A Flood of Open House Seats—But Not Competitive Open Seats

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— More than 50 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are not seeking another term in the House this year.

— The number of incumbents running again is going to be one of the lowest totals in any House election cycle since World War II.

— However, the vast majority of these retirements don’t mean anything for the November election because they are coming in safe seats.

— The open seats, collectively, feature a smaller share of truly competitive seats than the House as a whole does.

Flood of retirements doesn’t impact the overall battlefield much

A hefty number of House retirements means that the number of incumbents seeking reelection this year will be among the lowest in any election since the end of World War II.

But just like in the overall House, uncompetitive seats predominate among the open districts. We also are in an era where the value of incumbency is not as strong as it once was, as Senior Columnist Alan Abramowitz noted in a midterm analysis we published last week. That is not to say that none of the retirements are important for the general election—some are important, as we note below—but if there is a big wave in the House, it will have little to do with retirements.

Over the last couple of weeks, Reps. Mark Amodei (R, NV-2) and Barry Loudermilk (R, GA-11) became the latest to announce that they would not be seeking another term in the House. According to our own research as well as tracking from Senior Columnist Louis Jacobson, writing at the Almanac of American Politics’s new Substack, Amodei and Loudermilk are 2 of the 30 House Republicans who are not seeking another term this year, along with 21 House Democrats. The retirees are split about 50-50 in terms of those who are leaving elected office (at least for now) versus those who are seeking another office, usually governor or U.S. senator.

As of right now (this number will change), we count as many as 384 House incumbents running for reelection. That includes at least two sets of incumbents who, because of redistricting, are seeking reelection in the same district: Republican Reps. Ken Calvert and Young Kim are running against each other in CA-40, and Democratic Reps. Al Green and the just-elected Christian Menefee are running against each other in the redrawn TX-18. There may end up being more, driven by redistricting. It also includes some members who have not formally announced their reelection bids (but also have not said they will be retiring), and it assumes that the future winners of a few special elections happening later this year will eventually become incumbents running for reelection (in other words, those special election winners will run for full terms after winning). We will update those special elections at the end of this article.

According to figures from Vital Statistics on Congress (and supplemented by our own research), an average of 396 incumbents have run for reelection to the House in postwar election cycles. So at the very least, this is clearly going to be a below-average year for incumbents running for reelection, and it should be among the lowest.

This year is currently just one behind 2022 (383) for the fourth-lowest number of incumbents seeking reelection since 1946. The lowest tally in that timeframe was 368 in 1992, with the next-lowest coming in 2018 (376) and 1978 (382). So 2026 will almost certainly be lower than 1978 and 2022, and perhaps lower than 2018 or maybe (though probably not) even 1992 when it’s all said and done.

While this is not a national redistricting year, 2026 has already seen six states—California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah—redraw their maps, and that, plus other redistricting to come, will contribute to a higher number of incumbents opting not to run for reelection. As an aside, we noted in our analysis of the new potential Democratic gerrymander of Virginia that VA-2, a battleground district currently held by Rep. Jen Kiggans (R), hardly changed in that proposal. Since then, Democrats are making an effort to further improve their numbers in that seat, boosting Kamala Harris’s 2024 margin in the redrawn seat from about 1 point to about 5 points (making it slightly bluer than the most Democratic seat Republicans won in 2024, the open NE-2). That would probably be enough for us to make it a Leans Democratic seat for 2026 rating purposes if the map is indeed implemented (we previously said the district likely would remain a Toss-up even under the new map).

Back to the open seats. That more Republicans are retiring than Democrats may also tell us something about which way the political winds are blowing, or at least which way political elites believe the winds are blowing: Some House Republicans may not want to stick around if they believe they are going to be in the minority. More broadly, and to put it lightly, Congress doesn’t seem like a great place to be these days, whether in the majority or the minority. Adding all of these factors together provides some explanation for the high number of retirements.

While we count 51 retirements so far, the number of currently open seats is actually a little bit higher: 54. That’s because, as noted above, there are at least a couple of instances where incumbents are running against each other.

Let’s focus on those 54 currently open seats. Table 1 shows the partisan distribution of both the entirety of the House (on the left) and the makeup of the 54 open seats so far (on the right). This classifies districts by how well (or how poorly) President Trump did in each district in 2024, taking into account new districts drawn in advance of 2026. (Our friend Ron Brownstein used this Crystal Ball research, which we built from the Downballot and Dave’s Redistricting App, to assess the House battlefield in a CNN piece published over the weekend).

