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WASHINGTON — Republicans were on the cusp of losing control of the US House of Representatives hours after polls closed on Election Day, with Democrats having flipped several seats and kept their opponents’ gerrymandered advantages at bay in the midterm elections.
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Democrats had taken 143 seats, while the GOP held just 86 that had been called by the Associated Press by 11 p.m. in the 293 races on the line Tuesday night.
NBC News and CNN were both projecting a Democratic takeover of the House, while AP was waiting to call it when one of the parties reaches 218 seats.
If projections hold true, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and his party could have their largest majority in more than a decade, fueled largely by voters’ frustrations with the economy and the rising cost of fuel and food, according to public polls.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) acknowledged that Republicans lost the House in a speech from his hometown of Shreveport.
“From the first day of this election, we knew that to keep the House and sustain our majority, we would have to defy more than a century of midterm history,” he said. “It’s only happened twice in 90 years that a sitting president has picked up or held seats for his party in that first two-year cycle. There’s a lot of reasons for it. It’s very, very difficult to overcome, and it looks like history will be kept.”
But as polls were closing on the East Coast, Democrats were starting to rack up early victories — including in Florida, where a Republican-led redistricting effort failed to hand their party nearly a half-dozen extra seats.
In the Sunshine State, Democratic candidates beat back their Republican opponents in at least four of the five districts that had been expected to give the GOP breathing room in the House.
Decisive Democratic wins were also delivered in North Carolina, where Jamie Ager, a farmer, handily defeated Republican Jennifer Capps Balkcom, a state House rep, in the 11th District by 60.1% to 38.5% when the AP called the race at 8:53 p.m.
The seat had belonged to former Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), who abandoned his re-election campaign after a House ethics report determined the North Carolina Republican had engaged in “inappropriate conduct” with his female staffers.
Even the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Rep. Richard Hudson, seemingly won’t be spared in North Carolina, as Richard Ojeda, who until several years ago had been a state lawmaker in West Virginia, was on track to beat the GOP incumbent in the Tar Heel State.
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Other House Republican seats were also flipped in New Jersey, where Rep. Tom Kean Jr. had been serving a second term marked by a prolonged absence due to depression.
Democrat Rebecca Bennett beat Kean (R-NJ) by more than 20 percentage points when the race was called a little before 10 p.m.
Additionally, Democrat Zach Dembo triumphed in Kentucky’s District 6 over Ralph Alvarado, who served most recently as the state commissioner of public health in Tennessee.
The vacancy in the Bluegrass State had been left by Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), who easily defeated his Democratic opponent in the race to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Meanwhile, President Trump was seemingly preparing for two years of gridlock in Congress, telling CBS News in a phone interview before polls closed that he would be “Mr. Veto.”
“Historically, you veto for a couple of months and then they come and say, ‘We’ve got to make a deal,’” the president said.
Trump’s allies have already been bracing for the multimillion-dollar legal bills that could result if House Democrats follow through on investigations into the first family’s business dealings and other alleged corruption of those with ties to the president.
