How Election Week 2022 Went Down

Based on ABC News’s reports and projections in each individual House race, Republicans now have 211 seats to the Democrats’ 199 (this is different from the estimate you see in the top-right corner of our live blog, which is projecting that some as-yet-unprojected races will go Democratic). To reach the magic number of 218 seats for a majority, Republicans need to win seven of the 25 races that have not yet been projected, while Democrats need to win 19 of them. So the GOP has a much smaller hill to climb. But let’s take a look at the remaining races and what tea leaves we can read about the remaining contests.

Republicans arguably have an edge in four seats that haven’t yet been projected: Arizona’s 6th District, New York’s 22nd District and Oregon’s 5th District. In each, the GOP candidate leads, and what we know about the remaining votes could make it challenging for the Democratic candidates to overtake. We can also add Colorado’s 3rd District to this list, where Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert has taken a lead in an extremely tight race, with around 4,000 votes remaining, although the race could go to a recount.

But four other seats look likely or certain to go Democratic. In Nevada’s 3rd District, Rep. Susie Lee leads by 2 points, with mostly just Democratic-leaning mail ballots left to report in Clark County, while Democratic Rep. David Trone’s Republican opponent has conceded in Maryland’s 6th District. And Democrats are assured of two more seats in California (15th and 34th districts), where two Democrats are contesting each seat in the general election thanks to the state’s top-two primary system (these aren’t included in the table above).

Democrats are also somewhat favored in two seats where ranked-choice voting will decide the outcomes. In Maine’s 2nd District, Democratic Rep. Jared Golden leads by 5 points, with 49 percent of the vote, so he can probably win enough second-choice votes from independent Tiffany Bond — after all, he won over more of her voters in 2018. And in Alaska, Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola has 47 percent, with 72 percent of the expected vote reporting. Even if Peltola’s vote share drops, she will likely be in a better position than when she won a special election for this seat in August, when she won 40 percent of first-choice votes.

From there, things are more uncertain. Outside of California, we have three toss-up seats: Arizona’s 1st District, Oregon’s 6th District and Washington’s 3rd District. In Arizona and Oregon, it’s hard to know what the remaining votes’ partisan breakdown will be (80 percent of the expected vote has reported in each). The Washington race should be favorable to the GOP, but Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is up about 2 points against Republican Joe Kent and may have a path to victory, with 83 percent reporting.

Then we have 12 seats in California where too much vote is outstanding to know which way they’ll go, although some seats have a clear partisan lean that makes it unlikely they’ll do something unexpected. For instance, it’s hard to imagine Democratic Rep. Ami Bera losing the D+14 6th District, while Republicans are probably favored in the 3rd and 14th districts, but less than half of the vote has reported in any of these seats. Six incumbents running in competitive races all lead currently, but with tons of votes left to count: Republican Reps. Mike Garcia, Michelle Steel and David Valadao and Democratic Reps. Josh Harder, Mike Levin and Katie Porter. The highly competitive open-seat race in the 13th District is very close, too.

All in all, Republicans may need only some of these California races to hit 218 seats, while Democrats need to win all the toss-ups and overtake incumbents like Valadao and even Garcia to win the House.