An optimistic Nancy Pelosi told reporters at the start of September she was “absolutely prepared” to retain control of the House, despite longstanding predictions a resurgent Republican Party was primed to recapture its lost majority this November.
On Wednesday, the speaker of the House upped the ante, telling reporters she was confident her Democratic caucus would actually gain seats this cycle, offsetting a significant decline in membership resulting from the 2020 presidential election that left the party with only a slim majority to work with.
“When the Dobbs decision came down, it wasn’t one of those, ‘If only we’d known,’” Pelosi told Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman Wednesday in reference to the landscape-changing Supreme Court decision to eliminate landmark abortion protections under Roe v. Wade. “No, we believed we were going to win from January 6 on—well, even from November of last year on.”
Her counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, is not so sure. The following day, Punchbowl reported Schumer—apparently noisily enough for numerous others in a restaurant to hear—told a group of fellow Senators Pelosi was “in trouble,” and that Democrats would actually lose the House. Eavesdroppers told the outlet Schumer said the party had a 40 percent chance to hold control of the House compared to a rosier 60 percent handicap Schumer offered for the Senate.
The divide between the two could be seen as a cordon between faith and a more pragmatic view of the political landscape. Though Democrats now lead Republicans in the generic ballot, Schumer’s view is one more in line with that of most political observers, who have largely given Democrats only a slim chance to hold onto a plurality of seats in the wake of the 2020 redistricting process.
As of Thursday, Democrats have just a 29-in-100 chance of holding the House, according to FiveThirtyEight, while ratings from handicappers like the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections all show Republicans in a position to capture a slim majority in an environment already favorable to conservatives.
History bears that to be true as well. In the 40 midterm elections that have taken place since the days of Abraham Lincoln, the president’s party has lost House seats 36 times, a Brookings Institution analysis found, with the majority changing hands 17 times during that stretch.
But Pelosi’s optimism could be warranted. In the modern era, the scale of House losses, an August analysis of election data by the University of California at Santa Barbara found, typically aligns with the depths of a president’s disapproval rating as well as the strength of the economy.
The years the party in power saw gains—1934, 1998 and 2002—came amid improving economic conditions or cataclysmic events like the attacks on the World Trade Center, while partisan gains in the 1902 elections were largely the result of redistricting. And 2022 is no ordinary year.
As inflation has slowed after a significant year-over-year surge, President Joe Biden’s approval rating has experienced gradual improvement over the summer as Democrats have notched a number of legislative victories. On Thursday, his administration announced it had averted a national railroad strike while gaining pro-worker concessions in arbitration, a rare win for labor when Congress and the president have historically sided with industry.
And abortion, once again a national issue, has galvanized the electorate, helping bump candidates like New York Democrat Pat Ryan in races that were otherwise expected to be competitive.
There could be opportunity there. According to Cook, 31 seats across the country are expected to be “toss-ups,” while 29 lean Democratic and 25 lean Republican.
