Why the Red Wave Stopped at the House

The Democratic coalition of 2024 overperformed in the House, despite national headwinds.

Imagine you had somehow known, prior to Election Day, that Donald Trump would not only win the Electoral College with relative ease, but would also win the popular vote by over a point. You also were aware beforehand that Republicans would gain four seats in the Senate. With that knowledge, would you have ever guessed that Democrats would gain House seats?

If so, serious props to you. But for the rest of us, the House results were a bit shocking, given everything else that happened on November 5th. And in some ways, the overperformance of House Democrats was even more surprising, since they entered the election with 213 seats (218 is the number needed for a majority), meaning that they had to defend a handful of competitive seats. Keep in mind, too, that all of this came with Republicans collectively winning the House popular vote by about 3 points, almost double Trump’s popular vote margin.

So, how did House Democrats hold up so well, and why did their winning slightly under 48% of the House popular vote translate to almost winning a majority of House seats?

The most straightforward answer is that over the last decade, the changes in each party’s coalition have been largely to the benefit of Democrats, at least as far as the House is concerned. Of course, those same coalitional changes have made it harder for Democrats to regularly win the Senate, which is well known. But I feel the Democratic advantage in the House is underdiscussed.

It’s helpful to use 2012 as a point of comparison. That year, Obama won a comfortable Electoral College victory, and won the national popular vote by nearly 4 points. At the same time, Democrats won the House popular vote by roughly a point, which only translated into 201 seats, well short of a majority. So, in 2012, winning the majority of the House popular vote did not even come close to giving House Democrats control of the chamber.

Without a doubt, part of the story in 2012 was gerrymandering. In the 2010 midterms, Republicans had flipped state legislatures and governorships across the country, giving them control of the redistricting process in most states. Republican gerrymanders in Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania alone probably cost Democrats close to ten House seats in 2012, the first time that the new Congressional maps were used that decade.

But on top of that, the Obama coalition was, surprisingly, not well suited for easily winning the House, at least compared to how effective it was in winning the Electoral College. The same coalition in 2012 that won Obama a handful of now-red states such as Florida, Ohio, and Iowa wasn’t nearly as effective at winning House seats, even putting aside gerrymandering.

Broadly speaking, the Obama coalition in 2012 produced lopsided wins in diverse, urban House seats, yet tended to come up short in potentially competitive suburban and rural House seats. But since then, Democratic gains in the suburbs have reshaped the landscape of the House. Some of the suburban House seats that come to mind are those in southern California (the old CA-45 and CA-49), greater Chicago (IL-6 and IL-14), and northern New Jersey (NJ-5, NJ-7, and NJ-11), as well as Kansas’s 3rd, Michigan’s 11th, and Texas’s 7th.

Among those suburban House seats I just listed, most of which have high levels of educational attainment and had long been Republican pre-Trump, House Democrats won not a single one of them in 2012. Yet, this election cycle, they won all but one. The gains that Democrats have made in the suburbs help explain why the House easily flipped to Democrats in 2018, and remained close in the more neutral political environments of 2020 and 2022.

On the other side of the ledger, the gains that Republicans have made among rural voters starting in 2016 and among non-white voters more recently haven’t translated into a meaningful number of new House seats for the party. Winning by even larger margins in red, rural House seats is irrelevant for House control, and so far, Republican gains in racially diverse House seats have generally come up short in actually flipping them. This could, of course, change in the near future, and it’s not hard to think of certain blue House seats that could soon be winnable for Republicans. But the story of the House in 2024 is that Democrats managed to hold onto these seats, albeit with narrower margins than in the recent past.

In short, continuing Democratic strength in the suburbs, along with a fairer national House map compared to the 2010s (one in which Democratic and Republican gerrymanders are now closer to canceling out), has helped to make the House more favorable to Democrats than it was for most of the 2010s, when the party struggled to even get close to a House majority.

The inefficient House coalition that Democrats had in 2012 now belongs to Republicans, who have struggled to turn their recent House popular vote wins into large House majorities. In this sense, the 2022 midterms ended up being a preview of 2024 when it came to the House; in both years, Republicans won a very narrow majority of House seats despite winning the House popular vote by 3 points.

One more thing that has to be said: Democrats caught some very lucky breaks this cycle, and there really was a degree of chance in their small net gain. Below, I have a list of the closest House races, making note of which party won, and by what margin. I made this list by referencing this incredibly helpful map of the House results from The Cook Political Report.

• California’s 13th district: D+0.1

• California’s 45th district: D+0.2

• Iowa’s 1st district: R+0.2

• Colorado’s 8th district R+0.7

• Maine’s 2nd district: D+0.7

• Nebraska’s 2nd district: R+1.8

• New York’s 19th district: D+1.7

• North Carolina’s 1st district: D+1.7

• Ohio’s 9th district: D+0.6

• Pennsylvania’s 7th district: R+1.1

• Pennsylvania’s 8th district: R+1.6

• Pennsylvania’s 10th district: R+1.3

Note: As of this writing, the first race on the list, CA-13, is still slightly uncertain, but the expectation seems to be that Democrat Adam Gray will ultimately win the seat.

Among the very closest House races (those decided by under a point), Democrats won four out of six. There was nothing preordained about this, and it’s not hard to imagine a world where the national political environment had been slightly worse for Democrats. If that had come to pass, Democrats might very well have lost ground in the House.

Even if that had happened, Republicans would still have had a fairly narrow House majority to work with. It really does speak to how well-positioned Democrats are right now in the House that even a redder environment would not have produced a dramatically different result.

On the flip side, as well as House Democrats performed, they did not have a particularly easy path to 218 House seats this cycle. If every race on that list had somehow ended up a full point more Democratic, it would have gotten Democrats to the cusp of House control, but even that would’ve left them just slightly short of a majority.

So, as we head into 2025, I do think the House deserves more attention than it tends to get, given how closely divided the chamber will be. Republicans won a 220-215 House majority, but three Republican vacancies (due to nominations) will make the House functionally 217-215 for some period of time early next year. Unlike in 2017, when Republicans had a comfortable House majority as Trump came into office, the House will likely serve as much more of a veto point this time around.

Anyway, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and here’s wishing you a good start to the holiday season.