2022 Midterm Elections: Republicans projected to take control of the House of Representatives

Nearly 24 hours after the first polls closed in the 2022 midterm elections, neither party has yet managed to guarantee a majority in either the House or the Senate. However projections suggest that the Republicans will be the majority party in the House of Representatives for the next two years.

Election experts had warned that it could take days or even weeks for some races to be called, but at this stage it appears that the Republicans are on course to flip the House.

GOP leadership will be relieved to have disrupted the Democrats’ unified control in Washington, but the margin of victory looks set to be far smaller than initially thought.

What are the current projections for the House of Representatives?

Throughout the day the NBC News Decision Desk has calculated the most likely winners in all 435 individual House races to come to an estimate for the likely split in chamber.

The projections suggest that the Republicans will secure 222 seats in the House, giving them a nine-seat advantage over the Democrats, who are expected to win 213 seats.

GOP candidates have so far managed to flip three seats previously held by the Democrats, with Jen Kiggins’ victory over Democrats Elaine Luria in Virginia one of the most impressive.

As of 13:30 (ET) 203 seats had been called for the Republicans, with just 176 for the Democrats. The 435-seat House requires a party to rack up 218 seats to claim a majority and the Republicans should be able to secure at least 15 of the remaining 56 uncalled seats.

Republicans will be underwhelmed by narrow House majority

Last year Republican House leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy said that he expected the GOP would pick up more than 60 seats in the 2022 midterm elections, which would have given his party a powerful majority in the House. A comprehensive victory for the GOP looked possible, too. Since the end of World War II the party of the president has lost an a average of 26 House seats in the midterm elections as the electorate use the vote as an opportunity to send a signal to Washington.

But that trend has not materialised and McCarthy will now be coming to terms with the likelihood that he takes over as Speaker of the House with a majority of only a few seats.

This means that, unless he can conjure some bipartisan sentiment out of Congress, he will have to keep almost all of his 200-plus caucus together to pass legislation. That will be a major concern in a party that prides itself on being a broad church, where members hold radically different views on key issues.

The more traditional conservatives within the GOP are in opposition to the MAGA wing of the party on many key issues and those differences will only be amplified once in the majority.