How big will the red wave be? [UPDATED]

In the House, it might be historic

As far as I can tell, everyone who follows politics expects the GOP to regain control of the House of Representatives, and most everyone believes it will do so handily. But when the dust settles, how many seats will Republicans hold and will that number be “historic”?

Let’s begin by trying to define what a historic victory would be. Josh Kraushaar examines this question. He observes that if the GOP gets to 248 seats, this would be its largest number since 1928. That certainly would qualify as historic.

Getting to 242 seats would match the number reached in 2010. This number was viewed as historic at the time, in part because Republicans gained so many seats that year. Reaching 242 now requires fewer pickups and winning that number again just 14 years later would be less historic, but still quite an accomplishment. I’m pretty sure the GOP would settle for it.

Are these numbers within reach? It depends on how one looks at the matter.

As things stand now, the Cook Political Report has Republicans ahead (leaning, likely, or safe) in 209 seats, compared to 188 for Democrats. 32 seats are rated toss-ups. Six districts are not yet completely drawn or analyzed.

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball presents a similar outlook. It gives Republicans the edge in 214 seats and finds the Democrats enjoying one in 193. 28 seats are deemed toss-ups.

By definition, each party has about a 50 percent chance of winning a toss-up race. If one distributes the toss-up and indeterminate races in these analyses evenly, the GOP ends up winning around 230 seats. Nice, but not historic.

But I wonder whether Cook and Sabato are giving any real consideration to the prospect of a wave. Their breakdowns of GOP vs. Democrat-oriented seats correspond almost exactly to FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean, in which 208 districts lean Republican and 187 districts lean Democrat. The FiveThirtyEight breakdown is based on election results from 2020 and earlier, and thus (properly in FiveThirtyEight’s case) takes no account of a possible 2022 wave.

In wave elections the toss-up seats fall heavily to the wave party. Thus, if this election is wave-like, as many expect, then even under the Cook and Sabato analyses, the GOP haul should easily exceed 230.

There are other ways of looking at the picture that suggest 242-248 is hardly out of the question. According to Kraushaar, who cites Real Clear Politics, when the GOP won 242 seats in 2010, its lead in the generic poll average was 1.5 points. Today, it’s 3.5 points. That lead, if it holds, could translate into an historic number of Republican-held seats.

Kraushaar also says this:

If Republicans are able to win all five Trump districts held by Democrats, hold the seats of two battle-tested House Republicans running for reelection in double-digit Biden districts (Reps. Mike Garcia and David Valadao of California) and win every seat that Biden carried by single-digit margins (and nothing else), they’d hit that magic 248 mark.

Winning every Biden single-digit margin seat is a very tall order. But consider this: Biden won Virginia by 10 points in 2020; yet last year, when inflation wasn’t raging as it is now, Glenn Youngkin carried the state.

Consider too that, according to Kraushaar, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee includes 15 Democrats in double-digit Biden districts in their Frontline program that aids their most vulnerable members. If the GOP wins a few of these races, it won’t have to sweep the Biden single-digit margin states to reach 248.

And, of course, the GOP has addition wiggle room when it comes to reaching the 2010 mark of 242.

The election is almost four months away. It’s common to say that four months “is a lifetime in politics.”

That might be true in a particular race, but I don’t think it holds much validity when looking at the congressional races as a whole. Sure, inflation could recede and the economy could surge. Candidates on whom the GOP is pinning its hopes might end up being serially poor on the campaign trail. It’s not written in stone that this will be a big wave election.

But many of the factors that have pundits expecting a wave are baked in, or nearly so. For what it’s worth, I don’t expect the big picture to change dramatically between now and November.

If I’m right about this, the GOP might well end up winning a near-historic number of House seats.

UPDATE: Real Clear Politics finds Republicans ahead in 223 districts with 32 toss-ups. By winning half the toss-ups, the GOP would get to 239.

RCP’s breakdown strikes me as more realistic than those of Cook and Sabato which, as noted above, don’t seem to take the likelihood of a wave fully into account.