In our last set of House updates, we noted that Democrats had emerged as favorites to win the election. Since then, their odds have only gotten better. Our model now gives Democrats a 67% chance of winning the majority, which is the highest it has been since its inception.
Our current House ratings stand at 216 Democrats, 209 Republicans, and 10 tossups. While we could point to any number of factors for this, the biggest driver is simply the expanding Democratic lead on the generic congressional ballot.
To emphasize how the Democrats have taken the upper hand here, it has been nearly a full month since Republicans last led in a non-partisan poll of this metric. Between this and the Washington primary election, the last month has delivered a flurry of positive news for down-ballot Democrats. However, any majority is likely to be exceedingly narrow, as our model’s median simulation places the chamber at 221 Democrats and 214 Republicans.
The major change from our last set of updates is that we have built our own polling aggregators, which we are now using for all of our models (previously, we were using the polling averages generously provided to us from Logan Phillips of Race to the White House). This doesn’t actually change that much, because most rigorous aggregators actually tend to arrive at similar conclusion, but it is something that we still believe warrants a note.
While all of our projections are probabilistic (as expected with a quantitative model), we translate probabilities to discretized buckets to help with reader comprehension of our ratings. To get a better sense of how our model is viewing the map now, it’s worth walking through the “rating changes” induced by the model’s shifted probabilities.
All 13 of our changes in this update favor Democrats, but it’s worth walking through each one. Two seats are leaving the tossup category and moving to Leans Democratic: AK-AL and MI-08.
In Alaska, Mary Peltola remains favored to secure a second full term in the House in a rematch against Republican Nick Begich. Republicans are favored to win Alaska at the presidential level, but Peltola’s incumbency advantage, coupled with a strong fundraising position and a majority of primary votes, give her an excellent shot at hanging on.
In MI-08, a marginal Biden-won seat being vacated by Dan Kildee, the Democrats are now clearer favorites to win. Kristen McDonald Rivet is facing Paul Junge, a two-time failed congressional candidate. As in AK-AL, Democrats maintain a fundraising advantage in this district as well.
Two Republican seats are entering the tossup column: AZ-01 and AZ-06. While GOP incumbents David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani are still favorites to win according to the model, their Democratic challengers Amish Shah and Kirsten Engel now have greater probabilities of victory. Republicans have, however, outspent Democrats in both of these seats, and this is something Democrats will want to reverse in order to maximize their chances of coming out on top
Two districts are moving from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic: CA-47 and NH-01. Both of these seats were comfortably won by Joe Biden in 2020 and eluded Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.
In CA-47, Democrat Dave Min remains a favorite against Republican Scott Baugh despite his pre-primary DUI, mostly due to the fact that he is running in a Biden +11 seat (currently held by the exiting Representative Katie Porter). As for NH-01, Democratic incumbent Chris Pappas continues to be the heavy favorite in this secular, blueish district heading into the contested primary to determine his Republican opponent.
One seat is moving to Safe Democratic: NV-01. Democrat Dina Titus is not at serious risk of losing reelection to her Republican opponent Mark Robertson, and with a commanding lead in virtually every measured metric, our model now deems this seat to be off the board.
As the environment has improved for House Democrats, a few seats previously rated as Safe Republican have also now moved onto the board as Likely Republican. While the GOP should still comfortably win these races, there is enough uncertainty to examine the possibilities of upsets.
Three seats fit this category: IA-02, held by Rep. Ashley Hinson, NY-02, held by Andrew Garbarino, and VA-05, an open seat likely to be won by Republican Delegate John McGuire. All three districts are red, but not overwhelmingly so — Hinson’s seat only favored Trump in 2020 by 4.5 points, Garbarino’s by 1.5 points, and McGuire’s by 8.4 points. However, all three feature lackluster Democratic campaigns with insufficient spending to break the existing Republican advantages.
Three other seats enter the realm of true competitiveness, going from Likely Republican to Lean Republican: FL-13 (held by Anna Paulina Luna), TX-15th (held by Monica de la Cruz), and VA-02 (held by Jen Kiggans).
FL-13 represents the most vulnerable district in Florida for the GOP. Luna underperformed expectations by 8 points (according to our Wins Above Replacement model), making her the weakest Florida Republican after Matt Gaetz. Recent polls of the race have found Fox in a competitive position—a GOP internal only had Luna winning by 5, while a non-partisan survey from St. Pete Polls found her trailing challenger Whitney Fox by 4.
In TX-15, a seat which only backed Trump by 3, 2022 candidate Michelle Vallejo is seriously attempting to contest the only truly competitive seat in Texas. Because recent Texas polling shows a tight race for both President and Senate, this bellwether seat naturally becomes tighter and more hotly-contested. And in VA-02, Kiggans faces Democrat and Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal who is benefiting from an improved national environment. All three currently favor Republicans, but the GOP could see trouble if the environment deteriorates further for them.
With the improved national environment, the Democrats are now modest, but clear favorites to flip the House in November. It should be noted, though, that with nearly sixty days to go until the election, there is still some room for these projections to change. We’ll check back in after the next fundraising update to see what the state of play is.
I’m a computer scientist who has an interest in machine learning, politics, and electoral data. I’m a cofounder and partner at Split Ticket and make many kinds of election models. I graduated from UC Berkeley and work as a software & AI engineer. You can contact me at lakshya@splitticket.org
My name is Harrison Lavelle and I am a co-founder and partner at Split Ticket. I write about a variety of electoral topics and handle our Datawrapper visuals.
Contact me at @HWLavelleMaps or harrison@splitticket.org
I’m a political analyst here at Split Ticket, where I handle the coverage of our Senate races. I graduated from Yale in 2021 with a degree in Statistics and Data Science. I’m interested in finance, education, and electoral data – and make plenty of models and maps in my free time.