The Six Regions That Will Decide the House

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— The key districts in the battle for the House fit into a half-dozen regions scattered across the nation.

— What follows is a path toward what Democrats need to do (or Republicans need to prevent) in order to win a bare, 218-217 majority.

— Today’s update comes with a pair of rating changes in favor of Democrats; that does not include a pair of rating changes we are planning to make in Missouri if the state ultimately reverts to its 2022 map.

Table 1: Crystal Ball House rating changes

Table 2: Crystal Ball House ratings

The seats that will decide the House

While Democrats need to win just three more seats than they won in 2024 to flip the House, redistricting has scrambled the arithmetic to some degree, with Democrats slated to gain in a couple of states and Republicans slated to gain in several states (see a footnote below for how we’re handling Missouri, where the map is still up in the air and our current ratings still reflect a new Republican gerrymander).[*] So it’s not quite as simple as just saying “Democrats need to flip three of these X number of seats” to win the majority.

As the fall campaign begins in earnest, we thought we’d lay out the House battlefield in regions to spell out the path to the majority. We are doing this from the perspective of the bare minimum of what Democrats need to do to flip the House, but one could just as easily look at the following regional benchmarks from the GOP perspective in terms of what they need to prevent Democrats from doing.

We’ve identified 37 districts across 6 regions, which together make up the core of the House battlefield. Conveniently, these 6 regions cover all of our Toss-up districts as well as many of our Leans districts.

Subtracting these seats from the Democratic and Republican tallies, while also assuming they each win every district not included in this analysis already at least leaning to them, leaves both parties at a starting point of 199 seats. Obviously, if someone wins a seat outside of this group where they are currently an underdog, it changes the math (some of those districts are addressed at the end).

Let’s go region by region. Under each category, names in regular type are Toss-ups, names in italics are Leans Democratic, and names in underline are Leans Republican. We’ll address our rating changes in their respective sections.

El Norte (Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas)

Juan Ciscomani (R, AZ-6), AZ-1 Open (Schweikert, R), Adam Gray (D, CA-13), David Valadao (R, CA-22), CA-48 Open (Issa, R), Gabe Evans (R, CO-8), Gabe Vasquez (D, NM-2), Monica De La Cruz (R, TX-15), Henry Cuellar (D, TX-28), Vicente Gonzalez (D, TX-34), and TX-35 New

Bare minimum Democratic goal to hit 218 seats: 7/11

“El Norte” is one of the 11 North American regional cultures identified by Colin Woodard in his excellent book American Nations, and the U.S. portion of this heavily Hispanic region covers portions of all the states mentioned above (though not technically all of these districts). While the Hispanic population shares of these individual districts vary dramatically, this area will collectively tell us about how much (or how little) Democrats improve from Kamala Harris’s poor showing among Hispanics in 2024. This group also features this cycle’s most prominent Republican (Texas) and Democratic (California) gerrymanders, and we think Democrats need to do well in it. We do already have 6 of these 11 districts leaning to them in our ratings following today’s update.

Our one rating change here comes in the gerrymandered TX-34, a majority Hispanic district that voted for Donald Trump by 10 points in 2024 that Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D) is defending. We are making Gonzalez a modest favorite, pushing his race to Leans Democratic. This is based primarily on a broader expectation of a Democratic bounceback among Hispanic voters in South Texas. Our sense is that polling in the district itself is close—a recent nonpartisan public survey from the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University had Gonzalez up 45%-42% on his GOP opponent, veteran Eric Flores.

The other Tri-State Area (New Jersey, New York, and eastern Pennsylvania)

Tom Kean Jr. (R, NJ-7), Laura Gillen (D, NY-4), Tom Suozzi (D, NY-3), Mike Lawler (R, NY-17), Rob Bresnahan (R, PA-8), Brian Fitzpatrick (R, PA-1), Ryan Mackenzie (R, PA-7), and Scott Perry (R, PA-10)

Democratic goal: 4/8

The “Tri-State Area” generally refers to parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut that orbit New York City, but our regional district tour swaps out Connecticut for eastern Pennsylvania, a tiny portion of which is covered by the New York City media market.

This northeastern corridor region contains two of the three Kamala Harris-won districts that Republican House members won under the 2024 maps, Reps. Mike Lawler (R, NY-17) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R, PA-1). Fitzpatrick remains narrowly favored in our ratings but he is running very aggressively against Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie (D). Democrats should be able to make at least some headway in the Pennsylvania Toss-up races against Reps. Rob Bresnahan (R, PA-8), Ryan Mackenzie (R, PA-7), and Scott Perry (R, PA-10). Reps. Laura Gillen (D, NY-4) and Tom Suozzi (D, NY-3) together represent Nassau County, where GOP gubernatorial nominee Bruce Blakeman is county executive and could help their Republican congressional challengers. But if Gillen and Suozzi could win in 2024, they should be able to in 2026.

“Ohio” and “Xichigan”

Tom Barrett (R, MI-7), Bill Huizenga (R, MI-4), MI-10 Open (James, R), Marcy Kaptur (D, OH-9), Greg Landsman (D, OH-1), and Max Miller (R, OH-7)

Democratic goal: 3/6

Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed recently used “Ohio” to describe Ohio State University, which some interpreted as a mistake but is actually an intentional slight used by some University of Michigan fans against OSU (a political equivalent is when Republicans refer to the “Democrat” Party). Meanwhile, Ohio State trolling involves calling Michigan “the team up north” or putting a red X over “M”s around Columbus in advance of “The Game” against Michigan. Hence the X in place of the M in this section’s header.

