Five House Rating Changes as Overall Battle for Majority Remains Tight

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— We are changing 5 House ratings this week, although that does not change our overall arithmetic in the House. We continue to view the race for the chamber as effectively a 50-50 proposition.

— The real playing field may be smaller than what we saw in the 2022 election cycle, if current outside spending is any indication.

— Beyond our rating changes, we have some observations about key races across the competitive map, including in Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Table 1: Crystal Ball House rating changes

The race for the House

Despite a turbulent couple of months at the top of the ticket, the race for the House remains basically where it’s been for much of the cycle—highly competitive.

Just to illustrate the unclear outlook, consider this: Following 5 rating changes today, we nonetheless still have the same basic House rating topline. Republicans have 211 seats rated Safe, Likely, or Leaning to them, Democrats have 205 at least leaning to them, and there are 19 Toss-ups. Splitting those down the middle, 10-9 either way, would result in the Republicans retaining the majority with either 220 or 221 seats (they won 222 in 2022).

However, in our own back of the envelope accounting of these races, our best guess is that the Democrats would do better than just splitting the Toss-ups, putting the overall race for the House right on the edge of the 218 seats either side needs for the majority. We continue to not see a favorite in the House; the House probably will go the way of the presidential race, but not certainly (we discussed some of the history in our last major House update at the end of July).

One small positive development for Democrats is that as Kamala Harris has taken what appears to be a modest national polling lead, Democrats have done the same in the House generic ballot polling: They are up 2 points in the FiveThirtyEight generic ballot average. That’s not enough in our eyes to make them favorites in the House, but it is a small improvement from prior to when Harris got in the race, when the generic average was typically tied.

We are in a bit of a foggy period in the House, because the second quarter campaign finance reports are very dusty by now (they cover the April-June period), but the third quarter reports (July-September) won’t be all posted until Oct. 15. It does seem reasonable to believe that Democrats, on balance, will do better in these reports than Republicans: The GOP has been raising very public alarms about House and Senate fundraising, and Democratic candidates have generally had advantages in terms of the money they directly raise from donors since Donald Trump was elected in 2016.

In recent weeks there have been some signs of additional races becoming more engaged. For instance, GOP behemoth Congressional Leadership Fund recently made an ad reservation in the Washington, D.C. media market targeted at Northern Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. Just this week, Democratic giant House Majority PAC announced it would be spending against Rep. John James (R, MI-10) in his marginal Detroit-area district (more on both VA-7 and MI-10 below). But generally speaking, the playing field is smaller than in 2022, at least as telegraphed by actual outside spending so far. California Target Book analyst Rob Pyers noted on Sept. 13 that the number of districts where either a Democratic or Republican outside group had spent money was just 30; on a comparable date in 2022, it was 49. Over the past several days, the list of districts with money spent so far is now 33, Pyers reported last night, but that is still considerably lower than 2022. Nearly all of the districts with money being spent in them are ones we rate as either Toss-ups or as just Leaning one way or the other. This outside spending often, although not always, is a good guide to which races are truly competitive and which ones are not.

Our rating changes this week address some high-profile races, although the shuffling, as noted above, does not change our topline math in the House. Let’s go through them:

— Last cycle, Rep. Mike Lawler (R, NY-17) pulled off an impressive upset of then-Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney in a district that extends north from Westchester County and that Joe Biden won 54%-44% in 2020. Lawler has generally won kudos for trying to carve out an independent image—a necessity for a Republican in a blue-leaning seat—and he has benefited from some modest but important developments, such as his Democratic opponent, former Rep. Mondaire Jones, losing the primary for the Working Families Party ballot line, which could cost Jones support that might otherwise have gone to him if he had that ballot line. Lawler is very likely leading in this race, and not just by a couple of points: A publicly-released August poll from a Democratic sponsor had Lawler up 5 points, and Lawler may be up more than that. We doubt Lawler would actually win by a substantial margin, but we have seen and heard enough to believe that he’s a modest favorite.

There are 4 hotly-contested Republican-held, Biden-won districts in New York, and Lawler seems to be the best-positioned of all of them. We continue to rate Reps. Anthony D’Esposito (R, NY-4), in Nassau County, and Brandon Williams (R, NY-22), in a Syracuse-based district, in the Leans Democratic category. Finally, we see Rep. Marc Molinaro (R, NY-19), who holds an upstate district that has tracked somewhat with the national popular vote in recent presidential years, as being in a Toss-up race.

