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On Tuesday, all 435 House seats will hold elections for two-year terms.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, currently presides over one of the smallest House majorities in history.
Republicans control 220 House seats to the Democrats’ 212. Three seats are vacant due to deaths and a resignation – two of these are safely Democratic and one is safely Republican.
Adjusting for this, Democrats need just a net gain of four seats to retake the House, which they had most recently held in the four years between the 2018 and the 2022 midterm elections.
Unlike the Senate, the House control remains a tossup between the two parties.
FiveThirtyEight’s model favors the Republican Party over the Democrats by a 52% to 48% spread.
However on Polymarket, the Democrats are the slight favorites with a 56% chance of reassuming control of the lower chamber.
>> Check out last week’s two-part State of Play on the Presidential Election: Part I & Part II <<
The 7 Key Races that will decide the House
Alaska’s at-large district
The contenders:
incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola (D) vs. think tank board member Nick Begich (R)
FiveThirtyEight favorite:
Begich (60%)
Polymarket favorite:
Peltola (51%)
Consensus rating:
Tossup
Alaska’s sole congressional district – which covers the entire state – is both by far the largest House district in the country by land area and the most Republican district to be currently represented by a Democrat.
In 2020, Trump carried the state by just under 10 points. Less than two years later, Democrat Mary Peltola was elected in a special election to replace deceased Rep. Don Young, R-AK, the longest-serving Republican in congressional history.
In the election, which was the first in Alaska to be conducted using a controversial ranked-choice voting (RCV) system, now-Rep. Mary Peltola, D-AK, defeated both former Gov. Sarah Palin – the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee – and Nick Begich, currently her only Republican opponent.
Peltola, who went on to win the regularly-scheduled general election later in 2022, is Yup’ik and made history as the first Alaska Native elected to Congress. She serves as a co-chairwoman of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 10 moderate House Democrats.
Begich is a board member of the Alaska Policy Forum, a conservative think tank based in the state.
His grandfather and namesake was notably Young’s predecessor as Alaska’s congressman. The elder Nick Begich served one term during the early 1970s, before he disappeared in a plane crash after which he was presumed dead.
Peltola has notably taken steps to distance herself from Harris, as she vies to win the strongly pro-Trump state for a third time.
CatholicVote previously reported that Peltola
had previously written in a July Facebook post, “I’m not voting for Trump & I’m not endorsing anyone else either.”
“The media won’t allow us to engage in nuanced conversation because it doesn’t sell clicks,” she added in the post. “I won’t vote for a candidate who’s not pro-choice.”
“I can’t ask Alaskans to vote for a candidate who’s not pro-energy,” Peltola wrote, in a possible criticism of Harris’ history of animosity toward the oil industry, a large part of Alaska’s economy.
RCV will not be used in Alaska’s current U.S. House race due to there being only two candidates, as opposed to the three major candidates in both the special and general elections in 2022.
California’s 22nd district
The contenders:
incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R) vs. former state Assemblyman Rudy Salas (D)
FiveThirtyEight favorite:
Valadao (55%)
Polymarket favorite:
Salas (61%)
Consensus rating:
Tossup
The race for this Democratic-leaning Central Valley seat is a rematch of a 2022 contest in which Rep. David Valadao, R-CA, bested Democratic challenger Rudy Salas, then a state lawmaker, by three points.
As redrawn following the 2020 census, the heavily agricultural district is over 70% Hispanic. In the last presidential election, Biden won its vote by 13 points.
Valadao has served in Congress since 2013 with one interruption – when he lost reelection to Democrat TJ Cox in 2018. Two years later, Valadao defeated Cox to win his seat back, despite it going blue at the presidential level.
A moderate and dairy farmer by trade, Valadao is notably one of the only two remaining Republican House members to have voted for the second impeachment of Trump in 2021.
Valadao is a pro-life Catholic. Salas meanwhile is a self-professed Catholic who supports abortion.
