Biden loses Dems the House – swings key races

[(J. Miles, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ authoritative, nonpartisan newsletter on American campaigns and elections.) “How Current Presidential Polling May Impact House Races”, Center For Politics, July 11th 2024, https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/how-current-presidential-polling-may-impact-house-races/]//LR

The second scenario is where the playing field would really start tilting against Democrats. As of Monday, RealClearPolitics’s national aggregator gave Trump a 47.5%-44.1% lead over Biden, while the president trailed Trump by a slightly lesser 42.1%-39.7% in FiveThirtyEight’s average. In splitting the difference between the two outlets, we came up with a 3.3-point two-party margin for Trump. The far-right column on Table 1 reflects a uniform swing from the actual 2020 result to a 3.3% Trump popular vote advantage in the two-party vote. All told, Democrats would hold 15 of these 24 potential Biden-to-Trump seats. The aforementioned Rep. Angie Craig would actually hold the most marginal Trump-won seat in the House under this scenario. Importantly, over the past few cycles, Craig’s district has tracked well with Minnesota overall (meaning, in this case, one would expect the state’s electoral votes to be in the GOP column for the first time since 1972, albeit very narrowly so). While we won’t namecheck every seat that flips to Trump in this category, arguably the most important district here is NE-2. While GOP Rep. Don Bacon has been a frequent Democratic target since he was elected in 2016, his Omaha-district is also critical at the presidential level. In a situation where Biden holds the “Blue Wall” trio of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin but loses the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, NE-2 could provide Biden’s 270th electoral vote. In fact, we would go a little bit further and say that this configuration would represent Biden’s likeliest path to 270 (Crystal Ball Managing Editor Kyle Kondik discussed this scenario when we moved some Electoral College ratings last month). With the Nebraska legislature returning to Lincoln for a special session later this month, Gov. Jim Pillen (R) is renewing his push to change the state’s Electoral Vote allocation format to winner-take-all, although legislators turned back a similar effort earlier this year. Some of the Democratic incumbents in seats that Trump carries in this scenario might still be favored: in South Texas for instance, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D, TX-28) routinely outruns the top of the ticket—Cuellar, who is also under indictment on bribery charges, caught a break last month when it was announced that his trial would not take place before the election. Going farther west, Democrats’ Nevada gerrymander, which served them well in 2022, would begin to buckle, as Rep. Susie Lee (D, NV-3) would have a Trump +1 seat. Still, though Biden’s position has been wanting in Nevada for months by this point, national Republicans have not seemed to take much of an interest in House races there (although that could obviously change). Aside from the seats listed on Table 1, a uniform swing to Trump would have implications in other hotly-contested races. All three co-chairs of the Blue Dog Coalition—Golden, Gluesenkamp Perez, and Alaska’s Mary Peltola—would be defending double-digit Trump seats in the more extreme scenario (though to be fair to Peltola, Alaska has been a double-digit Republican-won state in presidential contests since 1996). This may explain why Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez have taken a “who cares, he’s going to lose anyway” stance on Biden: if Trump is perceived to be on an easy path back to the White House, red-district voters who may otherwise feel threatened by Democratic control of Washington could be more likely to split their tickets. Marcy Kaptur (D, OH-9), who is running for a historic 22nd term, would have a similar Trump +11 seat. Meanwhile, Democratic offensive opportunities could get less promising. On Long Island, the bluest district that is currently held by a Republican is Rep. Anthony D’Esposito’s NY-4 (we rate the race as Leans Democratic). D’Esposito could still be an underdog, but if Trump’s deficit in the district were cut to 7 points instead of 15, his odds would look less daunting.