DemDaily: Toss the House

November 3, 2016

While a Democratic victory at the top of the ticket may swing control of the US Senate to the Democrats, the prospects of taking back the US House of Representatives are less optimistic.

Although Democrats are expected to pick up anywhere from 5 to 20 seats, the impact of the national Trump trainwreck is not trickling down to all downballot GOP races.

It will take a net gain of 30 seats for the Dems to take control of the Lower Chamber, which currently seats 247 Republicans and 188 Democrats.

Of the 435 House seats up for election, The Cook Report rates 183 as "Safe or Likely Democrat,"
and 212 "Safe or Likely Republican," which puts 40 seats in play.

Another 21 seats lean toward one political party or the other ...

Lean Democratic: AZ-01 (open), CA-07 (Bera), CA-24 (open), FL-13 (Jolly), NV-04 (Hardy), NH-01 (Guinta)
Lean Republican: AK-AL (Young), CA-21 (Valadao), FL-18 (open), IN-09 (open), IA-03 (Young), KS-03 (Yoder), MI-01 (open), MI-07 (Walberg), MI-08 (Bishop), MN-03 (Paulsen), NY-01 (Zeldin), NY-24 (Katko), PA-16 (open), UT-04 (Love), WI-08 (open)

... leaving a core 19 highly competitive swing seats in the "toss up" category. Although only 2 of the 19 are currently controlled by Democrats, 7 are in presidential battleground states that could still sway individual races.