— Moving the opposite way, from Leans Republican to Toss-up, is Rep. Michelle Steel (R, CA-45), who represents a very diverse, Biden +6 district in Orange County with a significant Vietnamese population. This voting bloc leans right, although Steel’s opponent, Derek Tran (D), is Vietnamese-American himself, which Democrats argue could be helpful in a close race. Steel is Korean-American, and her campaign has questioned Tran’s fluency in Vietnamese—Politico’s Melanie Mason reported yesterday on the intensifying race, including Democrats going after Steel on the issue of reproductive rights and Republicans pointing to some unsavory clients Tran represented in his work as a defense attorney. Democrats have released a few internal polls over the past few months showing the race roughly tied; using a basic rule of thumb that publicly-released internals can overstate the party releasing the poll, Steel may very well still have the actual advantage, but our sense is that this one is competitive enough to merit being a Toss-up. The presidential trajectory in this race will matter, as CA-45 was clearly bluer in 2016 (Hillary Clinton would have carried it by 13 points).

— Staying in Southern California, Democrats are projecting greater confidence in the open CA-47, the district that Rep. Katie Porter (D) currently represents but left behind to run for Senate. State Sen. Dave Min (D) faces 2022 Porter opponent Scott Baugh (R) there. This is a Biden +11 district that probably is a stretch as a Toss-up, so we’re moving it to Leans Democratic even as it remains a plausible Republican target.

— There are conflicting indicators with Rep. Mary Peltola (D, AK-AL), who we are moving from Leans Democratic to Toss-up. We were impressed that Peltola, a shocking 2022 special election winner who held her seat comfortably a few months later in the 2022 general election, received slightly over 50% of the vote in Alaska’s August all-party primary, where the top 4 finishers advance to a general election that is resolved by ranked-choice voting if needed. Finishing in second was 2022 candidate Nick Begich (R), who beat out the candidate national Republicans preferred, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom (R). Following the primary, Dahlstrom dropped out, and after a series of other moves, the four candidates competing in November are Peltola and Begich (as the only Republican) plus a pair of minor candidates, including a Democrat who is currently a federal inmate incarcerated outside of Alaska. If this was California or Washington, where there is a proven track record of an all-party primary providing clues about the general election, we would still favor Peltola, given that she got over 50% in the first round of voting. But Alaska’s system was only first used in 2022—and could possibly be on its way out already (voters could repeal the system via a ballot measure this year)—and we do not know if the first-round voting results have predictive power. Turnout was only about 110,000 votes—less than a third of the roughly 360,000 votes cast in the 2020 presidential election in Alaska—so the primary electorate may not be representative of the actual presidential-level electorate. Republicans also appear to be all-in on contesting this race in a way they definitely were not when Begich and former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) were the main challengers to Peltola in 2022, and while Begich is far from a perfect candidate, the composition of the ballot is now helpful to him and Republicans. This is the reddest district (Trump +10) that any Democrat holds. We suspect that polling would still show Peltola ahead, as a publicly-released Republican internal poll nominally did a couple of weeks ago (46%-45% Peltola, but we would again reiterate that internal polls released by one side can often overstate that side). But this really looks more like a Toss-up now.

— Finally, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R, WI-3)—a first-term member who is no stranger to controversy—represents quintessential Obama-to-Trump turf in western Wisconsin. House Majority PAC recently released a poll showing Van Orden’s challenger, Rebecca Cooke (D), up 49%-47%. That seems way over-optimistic to us in a Trump +5 district, but this is also a more competitive contest than how we had it rated. It goes from Likely Republican to Leans Republican.

Beyond the rating changes, we have some other observations about key races:

— Speaking of the Leans Republican column (and the Midwest), Democrats are expressing increased optimism about a couple of races in Iowa, the districts held by Reps. Zach Nunn (R, IA-3) based in Des Moines and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R, IA-1) in southeastern Iowa. The much-discussed (including by us) Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll showing Trump leading in Iowa by just 4 points will likely only add to that optimism: If Harris ran markedly better in Iowa than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, these two districts would likely be voting for her instead of Trump (IA-3 backed Trump by just 0.3 percentage points in 2020, and IA-1 backed him by about 3 points). However, we’re a little skeptical that Harris’s actual position in Iowa is as strong as that poll suggests, which also gives us some caution about seeing either of the key Iowa House races as true Toss-ups. We also mentioned above that Democrats are giving increased attention to MI-10 held by John James (R), who only beat former Macomb County Judge Carl Marlinga (D) by half a point in 2022 (and Trump won the district by just a point in 2020). Democrats would love for the lightly-funded Marlinga to raise more money. Broadly speaking, if you’re bullish on Democratic odds in the House, increased Democratic optimism about playing real offense in narrow Trump-won seats like these would bolster that assessment.

