House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters he is confident that Democrats can win up to 15 additional seats in the Nov. 3 election, which would give them a much wider majority over the GOP and ensure easy passage of Obamacare expansion, climate change legislation, and other key party agenda items.
“I am very confident that we are going to expand our membership in the House of Representatives,” the Maryland Democrat predicted Tuesday. “And we’ll expand our membership in the United States Senate, take control of the Senate, and Joe Biden is going to win.”
Democrats currently control 232 seats, a 35-seat advantage over Republicans and 14 more votes than required to pass legislation with a simple majority.
Hoyer’s optimism reflects race watchers who predict that House Democrats will indeed expand their majority.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report noted that Republicans would need a net gain of 18 seats to take back the majority, which they lost in a Democratic landslide in 2018.
Dave Wasserman, Cook Political Report’s House editor, predicts House Democrats could expand their majority “perhaps by 5 to 15 seats.”
Wasserman blames President Trump at the top of the GOP ticket.
Trump is trailing Biden in polls, significantly in some states, and voters have rejected his handling of the coronavirus, a top concern.
Hoyer told reporters that while Democrats are poised to sweep Congress and the White House, mail-in balloting procedures that are new to many areas will likely delay final results.
Hoyer told reporters to “caution people to not believe that on midnight, Nov. 3, you’re going to know exactly what happened in the Senate, in the House, and in the presidency.”
Hoyer added, “I think it will be evident Joe Biden has won this race.”
Dozens of states have changed election laws to allow or expand mail-in voting due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Some states will allow ballots to be counted after Election Day if they are postmarked by Nov. 3.
Hoyer compared the current election year to 2006 and 2008, when Democrats swept into the majority with a historic pickup of 31 Republican seats and then expanded their lead by several more seats two years later.
He told reporters that Democrats have an advantage on both the handling of the coronavirus and healthcare in general because polls indicate Obamacare is popular, even as Republicans try to repeal it.
Trump, meanwhile, polls poorly on his handling of the coronavirus.
“I think ’06 and ’08 are very much analogous to ’18 and ’20,” Hoyer said. “Based upon that, based upon the polling data, and based upon the quality of our candidates, the money we’ve raised, and the advantage we have on the issues … I think all the factors are in our favor.”
House Republicans have made few optimistic predictions about winning back the majority, but at the presidential debate last week, Trump proclaimed, “I think we are going to win back the House.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has raised a record-breaking $103 million in this election in a bid to defeat Democratic incumbents while holding on to GOP seats.