Table 1: Current control of House districts based on 2024 Trump vote share

Source: Calculated by author based on the Downballot, Dave’s Redistricting App, the Almanac of American Politics, and Crystal Ball research.

In 2024, Democrats did not win a single district where Trump got 55% of the vote or more, and Republicans did not win a single district where Trump got 46% of the vote or less. Redistricting has scrambled the map a little bit, as both Democrats and Republicans are “defending” seats that new gerrymanders are designed to take away from them, but the basic story is the same: Presidential partisanship is a great predictor of which party controls House seats.

Now, look at the right side of Table 1. This just includes the 54 open-seat districts. Notice that of the 54 open seats, just 8 are in the most competitive zone, where Trump got between 46%-54% of the vote. That group does, however, include the reddest seat won by a Democrat in 2024: ME-2, from which Rep. Jared Golden is retiring, and the bluest seat won by a Republican: NE-2, from which Rep. Don Bacon is retiring. The other open seats in this grouping are held by members of both parties who are seeking higher office: Reps. Ashley Hinson (R, IA-2), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D, IL-8), Angie Craig (D, MN-2), and Chris Pappas (D, NH-1) are running for Senate, and Reps. David Schweikert (R, AZ-1) and John James (R, MI-10) are running for governor. The latter two races are categorized as Toss-ups, while the incumbent party is favored to varying degrees in the other four.

In the event of a blue wave in November, Democrats very well may be able to win redder districts outside of this Trump 46%-54% zone. But that zone nonetheless represents the most competitive grouping of House seats, and it’s where one would expect Democrats to notch the vast majority of their gains if they flip the House.

On the overall House map (the left side of Table 1), 74 of the 435 districts fall within that zone, or 17% of the whole House. When just looking at the open seats (on the right), 8 of the 54 fall within that group, or 15%. By that metric, the share of competitive seats is actually a little bit smaller among the open seats than it is among the House as a whole.

So just as the vast majority of House districts are not really two-party competitive, the same can be said for the open seats. While there are impactful retirements—certainly Bacon and Golden qualify, and perhaps others will too—retirements do not seem to have dramatically impacted the overall general election battlefield.

A quick word on vacant seats

Our tally of open seats does not include three currently vacant seats that will be filled by special elections later this year: NJ-11, GA-14, and CA-1. Our reasoning is that the eventual winners of these special elections will become incumbents running for reelection by the time November comes around, thus meaning that these won’t be open seats.

In northern California’s 1st District, the special election to replace the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R) is being held under the old congressional district lines, under which CA-1 is a Safe Republican district. However, the regular election for 2026 will be held under the new, Safe Democratic lines. State Assemblyman James Gallagher (R), who is running in both the special and regular elections, could become an incumbent if he wins the special, although he would be a major underdog in the regular election (Gallagher has the backing of both Trump and LaMalfa’s family).

In north-central New Jersey’s 11th district, progressive activist Analilia Mejia (D) surprisingly won the Democratic primary in the race to replace now-Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), emerging from a crowded field that included a former member, Tom Malinowski (D), who once represented neighboring NJ-7. The special election to fill the seat is set for April 16. We rate this race Safe Democratic—a district Kamala Harris won by a little under 9 points does not seem winnable for Republican nominee Joe Hathaway even against a left-wing candidate given the environment. Mejia is also seeking the seat for the November election.

In northwest Georgia’s 14th District, there will be an all-party first round of voting in the race to replace former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) on March 10, with a runoff coming on April 7 if no one gets over 50% in the first round of voting (which seems likelier than not given that nearly 20 candidates are running). President Trump is appearing in the district on Thursday alongside the Republican he has endorsed, local district attorney Clay Fuller. This is a Trump +37 district, making it far too red to elect a Democrat, even taking the political environment and Democratic special election turnout advantages into account.

Additionally, recent reporting has suggested the possibility that Rep. Neal Dunn (R, FL-2), who represents a Tallahassee-centered Trump +18 district, might resign before the end of this Congress, perhaps necessitating a special election and allowing an incumbent to contest this seat by the time of the November general election. Dunn’s FL-2 is one of the 54 open seats we included in our tally above, but depending on what happens, it may be that an incumbent elected in a future special election later this year will be defending the seat by November.

It’ll likely be several months before we can get a precise handle on exactly how many true open seats there are and how many incumbent members are seeking reelection.

 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.

See Other Political Commentary by Kyle Kondik.

See Other Political Commentary.

Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.