Republicans have a good chance of bouncing back in the 2022 midterms after Democrats’ lurch to the left, a new report from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics suggests.
While no redistricting has officially occurred yet, experts say the GOP is favored to win back the House of Representatives in 2022 even without the formalities of reapportioning and redrawing districts.
“While Republicans stand to gain from this process, they would be favored to win the House even if the district lines were not changing,” the report states.
While some districts are set to pose a larger threat to Democrats than others, research shows that more of the districts lean in favor of the GOP rather than Democrats.
“Overall, these ratings show 211 districts at least leaning to the Republicans, 203 at least leaning to the Democrats,” the report continues.
The report also considers Republican chances to be higher after noting that the Democrats have at least 19 “vulnerable” incumbents while GOP legislators will likely have to fight for only two.
“Given that most of the members listed here won by roughly two-to-four points in 2020, they can’t afford much slippage, but it has been common in recent years for members of the presidential party to perform worse in a midterm compared to the previous presidential election year,” the report states, noting that “incumbents from the non-White House party very rarely lose in midterm general elections.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee is also confident that Republicans have a winning chance in 2022.
“Republicans will take back the House and fire Nancy Pelosi in 2022,” NRCC spokesman Mike Berg said in a statement.
While Democrats took both the House and the Senate in 2020, as a leaked call in November indicated, leftist legislators were already nervous that their 222-213 victory wasn’t a truly winning margin.
“[If] we are going to run on Medicare for All, defund the police, socialized medicine, we’re not going to win,” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina, reportedly said on a leaked Democrat House caucus phone call.
During the call, Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia reaffirmed Clyburn’s concerns, saying that if leftists couldn’t reevaluate the platforms they relied on for the 2020 election, they would lose in a landslide in the 2022 midterms.
“No one should say ‘defund the police’ ever again,” Spanberger said. “Nobody should be talking about socialism.”
