where a Republican-drawn map designed to flip the seat held by Democratic Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver was shot down by the courts.

Kondik said the cumulative effect of redistricting favors Republicans. But given the environment, they won’t realize anything close to the double-digit gains they envisioned when they launched their map- drawing campaign last year.

“As of now, we only have the Republicans netting 2-5 seats as a direct result of redistricting,” he said, “and if things are really bad in November, it may be even less than that.”