House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy took a victory lap Wednesday, trashing polls and predictions that there would be heavy losses for Republicans, who are currently poised to pick up House seats.
“They were all wrong,” McCarthy, a California Republican, told reporters at a press conference in the Capitol Wednesday.
While some races remain undecided, the wave of Democratic victories predicted by many pollsters has not materialized.
Instead of losing from five to 20 seats some polls were forecasting, Republicans have so far picked up seven seats from incumbent Democrats.
The pickups will narrow the Democratic majority, which currently stands at 232. It typically takes 218 votes to pass legislation.
McCarthy said the GOP wins will include up to 19 women, which would set a record for the party.
McCarthy said he believes Republicans outperformed Democrats in many races because of the far-left agenda some prominent lawmakers in the Democratic party have promoted, including Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and a focus on investigating and impeaching President Trump rather than cutting bipartisan deals.
“I think the rejection that we saw last night from the Democrats was that America does not want to be a socialist nation,” McCarthy told reporters. “We watched the Democrats promise that they would be given the power to have the majority, that they would act differently, but they would solve problems, and they wasted their majority.”
Republicans outperformed many predictions.
The non-partisan Cook Political Report declared on Nov. 2 that House Democrats were in position to expand their majority by 10 to 15 seats.
Democratic leaders also predicted big wins in the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, told the Associated Press last week, “we intend to grow our numbers,” while Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters earlier this month he was “very confident” the party would expand its majority, with a gain of up to 15 seats.
Democrats have, so far, only picked up two open, formerly Republican-held districts in North Carolina that were redrawn to favor Democrats.
Republicans have a net gain of five seats so far due to wins in South Florida, South Carolina, Iowa, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
In Minnesota, Republican former Lieutenant Gov. Michele Fischbach unseated longtime incumbent Collin Peterson in the state’s 7th District.