California’s 27th district
The contenders:
incumbent Rep. Mike Garcia (R) vs. former Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides (D)
FiveThirtyEight favorite:
Whitesides (59%)
Polymarket favorite:
Garcia (53%)
Consensus rating:
Tossup
California’s plurality-Hispanic 27th district is similar to the 22nd in that it, as of late, tends to back Democratic presidential candidates while reelecting its Republican congressman.
Currently, the northern Los Angeles County-based seat which Biden won by 12.4 points four years ago is represented by Rep. Mike Garcia, R-CA, a retired U.S. Navy pilot.
Garcia was first elected in a 2020 special election after his predecessor former Rep. Katie Hill, D-CA, resigned following a sex scandal.
In the 2020 special, 2020 general, and 2022 general elections, Garcia defeated Hill’s handpicked successor, state Assemblywoman Christy Smith in a trio of upsets.
However this time around, Garcia will finally face a different opponent in Massachusetts-born former Virgin Galactic CEO and Obama transition team member George Whitesides.
California’s 45th district
The contenders:
incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel (R) vs. attorney Derek Tran (D)
FiveThirtyEight favorite:
Steel (51%)
Polymarket favorite:
Steel (56%)
Consensus rating:
Tossup
The final tossup House race in California is located in the southeastern suburbs of Los Angeles, mainly in Orange County.
The 45th district which backed Biden by six points in 2020 is one of the country’s few plurality Asian seats, with Asian-Americans representing 38.4% of the seat’s population. The majority-minority district is also 30% Hispanic.
Both candidates are Asian-American. Incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel, R-CA, is a South Korean immigrant and Democratic challenger attorney and Army veteran Derek Tran is the son of Vietnamese immigrants.
Steel is running for her third term as she was first elected in 2020 defeating a Democratic incumbent. She was reelected in 2022 by just under five points.
Michigan’s 8th district
The contenders:
state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D) vs. former DHS official and TV news anchor Paul Junge (R), open seat: incumbent Rep. Dan Kildee (D) is retiring
FiveThirtyEight favorite:
McDonald Rivet (58%)
Polymarket favorite:
n/a
Consensus rating:
Tossup
A swing district in a swing state, the Flint-based Michigan’s 8th district is the only open House seat on this list. Biden won the seat’s vote by two points in 2020.
Incumbent Rep. Dan Kildee, D-MI, has decided to retire after serving six terms. First term Democratic state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet and Republican former Trump administration official Paul Junge are running to replace him.
McDonald Rivet comes from a Michigan political family with her husband and twin sister both serving as elected officials. She is a self-professed Catholic who supports abortion and has stated that the “path to restoring abortion rights runs through” Michigan and the 8th district.
Junge’s resume includes serving as a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) official during the Trump administration. USCIS is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
He is also a businessman and has also worked as a criminal prosecutor and a former TV news anchor for FOX 47. Junge has heavily emphasized the economy and the ongoing crisis at the country’s southern border during his campaign.
This is the third consecutive cycle in which Junge has run. He lost to Kildee in 2022 by about 10 points. However in 2020, he ran in the pre-redistricting 8th district and lost to now Democratic Senate nominee Slotkin by under four points. Kildee had represented the 5th district before redistricting.
Notably, the 8th district and its predecessors have been represented by Democrats dating back to 1973.
However, the increasing appeal of the Trump-led Republican Party to working class voters has caused Flint and the surrounding area, a hub for the auto industry, to trend to the right.
Will third time be a charm for Junge, or will McDonald Rivet continue the district’s 50-year streak of voting for Democrats?
New York’s 19th district
The contenders:
incumbent Rep. Marc Molinaro (R) vs. lawyer Josh Riley (D)
FiveThirtyEight favorite:
Riley (53%)
Polymarket favorite:
Molinaro (60%)
Consensus rating:
Tossup
New York’s 19th district is home to another rematch of two years ago, this time between freshman Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-NY, and his Democratic challenger attorney Josh Riley.
