The key contests Democrats might hope to flip
There are 10 uncalled House contests where Republicans currently lead, so for a majority, Democrats would need to win four of those. And their hopes overwhelmingly hinge on whether slow tallies of mail-in ballots could shift outcomes in their favor.
- One possibility is Colorado’s Third District, the site of a potential shocking upset against Boebert. She is leading her Democratic challenger Adam Frisch by a little over a thousand votes, with more to tally — as well as potential “cures” for mail ballots that were initially rejected.
- In Oregon’s Fifth District, progressive Jamie McLeod-Skinner (D), who defeated a moderate incumbent in the Democratic primary, is currently trailing Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R) by 2.4 percentage points, with about one-quarter of the vote still uncounted.
- In New York’s 22nd District, an open seat contest to replace the retiring moderate Rep. John Katko (R), Republican Brandon Williams leads by 1.6 percentage points.
- Mail could also be a factor in Arizona’s Sixth District (where the Republican leads by about 2 percentage points).
But their hopes will probably hinge on California, another heavily vote-by-mail state, where there are several uncalled races where Republicans currently lead, and only about half the vote has been counted.
- The California 13th District’s open seat contest looks promising for Democrats to flip since Republican John Duarte is leading by only a 0.35 percent margin over Democrat Adam Gray, and just 58 percent of the vote is counted.
- Rep. David Valadao (R) represents California’s 22nd District, which Joe Biden won handily, and he has been through this before. In 2018, he led his Democratic challenger by 8 points on election night, but as the mail count slowly came in, that lead vanished, and he fell behind on November 26 and wouldn’t regain his lead. (He won the seat back in 2020.) Now, he is leading by 8 points again. Will history repeat itself?
- California’s Third District and California’s 41st District both narrowly went for Trump in 2020, and Republican candidates Kevin Kiley (CA-03) and Rep. Ken Calvert (CA-41) have single-digit leads, with about half of the vote uncounted.
- Finally, California’s 27th District and 45th District feature Republican incumbents — Mike Garcia (CA-27) and Michelle Steel (CA-45) — who represent districts Biden won but who currently lead. Their final margins are expected to get closer, though it’s not clear whether the untallied votes will be sufficient to change the outcome.
So those are Democrats’ hopes — to be saved by mail ballots and California’s slow counting process again. Still, it’s worth noting that though the conventional wisdom is that late-counted mail ballots benefit Democrats, that is not necessarily true in every state or district. (Washington and California have nonpartisan primaries, and in some of these, Republicans gained ground as mail ballots were counted this year.)
www.vox.com
