海角大神

While the battle for Senate control remains up in the air, and it鈥檚 unclear what will happen in several governor鈥檚 races around the country, there鈥檚 little suspense when it comes to the US House of Representatives. By all estimates and projections, Republicans will retain the majority they won in that chamber in 2010 and, indeed,聽look poised to expand upon it:

As聽Politico聽notes,聽getting to that bigger majority won鈥檛 be easy for the GOP, but it鈥檚 certainly within the realm of possibility:

Of the 435 seats in the House of representatives,聽RealClearPolitics currently lists 17 as being 鈥渢oss-up鈥� races, meaning that the polling that has been done has the candidates within the margin of error of each other. Of those 17 toss-ups, all but four of them are held by a Democrat running for re-election or a Democrat retiring at the end of the year. In addition to that, there are two House seats currently held by Democrats that are listed as 鈥淟ikely GOP,鈥澛燯tah鈥檚 4th Congressional District,聽where Mia Love seems likely to defeat her Democratic opponent after falling short two years ago, and聽North Carolina鈥檚 7th District, which is being vacated by a retiring conservative Democrat. On the other side of the ledger, there are two Republican seats, in聽New York聽and聽California聽respectively, that are currently listed as leaning Democratic. While congressional districts are notoriously hard to poll, this suggests that there鈥檚 at least a good chance that the GOP could gain as many as seven or eight seats, and possible even the 11 seats that they set as a goal earlier this year.聽

The reasons for this Republican strength in the House are fairly obvious. As we鈥檝e seen before, even in years where there is a wave on one side of the aisle or the other, the reelection rate for the House is typically at least 90% and usually quite higher. So, once you鈥檝e actually won a House seat, it takes something special from your opponent, or some spectacular failures on your part, to lose that seat. In addition to the inherent advantages of incumbency, redistricting in many states is either highly partisan or specifically designed to create districts where incumbents are relatively safe from being challenged in a general election. Additionally, thanks to the 2010 elections, the GOP enjoys majority support in state legislatures throughout the country, and most predominantly in the South, where the process of drawing district lines tends to be more highly partisan regardless of which party is in power than it seems to be in other parts of the country. Finally, Republican incumbents in the south are often protected by the fact that federal law tends to push legislatures to create at least a few 鈥渕ajority-minority鈥� districts where African-American and other minority candidates will dominate, which means that white suburban and rural voters that tend to vote more Republican will be concentrated in the districts that make up the rest of the state. Given all of that, Republicans have advantages in House elections that are unlikely to disappear until after the next round of redistricting, and probably beyond that.

The most notable thing about all of this, of course, is the contrast it forces with where things were just a year ago. It was, after all, just a year ago that the federal government was forced into a 16-day-long shutdown, thanks solely to Republicans in the House and Senate who were pushing a foolish and unrealistic scheme to defund the Affordable Care Act. By the time it was over,聽public approval of Congressional Republicans was at an historic low聽and Democrats were performing strongly in the Generic Congressional Ballot. Many analysts forecast聽that this would bode ill for the party in the upcoming midterms.聽Instead, the shutdown seems to have utterly disappeared from public memory, at least to the extent that they seem inclined to punish the GOP over it. To a large degree, this is likely due to the series of intervening events that have come to light since the shutdown ended ranging from the rollout problems for the PPACA exchanges, to Ukraine, the rise of the Islamic State and a whole host of other issues that have pushed the events of a year ago out of the minds of most voters. Because of that, the GOP not only stands to hold onto the House but gain seats there and is increasingly looking like it will gain control of the Senate. The lessons that the GOP draws from that fact, however, are likely to be ones that cause them problems in the future.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.