Less than three weeks from Election Day, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is predicting that House Democrats will pick up at least 25 seats at the polls.
Addressing reporters in the Capitol — a rare event during the long pre-election recess — the California liberal stopped short of saying the Democrats will win back control of the lower chamber. But her bold forecast — 25 seats is higher than most election handicappers anticipate — is some indication that Democratic leaders are confident Donald Trump’s campaign will harm Republican incumbents down the ballot.
{mosads}”We’re in a good place,” Pelosi said Wednesday. “I think we’ll be within a single digit, either way.”
With the Republicans boasting a 59-seat advantage, the Democrats would have to pick off at least 25 seats to meet Pelosi’s forecast. To take the Speaker’s gavel from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), they’d need to flip 30.
The odds are stacked against them, not least because even the most vulnerable House Republicans have kept their races competitive — and kept the Democrats spending — in some cases by rejecting Trump’s candidacy outright.
Also, as Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report has pointed out, wave elections tend to happen almost exclusively in midterm election cycles. The last time a party picked up more than 25 seats in a presidential year was 1980.
But perhaps the most significant factor is the redrawing of House districts — largely by GOP-led state legislatures — following the 2010 Census. Those new lines, while securing scores of Democrats in safe blue districts, also favored the Republicans in terms of underlying numbers.
Pelosi on Wednesday acknowledged that the district lines are a challenge, but not, she said, an impossible one.
“It’s an obstacle but not insurmountable. … If you say that, then you’ve just surrendered to a very bleak future for children and other living things in our country,” Pelosi said.
“You have to win so you can change a redistricting.”