Day: May 2, 2020

The House Of Representatives Likely To Be More “Blue” In 117th Congress

Six months out, it seems highly likely that the House of Representatives, which turned Democratic in the 2018 midterm elections, will be more heavily “Blue”.

The present House balance is 233 Democrats to 196 Republicans, and Independent Justin Amash of Michigan, who left the Republican Party in 2019, and voted for the impeachment of Donald Trump.

There are, presently, six vacant House seats, but four of them being filled soon, and the likelihood is that the two Democratic seats and two Republican seats will remain the same. Two other Republican seats have a vacancy that will not be filled until the November 2020 election.

But if one counts all six vacant House seats, the real balance is 235 Democrats and 200 Republicans, as Justin Amash is leaving Congress as the only Libertarian member. So effectively, the balance is what it was after Election Day in November 2018. Republicans would need a net gain of 18 seats to come back to the majority, and no polls show that happening.

More women and minorities were elected as Democrats than ever before in the House of Representatives, while the Republicans remain mostly white men.

There were big gains, a total of 41 new members of the Democratic majority, and California, the largest delegation, dropped to only 7 Republicans.

The Democrats had their biggest victory since 1974, and won the popular vote by 8.6 percent, an all time high for a party that had been in the minority previously. More than half the population voted, the highest percentage in a midterm election since 1914.

Besides California’s loss of 7 Republican seat, the following states lost multiple GOP seats:

Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Texas–2 seats each

New York, Virginia–3 seats each

New Jersey, Pennsylvania–4 seats each

21 states, altogether, lost 42 Republican seats, and it now seems likely that Democrats will gain more seats in Florida, Illinois, Texas, New York, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, with the estimate being at least 10 more seats, leading to a possible majority as high as 245-190, after a few likely Republican gains.