GOP sees House prospects grow bleaker as districts shift to blue

Less than a month out from the midterm elections, the landscape for House Republicans grows grimmer by the day.

President Trump’s approval ratings are low and sinking. The GOP’s emergency redistricting campaign has fallen short of its goals. And the volatile economy has voters on edge and thirsty for change. 

The combination has created a minefield of trouble for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other GOP leaders, who are scrambling against increasingly long odds to keep their slim hold on the lower chamber in the next Congress.

The strength of the headwinds they face has become evident in recent weeks as the nation’s top election analysts have shifted their projections for dozens of House seats — almost all of them in the Democrats’ favor.

Those changes signal that Republicans are struggling not only in purple battleground districts — the traditional combat zones where majorities are usually won and lost — but also in much redder regions of the country where Trump won easily just two years ago.

Part of that is expected. Midterm elections are historically tough for the party that controls the White House. But experts say the challenges for Republicans have been compounded this cycle by the high cost of consumer goods — which can be linked directly to Trump’s policies, including tariffs and the Iran War — and the erosion of support for the president, whose approval rating is at historic lows. 

“Republicans holding on to the House would be a shock given where the overall numbers are,” Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an independent election handicapper based at the University of Virginia, said Friday in an email. 

The latest wave of bad news for Republicans came on Friday, when forecasters at the Cook Political Report, another non-partisan election analyst group, moved 18 House races towards the Democrats. The highlights of that report include: 

Two incumbent Republicans who were previously favored to win, Reps. Bill Huizenga (Mich.) and Rob Whitman (Va.), are now in “toss up” races, meaning they’re too close to call. 

Five “toss up” races are now in the “leans Democrat” category, including four GOP incumbents — Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, and Pennsylvania Reps. Scott Perry and Ryan Mackenzie — who are now predicted to lose. (The fifth lawmaker in that group is Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a centrist Washington Democrat who has been a top........

© The Hill