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Despite a consistent swing toward Donald Trump across the country on Tuesday, the House of Representatives is still—barely—within the grasp of Democrats. And the reason why is an ancient mystery that every national journalist seems to forget every two years: California is not on your schedule when it comes to counting votes.
First, a word on why it would matter—at all—whether Democrats take the House. It’s true that Donald Trump has shown every willingness to extend executive power in whatever way he wants, armed now with a literal get-out-of-jail-free card from the Supreme Court. It’s true that a Republican Senate will allow Trump to seed the federal courts and executive agencies with all of his loyalists, who can then carry out his bidding. (I would expect Democratic attorneys general to spend mountains of time in court litigating against those executive actions; whether they will be as successful as during Biden’s term or Trump’s first term, when they were actually fairly successful, is another matter.) And it’s true that the areas where presidents have wide latitude, like foreign policy and immigration and tariffs, are at the president-elect’s whim.
But Congress, despite all impressions to the contrary, does matter. Control of the oversight committees, and the subpoena power that affords, would offer some glimmer of finding a way back to the public accountability that’s been so lacking for decades. On legislation, the Trump tax cuts expire at the end of next year, and a fight over extending tax cuts for millionaires could end with that expiration simply happening amid gridlock. I would expect a healthy portion of House Democrats to demand that leadership cave and make a deal, but here’s the thing: Winning the House would give leverage to the Senate.
That’s because both chambers have to agree on any reconciliation package, which allows the Senate to pass bills with a bare majority. If the two chambers can’t agree on that, Republicans will need 60 votes for anything, meaning that a handful of Democratic senators would have to be at the table. (Yes, Republicans could eliminate the filibuster, but with a Democratic House, that has far less appeal.)
That’s the why: Now to the what. As of midday Wednesday, Republicans have been named the winner in 200 House races, with Democrats prevailing in 183, per the New York Times tracker. You need 218 for the majority. Of the remaining 52 races, Republicans are ahead in 22. So in order to get Democratic control of the House, Democrats would need to stay ahead everywhere they are currently ahead (a tall order, as five of those races are within one percentage point or less), and then flip five seats from where things stand now.
This sounds rather insurmountable. It’s not. And California is the main reason why.
Seven of those uncalled races that have Republicans ahead are in California. Two of them appear pretty much out of reach: Young Kim’s big lead in CA-40, and David Valadao’s double-digit lead (albeit on meager turnout) in CA-22. Another race, pitting Michelle Steel against Derek Tran in CA-45, is a five-point race, though with high turnout thus far the spread is 11,363 votes.
The other four are under three points: CA-13, CA-27, CA-47, and CA-41. And that is well within the margin where the typical “blue shift” in California comes into play.
There are, simply put, millions of votes left to count in California. Ballots need only to be postmarked by Election Day, and can arrive as late as next Tuesday, November 12, and still be counted. These votes will be counted over the next few weeks. And what always happens is that the late-arriving votes are bluer than the rest of the pile, shifting the final tallies. There are numerous stories of seats with Republicans ahead flipping to Democrats during the course of the vote-counting process. It doesn’t happen in every single race, but it happens a lot. And at least four and maybe five of those seats are in the zone of flippage. I’ve seen Democrats make up margins of several percentage points in this fashion; Katie Porter in 2018, for example.
Those aren’t the only possibilities for Democrats. The closest uncalled race currently held by Republicans is in Iowa, where Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks has declared victory but has a lead of only 799 votes over Christina Bohannan. There is apparently nothing left to count, but a recount is likely, and you never know what might happen there.
In addition, Rep. Mary Peltola is in a difficult-to-decipher race against Nick Begich and one other candidate, John Wayne Howe, in Alaska. Alaska has instant-runoff voting, so it may come down to who captures the redistributed votes of the third-place finisher, Howe. But Begich is almost at 50 percent now, so that may be out of reach.
I’m not saying that the blue shift in California means that a Democratic House is likely; as vote-counting expert Dave Wasserman notes, Republicans are likely in a better position. His estimate is that the spread is trending toward a 221-214 House, which is amazingly close to what we have now.
What I’m saying is that, to the extent that Democrats have any chance of taking the House, it runs through California. And even though the late-arriving ballot phenomenon happens every two years in House races, it always sneaks up on the national media, as if without warning. The reality is that California counts complete later, because mail takes longer to verify and count. And where Democrats are positioned now does not presume where they will be positioned in the near future.
