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I figured I’d get ahead of the Protection Racket Media with a “GOP Seizes” headline. I tried to use pounce instead, but it just doesn’t work. 

As expected, Republicans took control of the Senate in the next session by defending all of its incumbents and making at least three pickups. The only Senate Republican incumbent that was supposedly at risk was Ted Cruz in my state of Texas, and … well, let’s just say we’ll be talking about polling in a separate post. Cruz beat Colin Allred by over eight points and currently leads by 979,000 votes, with a small number of precincts left to report. 

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Republicans picked up two seats that practically dropped months ago into their lap. Jim Justice replaced the retiring Joe Manchin in West Virginia, 69/28, over a token Democrat. Tim Sheehy finally unseated Jon Tester in Montana, whose luck in trying to convince voters of his conservatism finally ran out. The same can be said for Senate Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown in Ohio, who lost his seat to Bernie Moreno in a four-point loss that nonetheless outperformed Kamala Harris in the state. 

That puts the GOP at 52 seats, firmly in control of the chamber and the floor. They could still add to that lead, however. Two more states look good for Republican flips, and two others are still possible. 

In Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick is currently 53,000 votes and a full point ahead of ersatz-conservative Bob Casey Jr, who sought a fourth term in the Senate. The media hasn’t called it because only 82% of the precincts have reported in Philly, where Casey could still pick up some support; the split in that county is 80/20 Casey. There are a couple of rural counties with uncounted votes too, so we could see some flipping today. Right now, I’d rather be McCormick than Casey, but it’s not quite over.

Nevada could be a pickup too, although this one is truly on a razor’s edge. At the moment, Republican challenger Sam Brown leads Democrat incumbent Jacky Rosen by around 1800 votes and 0.1 points. Clark County (Las Vegas) has just about finished, but Washoe is another Democrat-leaning county and they’re only 75% reported. Rosen only leads in Washoe by three points, though, so it may not be decisive. A few other deep-red counties are still counting significant numbers of ballots, so this one’s a real toss-up and may not be settled today. 

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Michigan and Wisconsin are still possible, but looking less likely. Mike Rogers trails Elissa Slotkin by one-tenth of a point and 8500 votes, but there’s not much left to report except Emmet and Antrim counties. Can Rogers find a net gain to take the lead? We’ll see. Tammy Baldwin seems more firmly placed for re-election over Eric Hovde in Wisconsin, leading by 0.7 points and 23,000 votes. (Update: DecisionDesk HQ called this for Baldwin as I was writing the post.)

Right now, the GOP has a possible range of 52-55 Senate seats, and a probable range of 53-54. That’s a good night for Republicans, although perhaps a bit disappointing given Donald Trump’s apparent popular-vote victory. 

That brings us to the House, where … nothing much has changed at all. Republicans went into last night with a narrow 0.3-point lead in the generic ballot in RCP’s aggregation. Anything better than a D+5 usually signals a shift of a significant number of seats to the GOP. And yet, in an environment where the House is as evenly split as any in recent history, we still didn’t see a red wave to match Trump’s momentum. CNN reports a net 5-seat gain for the GOP; our partners at DecisionDesk HQ put it at two. A number of races are still left to be resolved, and Republicans lead in most of them — but those are in GOP-held districts. 

Politico reports this morning that Republicans are “bullish” on maintaining their majority in the House, but it’s gonna be close:

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The House, meanwhile, is up in the air — and will probably remain so for days yet. But we will tell you: Our GOP sources are sounding more bullish than our Democratic sources at this point. Democrats notched some redistricting-assisted wins in Alabama, Louisiana and New York, but the GOP held serve by flipping the Michigan seat Rep. ELISSA SLOTKIN vacated for a Senate run, while Democratic Reps. MATT CARTWRIGHT and SUSAN WILD hang by a thread in Pennsylvania. The fate of the majority will come down to a handful of seats out west — including several in slow-counting California.

“We are confident we will hold the House majority when this is all said and done, and we still see a pathway to picking up seats,” a senior GOP strategist told us in the wee hours this morning. “Still more to come in, but what we are seeing is encouraging.”

Our partners at Decision Desk HQ see it as basically a return to the status quo:

Why would this be close in a near-landslide presidential win? I find it mystifying. As Duane wrote this morning, this wasn’t even particularly close. A Republican presidential candidate is projected to win the popular vote for the first time in 20 years, and he pulled over significant gains among Hispanics and black men. That should have resulted in a red wave in House elections, too. It clearly did not; Republicans will almost certainly control the House next session, but with the same razor-thin margins that created all sorts of chaos in this session. 

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So what happened? Books will probably be written about this, but my suspicions are that Americans have been migrating to friendlier political environments over the past four years, and … abortion. The “Great Migration” has been well documented already, and it may be transforming congressional districts into fortified silos. Abortion turned out to play a smaller role in the presidential election — largely because Harris was such a terrible candidate — but it may still be impacting down-ballot races. 

The abortion argument probably had more legitimate impact on this level, too. Democrats warned voters that Trump would sign a national abortion ban, which Trump denied, but it takes Congress to first pass such a bill. That may have been enough for voters to split their votes to kick out the Biden-Harris administration but keep the House as a check on Trump. The fact that it will take days to determine House control means that the majority will be very thin no matter who gets it, and in effect will do exactly what voters may have intended — keep the House as a check on big ambitions in the White House and Senate. 

Update: I’ve been reminded by friends that Democrats actually lost seats in the House when Joe Biden won in 2020 (net -11 or -12, depending on how one counts). Democrats had gained 40 seats two years previous to that, however, in a Blue Wave midterm.  

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