Could control of the House flip in 2024?

The chamber currently has a five-seat Republican majority, 222-212, with one vacant seat that’s expected to go Democratic.

That’s a small margin by historical standards. Only twice since World War II has the majority party held fewer than 222 seats when it was at full strength – the Republicans with 221 seats from 1953 to 1955 and the same number from 2001 to 2003.

And the current margin is small enough to put the Republicans at risk of losing it in 2024. You have to look no further in history than a few months ago: Going into the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats also had a five-seat majority, and Republicans were able to win control of the chamber.

Fifteen months before the 2024 election, no one knows whether the GOP majority will hold. But a variety of factors could help determine who wins the House majority next November.

How Many Seats Appear to be Vulnerable for Each Party?

In their most recent ratings, these three outlets broadly agree that somewhere between 42 and 47 of the House’s 435 seats are “in play,” which means they are rated either as toss-ups or leaning toward one party or the other. Seats in two other categories, likely and safe, are not considered competitive.

The three outlets disagree somewhat about which seats are competitive and how competitive they are.

For eight seats, the three outlets agree on the most vulnerable rating: toss-up. Of these, six seats are currently held by Republicans: John Duarte and Mike Garcia in California districts; Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler and Brandon Williams in New York districts; and Lori Chavez-DeRemer in an Oregon district. The other two triple toss-up seats are held by Democrats: a seat in Michigan being vacated by Elissa Slotkin, who is running for Senate and the one held by Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington state.

A ninth seat may be even more vulnerable – the one held by New York GOP Rep. George Santos, who made up many details about his life and now faces criminal charges. Two outlets rate his seat a toss-up while the third rates it as lean Democratic.

Combined, these nine seats are the chamber’s most vulnerable – and if Republicans lose most of them and Democrats are able to hold their own vulnerable seats, that would be the majority right there. (The Democratic number could rise to three triple toss-up seats, pending the outlets’ decision on the swingy Virginia seat held by Abigail Spanberger, who announced July 28 that she will retire from the House in 2024 and run for governor in 2025.)

The Republicans’ disproportionate risk continues when you widen the focus to the next-most vulnerable seats. The three outlets uniformly characterize 30 seats as competitive – either rating them toss-up or leaning to one party of the other. Of these 30 seats, 18 are held by Republicans, compared to 12 held by Democrats.

Moving the boundaries of competitiveness further outward, however, the Democrats’ risk rises. Of the 45 seats that at least two of the publications deem competitive, 25 are held by the Democrats, compared to 20 held by the Republicans. And of the 57 seats deemed competitive by at least one outlet, the Democrats also have more at risk – 31 seats, compared to 26 for the Republicans.

The flip side, of course, is that nearly 90% of House seats are deemed uncompetitive. This is a continuing reality in the House: In 2022, 84% of House seats were either decided by margins of 10 points or more or went uncontested entirely. The average margin of victory in the contested races was 28 points. Only 36 races in 2022 were decided by less than 5 points.

Still, looking at the battleground of most competitive seats, score one for the Democrats: For now at least, they come into the 2024 House election cycle with a slight advantage.

What Impact Could the Presidential Race Have?

Historically, there’s no strong pattern of victorious presidential candidates having coattails in the House. Since the 1992 election, the winner of the presidential contest has gained House seats exactly half the time: in 1996, 2004, 2008 and 2012. Presidential winners actually lost ground in the House in 1992, 2000, 2016 and 2020.

No one knows how the 2024 presidential race will play out, of course, but President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are the front-runners for the nominations in their parties, and current polls show a close contest. This history makes the results of the 2020 election a starting point for analyzing the impact of the 2024 presidential race on the battle for the House.

It used to be that a district’s vote for president and the House had a decent chance of diverging. According to Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an average of 71 districts split their presidential and House votes by party between 2000 and 2010. But since the 2012 election, partisan polarization has increased, bringing the average number of districts below 28 and hitting a low of 16 in 2020.

If the 2020 election results are any guide – and it’s too early to be certain that they will be – growing partisan polarization could pose a problem for Republicans.

In the most recent election, 2022, 23 districts split their votes for president and House. Five Democrats represent Trump-win districts: Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington state, Alaska’s Mary Peltola, Maine’s Jared Golden, Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur and Pennsylvania’s Matt Cartwright.

But a far larger number of Biden-won districts – 18 – are currently held by Republicans, including each of the GOP-held seats that all three outlets rate as toss-up or worse.

This means the GOP will be defending more seats on relatively unfriendly territory – and more than enough to lose the majority if these Republican seats flip Democratic with Biden on the ballot.

So here, too, Democrats have a modest edge.

“The presidential vote is now a very, very strong predictor of House vote, so Democrats should have more pick-up opportunities in 2024 than Republicans,” says Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist.

How Many Vulnerable House Members Are Rookies?

Incumbency doesn’t make a veteran House member invincible – in fact, incumbency matters a lot less today than it once did, Abramowitz says – but it can help on the margins. And in the most competitive seats, the GOP has more rookie members standing for their first reelection in 2024.

Of the 30 seats held by rookie House members who are considered vulnerable by at least one ratings outlet, 16 are held by Republicans, compared to 14 held by Democrats. And the Republican rookies include five of the party’s most vulnerable: D’Esposito, Lawler, Santos, Williams and Chavez-DeRemer.

In other words, while rookie-held seats are more evenly divided between the parties, the Democrats enjoy a slight edge.

What States Are Most of the Vulnerable Seats Located In?

