Dem
51
GOP
49
We still have a number of post-election postmortem items we plan to write. It's a little late; in part we were waiting for all the dust to settle, including the Senate runoff in Georgia. And in part, the first couple of weeks in December is grading time. But now, we have plenty of time. And, as they say, "better late than never."
Back in November, the dust had settled enough to take a look at the House of Representatives, and relatively small things that might have made the difference in Republican control vs. Democratic control. Here are the two items we wrote at that time:
In case you don't care to review, our assessment was that the New Yorkers probably cost the Democrats three seats, whereas the folks who retired for fear of a red wave probably cost them one or two. So, neither of these things flipped control by themselves, but taken together, maybe.
Now let's take a look at an item by Jacob Rubashkin of Inside Elections. He put together a list of the five narrowest Republican wins, along with the margin of victory for each:
| District | GOP Winner | Margin |
| CO-03 | Lauren Boebert | 554 |
| CA-13 | John Duarte | 584 |
| MI-10 | John James | 1,600 |
| NY-17 | Mike Lawler | 1,787 |
| IA-03 | Zach Nunn | 2,145 |
| Total | 6,670 |
There you have it: If the Democrats could have deployed 6,675 votes (enough to make up the difference, plus one more for the win) in just the right way, they would still have control of the House of Representatives.
That said, this isn't really a "missed it by that much" scenario. That is to say, when you've got 435 elections going on, and each side wins roughly half of them, and you add up the three closest or five closest or seven closest margins of victory, the total is going to be a fairly small number. Oh, and in case you are wondering what the margin was for the five closest Democratic-won districts:
| District | Dem Winner | Margin |
| NM-02 | Gabe Vasquez | 1,350 |
| CO-08 | Yadira Caraveo | 1,632 |
| CT-05 | Jahana Hayes | 2,004 |
| NY-18 | Pat Ryan | 2,608 |
| WA-03 | Marie Gluesenkamp Perez | 2,629 |
| Total | 10,223 |
In other words, but for 10,000 or so well-placed Democratic votes, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would likely have a smooth road to the speaker's gavel, instead of the giant headache he has right now.
Clearly, this wasn't some sort of unforced error like, say, the New York gerrymander screw-up. With literally dozens of House elections decided by something less than 5% of the vote, there was no way for the Democrats to know which five districts would be the nearest near misses. And even if they had known, there is no guarantee they could have swung all five.
That means that the real lesson here was that the midterms were very, very close. Shockingly close, given the circumstances. In 2020, it would have taken 34,745 votes to flip control. In 2018, it would have taken 105,316. In 2016, it would have taken 607,885. It has been a very long time since control hinged on as few votes as the current House does.
This also means that, as everyone already knows, 2024 is going to be a Battle Royale. If you had to bet, you'd have to bet that control flips back to the Democrats. After all, he Republicans have a larger number of vulnerable seats, presidential years tend to favor the Democrats, and it's very plausible that the House GOP Conference will spend the next 2 years producing vast piles of red meat of the sort that thrills the base but turns everyone else's stomachs. That said, 2 years is a long time in politics, and with so many known unknowns, not to mention unknown unknowns, well, you never know. (Z)