I closed Monday’s review of my House predictions with an observation that I amazingly haven’t seen anyone else make: the Republicans actually came very close to capturing control of the House of Representatives. How close?
The current seat count in the U.S. House of Representatives is Democratic 220, Republican 202 – likely to go up to Republican 205 once the final three seats are decided. That means that if eight elections had gone Republican instead, the count would be Republican 213 Democratic 212.
The table below shows the eight closest races in which the Democratic candidate won. Adding up all the margins gives the minimum number of extra Republican votes that would have been required to give control of the House to the Republicans – provided of course all the votes had come in exactly the right places.
| District | Democratic | D votes | Republican | R votes | Margin | Pct margin |
| IL-14 | Underwood | 203,195 | Oberweis | 197,818 | 5,377 | 1.3% |
| IA-3 | Axne | 219,205 | Young | 212,997 | 6,208 | 1.4% |
| VA-7 | Spanberger | 230,893 | Freitas | 222,623 | 8,270 | 1.8% |
| PA-17 | Lamb | 221,547 | Parnell | 211,951 | 9,596 | 2.2% |
| WI-3 | Kind | 199,870 | Van Orden | 189,524 | 10,346 | 2.7% |
| MN-2 | Craig | 204,031 | Kistner | 194,466 | 9,565 | 2.4% |
| MI-11 | Stevens | 226,128 | Esshaki | 215,405 | 10,723 | 2.4% |
| TX-15 | V. Gonzalez | 115,594 | De La Cruz-Hernandez | 109,005 | 6,589 | 2.9% |
The final count: 66,674. That’s not very many voters.
Lesson: Your vote matters. VOTE!