Dem
47
GOP
53
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and his colleagues in the House Republican Conference don't have much to hang their hats on these days. They don't do much when it comes to passing legislation. And they are saddled with an unpopular president who keeps pushing them to do things that the majority of voters will hate (see above for one example). If House Republicans do what Trump wants, one group of voters is going to be furious. If they reject Trump, a different group of voters is going to be furious. And, as it turns out, if they hem and haw and do nothing, pretty much everyone ends up furious.
Recognizing that time before the midterm election is pretty short (especially given how many days the House is in recess between now and then) and the odds of passing any substantive legislation before then are pretty long, it appears that the House GOP is now grasping at the most obvious, and perhaps only, straw when it comes to their chances of holding their majority: gerrymandering. They are telling themselves that the roughly +9 seats the Republicans gained by redrawing maps mid-decade will be enough insurance to keep the gavel in Johnson's hand.
You never know, given that the Democratic brand is not too popular these days, and given that there are considerably fewer swingy districts than there once were. That said, a couple of non-gerrymandering-related indicators suggest the House Republican Conference should be bearish. To start, Cook Political Report just updated its ratings for seven different House races, and moved all seven in the direction of the Democrats. And six of those seven are currently held by Republican members, with Cook's Erin Covey observing that, "Districts that once appeared to be relatively safe for Republicans look increasingly competitive."
Similarly, the generic House ballot is definitely not trending in the Republicans' favor. Race to the White House has the average at 47% for the Democrats, 41.2% for the Republicans, or D+5.8. Real Clear Politics has it at 47.9% to 43.1% in favor of the Democrats, or D+4.8. Nate Silver's number crunching says it's actually 48% for the Democrats, 41.7% for the Republicans, for a net of D+6.3. Broadly speaking, this is about where the numbers were in June of 2018, which is Donald Trump's first midterm election. Eventually that year, the average grew to D+8.6, which resulted in a gain of 41 seats for the blue team. So, something like D+8 is what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and the DCCC are hoping to get to, and at the moment, they are on pace. That probably wouldn't flip 41 seats, like it did 8 years ago, but it would certainly flip enough to hand control of the lower chamber to the Democrats. (Z)