Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.
Republicans will have a narrow majority in the House next year with Democrats flipping one final seat in California, leaving GOP leaders with even less margin for error as they try to advance President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.
Democrat Adam Gray has defeated GOP Rep. John Duarte in a rematch in California’s 13th District in the Central Valley following weeks of ballot counting, NBC News projects, meaning Republicans won 220 House seats in the 2024 elections to Democrats’ 215. The GOP can lose just two votes on legislation in the House in the next Congress if Democrats all vote in opposition, giving them little wiggle room for absences, internal fighting and vacancies.
Duarte told the Turlock Journal that he had called Gray to concede on Tuesday evening.
Thanks to Gray’s victory, Democrats netted one seat in the House elections, flipping nine Republican-held seats, mainly in blue states, as Republicans flipped eight Democratic-held seats.
The 13th District is one of three Democratic pickups in California alone, with Democrats Derek Tran and George Whitesides defeating GOP Reps. Michelle Steel and Mike Garcia. Democrats also flipped three seats in New York and one in Oregon, and they gained one seat each in Alabama and Louisiana because of new congressional maps in those states.
Republicans, meanwhile, picked up three seats in North Carolina because of the state’s new congressional map. They also defeated two Pennsylvania Democrats, Reps. Susan Wild and Matt Cartwright, as well as Democratic lawmakers in Alaska and Colorado, and they flipped an open seat in Michigan