These states each have a trio of key races. Two feature intriguing tests of candidate quality, as Rep. Max Miller (R, OH-7) tries to survive following accusations of domestic abuse in a district that shouldn’t be competitive but is, while far-left Democratic nominee William Lawrence tries to unseat Rep. Tom Barrett (R, MI-7) in a swing district that probably should flip to Democrats in a year like this but possibly won’t.

Driftless and Beyond (Iowa and Wisconsin)

Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R, IA-1), Zach Nunn (R, IA-3), IA-2 Open (Hinson, R), and Derrick Van Orden (R, WI-3)

Democratic goal: 2/4

The “Driftless Area” is a region that primarily covers southwest Wisconsin but also bleeds into Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa (though it doesn’t cover all of the congressional districts in the Hawkeye State). It gets its name from not being covered by glaciers during the last ice age, and thus the region lacks the deposits known as “drift” that the glaciers left behind. The political drift in this general area has been away from Democrats, but as recently as 2018, Democrats held all four of these congressional districts, albeit under different district lines, before Republicans flipped them all over the course of 2020 and 2022. Under the current lines, these predominantly white districts all voted for Barack Obama twice and then Donald Trump three times.

The South’s Oldest Rivalry (North Carolina and Virginia)

Don Davis (D, NC-1), NC-11 Open (Edwards, R), Jen Kiggans (R, VA-2), and Rob Wittman (R, VA-1)

Democratic goal: 2/4

The University of Virginia and University of North Carolina play what’s called “The South’s Oldest Rivalry” in football, and the commonwealth and the state, respectively, have some of the earliest poll closing times in the nation, so how they vote will give us some clue about the broader story of November. Back in 2022, then-Rep. and now-Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) surviving without too much trouble was a good early sign for Democrats as they limited their House losses; in 2024, Loudoun County’s weaker-than-expected Democratic margin was a bad early sign for Kamala Harris as she was going down to defeat. Of these four districts, the 2022 rematch between Rep. Jen Kiggans (R, VA-2) and former Rep Elaine Luria (D) is closest to a must-win for Democrats.

Floribama (Florida and Alabama)

Shomari Figures (D, AL-2), Kathy Castor (D, FL-14), Jared Moskowitz (D, FL-25), and FL-22 New

Democratic goal: 1/4

Our last region mostly covers Florida, where a Republican gerrymander aims to flip up to four Democratic-held seats, but also gerrymandered Alabama, where Rep. Shomari Figures (D, AL-2) is trying to defend a Trump +14 district north of the Florida panhandle. Both Castor and Moskowitz seem to be very much in the game despite holding Trump +10ish districts, and Democrats could also defend the new FL-22 in South Florida, although that remains Leans Republican in this update. Joining it in that category this week is Figures, who may still have a path despite finding himself in a hostile district. Some publicly-released Democratic polls over the past few months found him effectively tied with state Rep. Rhett Marques (R); to us that still means Figures is an underdog (we generally interpret publicly-released internal polls to be rosy for the side that releases them), but Figures, as an incumbent, should get help from national Democrats. Additionally, Black turnout could be relatively strong across the South, partially in response to the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, which allowed Republicans to dismantle a few substantially Black, Democratic districts, including Figures’s old district. This new one is still about 40% Black, though.

Others and conclusion

Probably the most high-profile race not included in any of these categories is the reelection bid of Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D, WA-3), who we have had as Leans Democratic all cycle but who others sometimes view as a Toss-up. A few other Leans Democratic seats, including the open, Republican-held NE-2, also are not included above. If Republicans win any of these seats, they are likely doing better in the House than we’re anticipating.

Meanwhile, the Likely Republican column has a bunch of GOP-held seats in, among other places, Colorado and Florida (the latter in addition to the several we already list above). That includes a Democratic incumbent, Rep. Darren Soto (D, FL-9) in a redrawn Trump +18 district who could have a case to be, like Figures, in a more competitive category down the road. If Democrats are winning seats among this group, they are likely doing better than we’re anticipating.

When we go through the exercise above and make our back-of-the-envelope guesses on the House, we end up with the Democrats in the mid-to-high 220s. And yet we wonder whether that may ultimately end up being light for Democrats. Baked into our assumptions is a belief that there are limits to how deeply Democrats can cut into double-digit Trump-won districts. But there are a lot of big-picture warning signs for Republicans—mostly flowing from the president’s poor approval rating and the usual midterm challenges for the president’s party—that could be leading us to underestimate the Democratic ceiling in the House.

Note

[*] Missouri’s map for 2026 remains in flux as of this writing. Last week, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked Republican efforts to use a new gerrymander despite a successful effort to place a referendum on the map on the November ballot, which would typically put a new law on ice until voters got a say. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene against the state court, seemingly pushing Missouri back to the old 2022-2024 map for 2026, but then a lower federal court ruled that the new map should be used. As of Thursday morning, there was not a clear resolution here, and our ratings still reflect the new, 7-1 Republican map. If the new map is indeed set aside, Democrats would pick up a seat in our ratings, as Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D, MO-5) would go all the way from Safe Republican to Safe Democratic. Additionally, Rep. Ann Wagner (R, MO-2) would go from Safe Republican to Likely Republican. Stay tuned.

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.

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