So far I’ve brought you several forecasts of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election (here’s the most recent, from just two days ago), and a forecast for the nail-bitingly-close Senate election, which I predict will messily resolve into the thinnest possible margin for a Democratic majority.

Today, it’s time for the last leg of the tripod: my forecast for the results of the 2020 elections for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Last week, I showed you a map of what the U.S. House looks like today, for the 116th U.S. Congress. After lots of research, primarily on the always-inspirational fivethirtyeight.com, I present to you my prediction for what the House will look like next January, at the start of the 117th U.S. Congress. Guide below, click on the image for a larger version that you can actually read.

As is traditional yet completely arbitrary, Republican representatives are shown by red hexagons and Democratic representatives are shown by blue hexagons. The text labels show the names of incoming representatives; plain text means that I predict the incumbent will be re-elected, bold means that I predict a new representative will be elected from the same party, and bold all-caps means that I predict a party switch. A larger font size and a single asterisk(*) mean the election is likely to be close, within about 5%. An even larger font size and double asterisk(**) mean the election is likely to be very close, maybe within 2%.

Jumping to the bottom-line prediction, I predict the final count of seats by party will be:

Democratic 237 Republican 198

I wouldn’t be surprised if this prediction were off by ten or so in either direction, but it’s not going to be so far off that it results in a missed prediction of a Republican majority. That means the House election is unlikely to be exciting on a national level; the House will be declared a Democratic majority sometime around 11:30 PM Eastern Time, when the blue wave begins to roll in from the California shore.

But there will be a number of fascinating races that will, earlier in the night, give us a sense of how wide the margin might be. In my Senate prediction, I offered at least a passing comment on each of the 35 races. With 435 House races, I’m obviously not going to do that, but I have looked at them all to get a sense of which will be most exciting.

At this point, I was going to describe each close and very close race marked on the map above, giving you a snapshot of the district, the context of the 2020 race, and a prediction of who I think will win… but two hours of writing and 503 words later, I’m through six of the 35 races I wanted to cover. So this has just become a multi-part post.

Enjoy the map, and stay tuned Monday for part 2.