Despite the presidential race being called for Democrat Joe Biden, November’s elections set up Republicans well for 2022 and beyond.
President Trump remained competitive enough in the battleground states to help down-ballot Republicans across the finish line. In other cases, Republicans such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine were able to run well ahead of Trump to defy pollsters and hold onto their seats.
“Republicans might not be happy over the presidential election, but we are poised to take back the House and are likely going to do very well with redistricting,” said GOP strategist Ron Bonjean. “Additionally, the party was able to attract a sizable amount of Hispanic and Latino voters as well.”
The party is within a January Georgia double runoff of retaining the Senate, keeping Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in charge for at least the first two years of an anticipated Biden administration. But the GOP also gained seats in the House, reducing the Democratic majority to just 219 to 202 with over a dozen races still uncalled.
This puts Republicans in a potentially good position to regain the speaker’s gavel in a typical midterm election year when the White House is in a first-term Democrat’s hands. Republicans gained 54 seats in 1994, Bill Clinton’s first midterm election, and 63 seats in the House in 2010, Barack Obama’s first.
Both elections were more than enough to flip the House to GOP control — in Clinton’s case, for the first time since the 1950s under Dwight Eisenhower. Clinton and Obama were both elected by larger margins than Biden and entered the White House boasting bigger congressional majorities.
But it is the Republicans’ state legislative gains that could pay the longest-term dividends for the party, especially when it comes to congressional redistricting. Democrats failed to pick up a single state legislative chamber this year.
Next year, states will apply the new census data to redraw congressional districts across the country. Republicans retained their majorities in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which emerged as swing states in the Trump era. The third Rust Belt battleground, Michigan, voted in 2018 to turn over redistricting to an independent commission, though Republicans are still contesting this on state constitutional grounds.
In Florida, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, and Kansas, Democrats are effectively going to be shut out of this process. Not only did Democrats fail to turn Texas blue at the presidential level, but they did not win a single House seat that they were trying to add in the state. Democrats hold only 11 of Florida’s 27 congressional seats even before the maps will be redrawn by the GOP-controlled legislature. North Carolina strengthened its Republican legislative majorities.
All this makes Republicans optimistic about life after Trump, although not complacent.
“The Republicans are well positioned to take back the majority in the House, but it will be a real fight to keep the Senate, given the map that they face in 2022,” said Republican strategist John Feehery. “But with that potential comes great risk.”
One risk is that there might not be life after Trump, which complicates the midterm election picture. The president is still contesting the results in multiple states, possibly paving the way for one or more Bush v. Gore-style Supreme Court rulings, and hasn’t conceded the race. Even if he leaves the White House, he may not depart the political scene. Trump has a huge Twitter megaphone, could wind up being a regular voice on television, and he may even run again in 2024.
A Washington Examiner/YouGov poll earlier this month found that nearly half of voters wanted Trump to leave politics entirely if he lost the election, although this sentiment was not as strong among Republicans as Democrats and independents.
“Donald Trump promises to be a larger-than-life presence and could cast a huge shadow on the election. For Republicans in the House and the Senate, they have to offer the voters a coordinated agenda that resonates with both the Trump voter (those who love Trump but don’t love the GOP) and the establishment Republicans (those who hate Trump but typically vote Republican),” Feehery said. “Navigating the issue set of when to cooperate with the Biden administration and when to confront its worse excesses will be a challenge.”
Democrats may not have the votes to eliminate the legislative filibuster or pack the Supreme Court, as the expected blue wave failed to materialize. But Biden is likely to rail against Republican attempts to stymie his agenda, as Obama did before him.
“Republicans don’t want to be accused of being ‘do-nothing’ or unnecessarily obstructionist, but at the same token, they don’t want to alienate their base in pursuit of ‘good governance,'” said Feehery.
