We interrupt your doomscrolling with a flicker of hope, which is that the Democrats can still win control of the House of Representatives, but they’ll need California to do it.
The Donald Trump win in Tuesday night’s election got even scarier upon realizing that Republicans took control of the US Senate with a now 52-seat majority. But there is one thing standing in the way of Trump and the Republicans commanding the entire apparatus of the US government, which is that control of the House of Representatives is not yet decided, as CNBC reminds us.
As of right now, the Democrats have only lost a net of one seat. They need 28 more seats to take the chamber, but some of those are Democrat vs Democrat races where they’ll definitely win. NBC News estimates there are about 20 key races that will determine who wins control of the House, and Dems would need to pretty much run the table to keep the House.
“The path to take back the majority now runs through too close to call pick-up opportunities,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “The party that will hold the majority in the House of Representatives in January 2025 has yet to be determined. We must count every vote.”
A disproportionate number of the key races are in California and Arizona, so California cannot deliver the House to Democrats on its own. And these aren’t like the East Bay’s Lateefah Simon vs Jennifer Tran race (not yet called, but Simon’s way ahead), or the South Bay’s Sam Liccardo vs Evan Low race (Liccardo just won), as those are all Democrat-on-Democrat races. These key races are all the standard Democrat vs Republican races.
The Desert Sun points out that these races are largely in Southern California, and here’s where things currently stand in these undetermined races:
- 13th District (San Joaquin Valley): Republican John Duarte leads Democrat Adam Gray 51%-49%
- 22nd District in (Central Valley): Republican David Valadao leads Democrat Rudy Salas 55%-45%
- 27th District (Los Angeles County): Republican Mike Garcia leads Democrat George Whitesides 51%-49%
- 41st District (Imperial Valley): Republican Ken Calvert and Democrat Will Rollins are effectively in a dead heat
- 45th District (Orange and Los Angeles counties): Republican Michelle Steel leads Democrat Derek Tran 53%-47%
Yes, Dems are behind in basically each race. But these are margin-of-error deficits with hundreds of thousands of votes yet to be counted.
Whichever party does win control of the House, they will probably not learn this for a while yet. As has been noted many times, in House of Representatives elections, particularly in California, notoriously can take weeks to determine the winner.
Image: The east side of the US Capitol in the early morning. Senate Chamber in the foreground. (Getty Images)
