GOP likely to take House after midterms, per Decision Desk HQ
(NewsNation) — It’s a pretty sure bet the Republicans will take over the House of Representatives after this round of midterm elections, according to the latest forecasting model by Decision Desk HQ.
Projections by Decision Desk show that the GOP has an 88% chance of grabbing control in the House, though Democrats fare slightly better in the Senate, where they have a 54% chance of keeping control.
This data falls in line with past trends, where the party currently in power or holding the presidency gives up some seats, Scott Tranter, an adviser for Decision Desk HQ, said.
“Some of those seats that have gone Democrat in 2020 are looking like they’re going to go Republican this time,” he said.
Tranter said this is not necessarily because people are flipping parties, but that there are new people registering to vote.
“As registration grows, we see the Republican registration growing higher,” he said.
However, the fastest growing segment of party registration in the U.S. is non-partisan.
“Part of it might be — you vote Republican consistently, but you might not like everything about the Republican Party, and so you don’t want to associate with them,” he said. “It has really been a phenomenon since 2018, how the registrations shake out, and we’re going to see the effects in 2022, and I hate to say it, in 2024 we’re going to be thinking about it.”
Three particularly interesting races to watch, according to Tranter, are the Pennsylvania Senate race between the state’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, and Republican television personality Mehmet Oz; the Nevada Senate race between Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Adam Laxalt, the state’s former GOP attorney general; and in Arizona, retired astronaut and Democrat Mark Kelly versus Blake Masters, a Republican businessman.
“The Senate is really going to be where a lot of the action is going to be this fall,” Tranter said.
People will likely get more engaged with the elections after Labor Day, Tranter said, although there has been a lot of money raised by candidates already. He attributed this to large-scale political developments, such as the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, as well as “charismatic” candidates raising more funds.
“We’re seeing record levels of fundraising,” Tranter said. “There’s just a lot more money in politics this cycle and that’s that’s been the trend for a while.”