In 2022, Molinaro defeated Riley by a point and a half in the sprawling upstate New York district which stretches from the state’s Pennsylvania border to its border with Massachusetts. Biden had won the seat’s vote by over four points two years earlier.
Reflecting its politically split nature, the 19th district encompasses conservative-leaning rural areas, as well as the deep blue college towns of Ithaca and Binghamton.
Molinaro, a former county executive, was notably the Republican nominee for Governor of New York in 2018 where he lost by 23 points to then-incumbent Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The first-term lawmaker has emerged as a socially moderate-to-liberal member of the Republican House conference and supports a “pro-choice” stance on abortion. He also supports same-sex “marriage.”
Washington’s 3rd district
The contenders:
incumbent Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D) vs. retired U.S. Army Green Beret Joe Kent (R)
FiveThirtyEight favorite:
Kent (56%)
Polymarket favorite:
Kent (55%)
Consensus rating:
Tossup
Finally we come to yet another rematch of 2022: the race in Washington’s 3rd congressional district.
The set in southwestern Washington state straddles the Columbia River and borders the Pacific Ocean. Although it appears to be mainly rural, over 60% of its population lives in Clark County, a Democratic leaning suburban county just across the river from Portland, Oregon.
However, as a whole, the district leans Republican and is the only one on this list to have voted for Trump in 2020 – who carried it by just over four points.
For the second election cycle in a row, the seat features a race between now-first-term Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-WA, and Republican challenger Joe Kent, a retired officer in the U.S. Army Special Forces (commonly known as the “Green Berets”) and Gold Star husband.
U.S. Navy Senior Chief Cryptologic Technician Shannon Kent – Kent’s first wife and the mother of both of his children – killed at the age of 35 in a 2019 ISIS bombing while deployed in Syria. The Kents’ sons were aged 3 and 1 at the time.
Joe Kent is well known for advocating for non-interventionist foreign policy positions and is a staunch critic of what he calls the “endless wars” in which the U.S. military engages.
Kent has cited his late wife’s tragic death in explaining why he takes these positions – which over the past several years have become more mainstream in the ranks of the Trump-led Republican Party.
In what was widely seen as a massive upset, Gluesenkamp Perez, a political outsider who had owned an auto body shop with her husband, won the seat in 2022 besting Kent by the razor-thin margin of under one percentage point.
During the state’s blanket primary, Kent had pulled an upset of his own, edging out five-term incumbent Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-WA, by 0.5%, to advance to face Gluesenkamp Perez in the general election.
Herrera Beutler had voted for Trump’s second impeachment – a vote that led to her primary defeat at the hands of Kent.
Kent was seen as the heavy favorite to win the 2022 election as the seat had consistently voted for Herrera Beutler by comfortable margins. Before Gluesenkamp Perez’s term, the last Democrat to represent the seat was former Rep. Brian Baird, D-WA, the uncle of pop singer Billie Eilish – who left office in 2011.
After he came up short the first time around, Kent also immediately filed for a rematch – and in this year’s blanket primary voters seemed to clearly want one as Kent comfortably dispatched the other Republican candidate in the race by 27 points.
This time around, Kent and Republicans hope that presidential turnout for Trump in the usually red district will be enough to pull the Green Beret over the finish line.
Like Peltola, Gluesenkamp Perez has gone out of her way to downplay her connection to Harris, her party’s nominee.
In late October, The Washington State Standard noted that the Washington state congresswoman dodged a reporter’s question about who she planned to vote for:
The Standard reported that Gluesenkamp Perez
strode into the unpaved parking lot of the Fat Moose Bar & Grill where she ducked, dodged, and eventually, ditched a reporter pressing her on the subject.
Yes, she voted. No, not for Donald Trump. When asked if she voted for Kamala Harris, the first-term representative strode purposefully through the lot, talking about the importance of letting voters decide on their own.
“I don’t want to tell people how to vote,” she said, glancing over her shoulder before getting into a car bound for her next event.
Also like Peltola, Gluesenkamp Perez is a co-chairwoman of the Blue Dog Coalition.
