WASHINGTON (AP) – House Democrats are on track to bolster their numbers in Tuesday’s election, perhaps picking off veteran Republicans from New Jersey, Florida and California along the way. But with no visible wave poised to engulf GOP lawmakers, there’s little suspense about whether Republicans will keep control.
Democrats long believed that Donald Trump’s presidential run would prove toxic to his party’s House candidates, but that seems likely to be only modestly accurate. GOP hopes for limiting losses have been buoyed in the campaign’s dwindling days by Republican voters rallying behind Trump, renewed attention to Hillary Clinton’s emails and rising premiums under President Barack Obama’s health care law.
“There were misplaced waves of optimism” among Democrats about a landslide in which “Trump was a magic word, if you just said Trump and a Republican candidate, all of that person’s support would melt away,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. “And it’s just not true.”
As a result, it seems improbable that Democrats will add the 30 seats they would need to capture House control. That large a gain has been achieved by either party in just 10 of 35 elections since World War II. Instead, strategists from both sides expect a Democratic pickup of roughly 10 to 15 seats in a chamber Republicans dominate 247-188, including three vacancies.
That’s the biggest GOP majority since 1931. It includes seats from Democratic areas that they’ve long acknowledged would be difficult to defend in a presidential election year, when Democratic turnout usually grows.