As the presidential race comes down to the wire, so too does the race for the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats have a roughly 50-50 shot at reclaiming control of the chamber; to do so, they need to win only four more seats than they currently hold (214, including a couple of current vacancies in safely Democratic districts).
While presidential and House contests are often won by the same party, they aren’t always. This year, Republicans could reclaim the presidency while losing the House — a reverse flip that has no precedent in this two-party era, dating back to the Republican Party’s creation just before the Civil War.
Still, House and district-level presidential results have become highly correlated in recent years, and some key House districts will give us clues not just about which way the House might go, but the presidency as well. They could also provide answers to some of the big demographic questions looming over American politics.
Is the election breaking for one party early in the night?
One of the earliest poll closings, at 7 p.m., is in Virginia. While it is not part of the core presidential battleground, it hosts a couple of competitive House elections. If there is an upset in either, it could help set the tone for the evening, both at the presidential and House levels.
Virginia’s Second District, centered on competitive Virginia Beach in the coastal, military-heavy Hampton Roads region, voted for Joe Biden by a little under two percentage points in 2020. The incumbent is a first-term Republican, Jen Kiggans. Up in Northern Virginia, Democrats are defending the Seventh District, an open seat where Biden ran ahead of his national margin. Publicly released polls, albeit some from partisan sources, have shown that the congressional races are close.
The likeliest outcome is that the districts stay with their current party, but if either party wins the pair, that could be an early sign of momentum for that side. In 2022, Republicans flipped the Second, an important piece of their eventual House majority, but they failed to flip the Seventh, an early sign that a “red wave” was not materializing that year.
Have Republicans gained ground with Black voters?
Although African Americans still overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, some polls have indicated erosion of that support, particularly among young men. That shift could matter in swing districts that Biden won four years ago and that now may end up flipping to Donald Trump (and, as a result, to Republicans at the House level).
A telling district like this to watch is North Carolina’s First District, which Representative Don Davis, a Democrat, is trying to defend. The district covers some rural and small-town areas with significant Black populations, with whom the Democratic Party’s national troubles have been evident: Biden’s districtwide victory in 2020 was down a few points from Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. Given North Carolina’s early 7:30 p.m. poll closing, this race might be an early indicator of Democratic performance with Black voters more broadly. The district was redrawn this year, which has made it harder for Democrats to defend, so if the race is tight, that might have something to do with it, but weaker Democratic turnout than in 2020 would still be revealing.
A Davis loss would be a blow to Democratic hopes of winning a majority and would be consistent with Trump winning North Carolina, while a Davis victory — particularly if the margin is not that tight — may suggest Democratic troubles with Black voters were overstated.
Where could control of the House be decided?
Far outside the presidential battlegrounds, California and New York both include several Biden-won districts held by Republicans. Democrats most likely need to net at least a couple of these seats from each state to build a House majority.
One of those is New York’s 19th District, in the middle of the state. Of several competitive races in New York, this is the only House race that we listed as a tossup in our Sabato’s Crystal Ball ratings, and the seat looms large as one of a handful of potentially majority-making seats for both sides. That’s partly because in 2020, Biden won New York’s 19th by roughly the same margin as the popular vote — 4.5 points — making it one of the few districts in the country to so closely mirror the nation. In the 2022 midterms, New York’s 19th was one of several Biden-won districts that Republicans flipped as part of a state “red wave.” If the Democrat Josh Riley can unseat the Republican Representative Marc Molinaro, it would be a very positive sign for a Democratic House takeover.
Another seat Democrats most likely need to win is California’s 13th, in the Central Valley, which is one of the Republicans’ toughest defensive assignments. Held by first-term Representative John Duarte, it is one of just a few seats in districts that Biden won by double digits being defended by Republican House incumbents. The 13th District is probably the best Democratic target in the state for flipping; if Democrat Adam Gray loses, it’s probably a sign that Republicans are on track to keep the House.
Will Democrats keep bleeding support from Hispanic voters?
There’s another reason California’s 13th District is worth watching: It’s a Hispanic-majority district, so the results there might give us a clearer picture of Trump’s strength with that demographic, which has shifted toward Republicans in recent years. Directly south of the 13th is California’s 22nd District, which is also majority-Hispanic and held by another Republican, David Valadao. The consensus is that Valadao, a longtime member with a strong campaign record, will be harder for Democrats to dislodge than Duarte; but if Democrats do defeat Valadao, it would be a positive sign for their overall House math and might also indicate that Kamala Harris is holding up decently with Latino voters.
To be sure, the Hispanic electorate varies across the country. There is a significant Puerto Rican population in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley-centered Seventh District, a key district in a key state, held by the Democrat Susan Wild. One of the big stories in the final stage of the campaign has been an inflammatory joke about Puerto Rico told by a comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. How Puerto Rican voters turn out in Pennsylvania’s Seventh will be an important part of both the House and presidential pictures: Wild losing her very marginal Biden-won district would be a bad sign for Democrats’ Hispanic support and their House hopes overall.
How high can Harris drive up her margins with suburban and college-educated voters?
In the Trump era, voters without college degrees, especially white and rural ones, have turned to the Republican Party, while college-educated and suburban voters have trended Democratic.
This shift in the party coalitions will be on display in the two congressional districts that directly award electoral votes: Maine’s Second, a rural, working-class district that delivered an electoral vote to Trump in 2016 and 2020, and Nebraska’s Second, a more suburban, higher-education district based in Omaha that delivered an electoral vote to Democrats in 2008 and 2020.
Trump is clearly favored to win the former and Harris the latter, but the House races may not mimic the presidential race: The incumbents — Representative Don Bacon, a Republican, of Nebraska’s Second District and Representative Jared Golden, a Democrat, of Maine’s Second — are both fighting against the presidential tide and strong challengers from the other party. If Golden wins, that might suggest that working-class white voters aren’t turning out as enthusiastically as expected for Republicans. By the same token, if Bacon wins, it may mean that Harris is not pushing her suburban, college-educated voter margins high enough in the electorally vital Midwest.
The House map is a lot like the Electoral College map: Only a relatively small number of districts and states are truly in play for both sides. Some of these battlegrounds overlap while others do not, but the trends that emerge across the nation’s congressional districts will help us understand not just how a majority was won, but how the presidency was, too.
Kyle Kondik is the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the election analysis newsletter published by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. He is also the author of “The Long Red Thread,” a history of the growth of Republican power in the House of Representatives. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