The biggest states so far for competitive seats in 2024 are Democratic strongholds: California and New York.

For now, California is home to seven vulnerable seats, of which six are held by Republicans: Duarte and Garcia, plus David Valadao, Michelle Steel, Ken Calvert and Young Kim. Only one is held by a Democrat – an open seat being vacated by Senate candidate Katie Porter.

New York, meanwhile, also has seven vulnerable seats right now, of which six are held by Republicans: D’Esposito, Lawler, Santos and Williams, plus Nick LaLota and Marc Molinaro. Only one is held by a Democrat, Pat Ryan.

In presidential election years, turnout rises significantly compared to midterm elections, and that could help Democrats in strongly blue states like California and New York. High turnout should provide a special boost for Democrats in New York, where the Democratic performance in the 2022 midterms was unusually weak.

That said, Republicans are better positioned in the two states with the next-largest number of vulnerable seats, four: Michigan and North Carolina. In Michigan, three of the vulnerable seats are held by Democrats, with just one held by a Republican. In North Carolina, all four of the vulnerable seats are held by Democrats.

What Is the Pattern for Open Seats?

It’s only about one-third of the way through the 2024 election cycle, so the number of seats left open due to retirements or deaths is low for now. In fact, the only two open seats considered vulnerable to a party switch at the moment are those being vacated by Democrats Slotkin and Porter – with Spanberger likely to join them.

So this category aids Republicans, though the numbers are small. Many more seats are likely to open up in future months. In fact, high rates of retirement are often a sign of dwindling confidence in the party’s prospects in the next election. So much more remains to be written on retirements.

Can Voters Expect Candidate Rematches?

The short answer is: yes. And the slightly longer answer is: Yes, and it could make a difference.

“Candidates who’ve come close to winning have certain advantages on their second try – now they’re better known by voters, and they aren’t starting from scratch building their campaign infrastructure and fundraising networks,” Inside Elections’ Erin Covey wrote recently. “Repeat candidates may also be helped by a stronger top of the ticket compared to their previous run.”

Covey noted some two dozen candidates who have announced a rematch bid in 2024, including Republican candidates in the open Slotkin seat and against Gluesenkamp Perez, as well as Democratic candidates in districts represented by Republicans Calvert, Chavez-DeRemer, D’Esposito, Duarte and Molinaro. Another notable rematch will occur in Colorado, pitting controversial GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert against Democrat Adam Frisch, who came just 546 votes short of defeating Boebert in 2022.

In some cases, the 2022 nominee will have to clear a primary first in 2024 for the nomination (and sometimes may lose to a stronger candidate from their own party). And a bunch of other 2022 nominees are officially undecided about a 2024 run but are considered possible entrants in the coming months.

By and large, then, both parties can claim successes in recruiting strong candidates from 2022.

What States Might Redistrict Before the 2024 Election?

While 2022 represented the first year under the new House district lines that are drawn once a decade, both parties have options for tilting the district playing field in their direction through a new round of redistricting over the next year and a half, driven either by partisan power grabs or court-ordered redrawing.

The GOP stands to gain a couple of seats in North Carolina, where control of the state Supreme Court shifted in 2022, enabling the Republican-controlled legislature more room to draw a new, more GOP-friendly map.

In Ohio, the GOP-controlled state legislature is poised to redraw its congressional map after a long-running battle with the state Supreme Court, which now leans more heavily Republican than it did in 2022.

However, the Democrats have a shot at balancing out these GOP gains, due in part to the Supreme Court’s surprise 2023 decision in the case Allen v. Milligan, in which the justices found that Alabama’s map violated the Voting Rights Act by including one rather than two Black-majority districts.

The Allen decision could mean that Democrats net an additional seat in Alabama and Louisiana, although Democrats may need to fight protracted court battles to secure these gains, chewing up time. Other states could also see pro-Democratic shifts in their maps due to Allen v. Milligan: In descending order of likelihood, they are Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and Texas, according to the Cook Political Report.

Meanwhile, in Democratic-controlled New York state, Democrats are going on offense, seeking a stronger partisan tilt for a map that was drawn in 2022 by a court-appointed special master.

In Wisconsin, the Democrats earlier this year flipped control of the state Supreme Court, enabling Democrats to legally challenge the heavily pro-Republican congressional map in a state that is otherwise evenly divided.

Finally, in Utah, Democrats are suing to overturn a map that splits heavily blue Salt Lake City into multiple districts, an approach that all-but assured unanimous Republican representation.

Ultimately, both parties have the potential to see gains through mid-decade redistricting, but it’s unclear whether these gains will cancel out or give a nudge to one party or the other.

What Does Polling on Generic Congressional Ballot Show?

There’s no way of knowing what the overall political environment will look like in the fall of 2024. But for now, the generic congressional ballot – that is, what respondents say when pollsters ask which party they would prefer to control Congress – leans ever so slightly toward the Democrats.

According to FiveThirtyEight.com, the only independent pollster to ask this question in recent months has been YouGov, for The Economist. In five polls since late June, the Democratic edge on the congressional ballot has ranged between one and four points. Polls sponsored by Republican groups have found the parties separated by a point or two.

Given historical patterns, that may not be enough of an edge to assure Democrats of a chamber flip in 2024. But it’s better than starting in a hole.

So what does this all mean?

Taking into account these factors collectively, Democrats have reason for optimism about flipping the House in 2024. But it’s far from guaranteed – and much about the nation’s political mood remains to be determined in the remaining 16 months before Election Day.