Republicans Poised to Have Greater Majority Than Dems Did Going Into Midterms
While Republicans took back control of the House of Representatives last week, they still do not know the exact size of their majority.
The GOP appears likely to end up with one or two seats more than the Democrats’ current 220-213 lead.
As of Wednesday, the Republicans held 220 seats, with three races yet to be called, according to The New York Times. One is in California, one in Colorado and one in Alaska.
Republican candidates lead in two of the outstanding contests and a Democrat is ahead in the remaining one, meaning that if current trends hold, the GOP will have won a 222-213 majority over the Democrats.
In California’s newly drawn 13th Congressional District, Republican John Duarte holds a less than 1,000-vote lead over Democrat Adam Gray. The Modesto Bee reported that the race could take “many more days” to call.
Moving over to Colorado, GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert faced a much tighter re-election race than expected against Democrat Adam Frisch. The incumbent trailed at points along the way, but now holds a 554-vote lead in a contest in which over 327,000 ballots were cast.
Frisch has conceded the race, though by state law there will be a recount. “The likelihood of this recount changing more than a handful of votes is very small,” Frisch said in a news conference streamed on his Facebook page, according to Reuters.
Conservatives are happy warriors!
That’s all. pic.twitter.com/LzJ1I6tArB
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) November 7, 2022
Finally, Democrat Mary Peltola in Alaska has about a 60,000-vote lead over Republican Sarah Palin and a 66,000-vote advantage over Republican Nick Begich.
With Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, the first candidate to reach over 50 percent will be the winner, and Peltola stands at 48.7 percent. The ranked-choice count will begin Wednesday.
Prior to the midterm elections, Fox News contributor and Townhall political editor Guy Benson argued that the number Republicans should be focused on is the total number of seats controlled when the counting is over, not the total seats gained.
“Republicans are starting from a higher floor because they did well in 2020. So the final number of seats controlled is more, I think, revelatory and more telling than the actual map of how many seats do they gain,” he said.
One of the oddities of the 2020 general election is that Republicans gained 12 seats in the House, even as President Donald Trump, at the top of the ticket, lost his re-election bid.
Benson pointed to 1994’s 230 seats and 2010’s 242 seats held by the GOP after those midterm elections as good benchmarks as to whether a red wave has occurred.
So by this measure, 2022 was not a red wave, but the Republicans may have a net gain of 10 seats when all is said and done, or 22 seats over the last two election cycles.
A version of this article originally appeared on Patriot Project.
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