How many seats have Democrats and Republicans won and lost in the midterm elections?
As the dust begins to settle after the midterm elections, we take a look at the gains and losses for each party in Congress.
During midterm elections the party of the president often suffers losses as the electorate takes the opportunity to voice opposition to the government.
Since the end of the Second World War the president’s party has lost an average of 26 House seats, but the Democrats appear to have avoided significant losses this time around. We do not yet have finalised numbers in a number of districts but we can see that the Republicans appeared to have flipped enough seats to retake the House.
Two days after Election Day, with most of the House and Senate races across the country already called, the New York Times calculated the most likely final outcomes in both Houses.
In the 435-seat House of Representatives the Republicans are considered highly likely to win 219 seats, with the Democrats favoured in 206 races. This leaves ten races that are still too close to call.
Crucially, however, this means that the GOP are very likely to pass the 218-seat threshold required to secure a majority in the Upper House. In 2020 they won 212 seats in the House, meaning that the Republican Party stands to flip at least seven seats.
In the Senate things are still too close to call and both parties retain a real chance of holding a majority in the Upper Chamber. In the last Congress the 100-seat chamber was split 50-50, but the Democrats claimed the slimmest of majorities by dint of Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote as President of the Senate.
That gave them very little margin for error in the 2022 midterms with 34 Senate seats up for election.
The victory for John Fetterman in Pennsylvania flipped a seat that had previously been held by a Republican. However there are still four seats up for grabs in the Senate and Adam Laxalt looks likely to dislodge incumbent Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto from Nevada. This would mean each party has flipped one seat in the Senate.
If Arizona remains Democrat and Alaska stays Red, as is likely to happen, then the deciding seat in the 118th Congress will be that of Georgia.
As was the case in 2020 the Georgia Senate race was particularly tight and neither candidate, Sen. Raphael Warnock nor Herschel Walker, are expected to secure 50% of the vote. This means that the Georgia seat, and most likely control of the Senate itself, will be decided in a runoff election on Tuesday, 6 December.
All in all, the Republicans do stand to make gains in Congress in the 2022 midterms and will almost certainly flip at least one chamber. But given the economic situation the GOP leadership will consider the failure to secure a more comprehensive majority in the House an opportunity missed.