— The partisan gravity of Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District may finally be catching up to Rep. Don Bacon (R, NE-2). A late August Split Ticket/SurveyUSA poll showed Bacon down 46%-40% in his rematch with state Sen. Tony Vargas (D). The situation for Bacon might not be as dire as this poll suggests, but we do believe he is trailing to some extent. Remember that this district also casts a single electoral vote for president, and Kamala Harris has led in recent polling there by a little over 5 points, similar to Biden’s 2020 margin. The Harris campaign also appears to be much more focused on locking down the electoral vote there than the Trump campaign appears to be on contesting it, which also presumably helps Vargas.

— Republicans got a good public poll Wednesday afternoon in NE-2’s Trump-won counterpart, ME-2, where Rep. Jared Golden (D) is trying to hang onto a Trump +6 district in a Toss-up race. A Pan Atlantic poll showed Trump leading in the district by 7 points, similar to his 2020 margin there, while Golden was trailing his Republican opponent, state Rep. Austin Theriault, by 3 points. Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that award electoral votes by congressional district, and Trump carried ME-2 in 2016 and 2020 while Biden carried NE-2 in 2020. National Republicans continue to push Nebraska Republicans to make the state winner-take-all for president—Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was just in Nebraska yesterday to make that case to Republican legislators, but it may very well still be the case that the votes are not there in the legislature to make the switch. Democrats in Maine have previously said they would consider making their state winner-take-all if Nebraska did. 

— There appears to be some real disagreement between the two parties on the true level of vulnerability for Rep. Don Davis (D, NC-1), who holds a Biden +2 district in northeast North Carolina. This will be a key race to watch early on Election Night—it’s not necessarily a “must-win” for either side, but Democrats hanging onto it would augur well for their overall chances of winning the majority, as Republicans do view it as one of their top pickup opportunities.

— Outside of the districts that were drastically changed in 2024 redistricting, the open MI-7 race between former state Sens. Tom Barrett (R) and Curtis Hertel (D) may be the top Republican pickup opportunity in the country. We wrote in our last big House overview at the end of July that Barrett was probably leading there, and we think that is still true. This is a seat centered on Lansing; Democrats are defending another marginal Biden-won open Toss-up seat in the state, MI-8 centered on Flint. Republicans may need to flip at least one of these two to hold the House given their vulnerabilities elsewhere.

— We remain comfortable with Leans ratings in Virginia’s two most competitive districts, the open VA-7 in Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads-based district that Rep. Jen Kiggans (R, VA-2) is defending. That’s despite indications that, particularly, the race between former National Security Agency official Eugene Vindman (D) and former Green Beret Derrick Anderson (R) is likely close right now. Vindman has shaky connections to local politics in the district and is known as more of a national figure in “Resistance Liberal” circles following the involvement of he and his twin brother, Alexander, in the events leading up to the first impeachment of Donald Trump. However, he also has been an incredible fundraiser, which helps in a district predominantly covered by the expensive D.C. media market. One sneaky detail about VA-7 that makes it a little bit of a heavier lift for Republicans than meets the eye is that it is probably bluer at the presidential level than the “official” Biden +7 presidential figure commonly reported there. The reason for this is that back in 2020, it seems likely that absentee ballots in Prince William County were mis-allocated in such a way that overstated Biden’s level of support in the northern part of the county and understated it in the southern part of the county. We mentioned this last year when we wrote about Virginia’s state legislative races, and it also likely applies to the congressional map. At the congressional level, VA-10 (an open, bluer seat) has the northern part of Prince William County, and VA-7 has the southern part. Practically, what this means is that Biden probably carried VA-7 by a margin closer to 8 or 9 points while his margin in VA-10 was likely a few points smaller than what the “official” 18-point figure suggests.

Meanwhile, in VA-2, Kiggans is almost certainly leading her opponent, Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal (D), by some amount, perhaps by something like the 45%-40% margin a Christopher Newport University Wason Center poll recently found. We thought Democrats might write off this district, but House Majority PAC is spending there. While we considered moving this seat to Likely Republican earlier this cycle, Leans Republican still seems like the right rating in a Biden +2 district that could conceivably flip to Trump in 2024. These are a couple of other districts that will tell us something relatively early in the night about the race for the House. In 2022, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) holding up relatively well in VA-7 was an early signal that a “red wave” was not coming (Spanberger is retiring to run for governor next year, which created this year’s open-seat race). We don’t really see Democrats winning the House majority without VA-7, or Republicans winning without VA-2, so an upset in either district might be a signal of the overall House race breaking one way or the other.

Table 2 shows our updated House ratings.

Table 2: Crystal Ball House ratings

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.

See Other Political Commentary by Kyle Kondik.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.