Four more seats decided, all to Democrats. Republicans now hold a 217-208 edge, meaning they are still just one seat away from claiming a majority. Don’t get your hopes up (or down), Republicans are leading in enough remaining seats that they will definitely get at least one more.
Updated map – as always, click for a larger view:
The current state of the House of Representatives, with 10 seats undecided. Red = Republican Blue = Democratic White = party undecided Click for a full-size version.
Six more seats of the House of Representatives for the incoming 118th United States Congress have been decided. Republicans now hold a 217-204 edge, meaning they are just one seat away from claiming a majority. But the opposition party always does well in the first midterm election after a new President. Combined with the five seats that Republican state legislatures c̶h̶e̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ gerrymandered, the fact that we’re even still talking about “Democrats might theoretically get a majority” shows what a disappointing night it was for Republicans.
Updated map – as always, click for a larger view:
The current state of the House of Representatives, with 20 seats undecided. Red = Republican Blue = Democratic White = party undecided Click for a full-size version.
EDIT: I originally said Oregon’s 5th district was still undecided; it was actually Oregon’s 6th district, containing the far southwestern suburbs of Portland
We still don’t know all the members of the House of Representatives for the incoming 118th United States Congress. We don’t even know which party will be in the majority.
Here’s what we do know so far, presented in the usual Mapping Democracy map style. White ? hexagons are seats that are still undecided. Click for a larger view.
The current state of the House of Representatives, with 20 seats undecided. Red = Republican Blue = Democratic White = party undecided Click for a full-size version.
The current count by party is Republican 212, Democratic 203. Twenty seats are still up for grabs: one each in Alaska, Maine, New York, and Oregon; two each in Arizona and Colorado; and twelve in California. Halfway, at 218 seats, is enough for control – so Republicans must win six of the remaining seats to hold the advantage. That seems likely, but whothehellknows.
If Republicans do get the majority, what happens? Obviously, it would be harder to pass legislation with different parties controlling the House and Senate – but maybe not impossible. Remember that Republicans in the House will face the same Joe Manchin Effect a the Democratic Senate – the closer the margin, the more people will need to be convinced to vote for the party line. And representatives from competitive districts will have an incentive to show their voters that they are willing to stand up to the party line.
With gerrymandering, are there enough competitive seats to make a difference? Yes, obviously – after all, there are still 20 seats up for grabs now, nearly a week after votes were cast. Here are those districts, with information about where they are:
Arizona-1: the northeastern quarter of the state, plus a gerrymandered bit of the northwestern suburbs of Phoenix – parts of Scottsdale and Paradise Valley
Arizona-6: the northeastern suburbs of Phoenix, including parts of Scottsdale and Paradise Valley
California-3: the rural Sierra Nevada mountains and the northeastern suburbs of Sacramento, including Roseville
California-6: the northern half of the city of Sacramento, and parts of Arden-Arcade and Rancho Cordova
California-9: Stockton and surrounding areas of San Joaquin County
Quick Senate Update: With wins by Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), the Democratic Party has maintained its majority in the Senate. Here’s the unmisleading map:
The current state of the Senate, with 3 seats undecided. Red = Republican Blue = Democratic Light blue = Independent but votes Democratic White = party undecided Click for a full-size version.
Both wins were not hugely surprising. We still don’t know who will represent Alaska or Nebraska, but we know it will be a Republican. And of course, we won’t know until the runoff on December 6th whether Democratic Raphael Warnock or Republican Herschel Walker will represent Georgia.
The runoff election in Georgia is still extremely important, though. If Warnock wins for a 51-49 Democratic edge, Democratic leadership will no longer have to rely on every single Senator’s vote to pass legislation, including Joe Manchin (D-WV). That would be great news for Democratics everywhere for two reasons. First, for passing legislation, which after all is the entire point of being the majority party. Second, the occasional (or even frequent) no vote will allow Manchin to say he “stood up to the left wing of his own party,” which will be helpful for his re-election campaign in 2024 in ultra-conservative West Virginia.
All this comes with a big IF, of course: IF Raphael Warnock wins the runoff election against Herschel Walker. No matter which candidate you support: VOTE! VOLUNTEER! DONATE! The future of American democracy is in your hands.
The current state of the Senate, with 5 seats undecided. Red = Republican Blue = Democratic Light blue = Independent but votes Democratic White = party undecided Click for a full-size version.
Which political party will control the Senate when the next legislative term starts on January 3, 2023?
Five seats are still undecided, three of which have implications for control. If the Democratic Party wins 2 out of 3 seats, they will control the Senate by virtue of either a 50-50 tie plus the Vice President as tiebreaker, or by a 51-49 majority. If the Republicans win all three, they will control the Senate with a 51-49 majority.
Here are the seats whose Senators are still unknown, ordered from least to most interesting.
Nebraska Group 3 (next election 2026):Ben Sasse will resign immediately at the beginning of the next term to become President of the University of Florida, a job for which he is extremely well qualified. He has been one of the few Republicans to even try to stand up to Trump, so I wish him well. His successor will be named by the Governor of Nebraska, pending an off-cycle special election in 2024. It’s technically possible that Republican Governor Pete Ricketts will name a Democratic Senator, but hahahahahahahahahaha no.
Alaska Group 3 (current cycle): Alaska has a weird system using Australia-style ranked choice voting, independent of party. Currently, Trump-backed Republican candidate Kelly Tshibaka leads incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski. The margin is hard to evaluate because of the ranked choice voting system, but it looks like the predicted comfortable victory by Tshibaka will turn into a close victory. But a win is a win – and even if Murkowski comes back, the seat will still be held by Republicans.
Arizona Group 3 (current cycle): With 82 percent of the vote counted, Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly currently leads Republican challenger Blake Masters by 115,000 votes, for a 52%-46% edge (plus a few percentage points for minor parties). Most of the remaining ballots are from Maricopa County (Phoenix and suburbs) and/or are mail-in ballots, both of which lean Democratic. Kelly will almost certainly be re-elected.
Nevada Group 3 (current cycle): This one is hella close. With 90 percent of the vote counted, Nevada’s Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt leads Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto by just 9,000 votes, just a 49%-48% edge. With mostly mail-in ballots from Clark County remaining, Cortez Masto could still win – but so far the margin of those appears to be 50-50 as Laxalt holds a slight edge. I have no idea what will happen here. If Laxalt holds, then once again it all comes down to the runoff election in…
Georgia Group 3 (current cycle): Georgia has a Brazil-like system where, if no candidate gets a majority, the election heads to a second round with the top two candidates. Democratic incumbent Reverend Raphael Warnock leads Republican challenger Herschel Walker by 35,000 votes for a 49.5%-48.5% margin, but neither candidate got the required majority of votes cast to win outright. The runoff is scheduled for Tuesday, December 6th. Again, this one could go either way. Runoff elections tend to have higher turnout, which would favor Warnock. But without a Libertarian candidate to pull votes away, Walker could do better in a one-on-one matchup.
So where does that leave us? On the news, you have probably seen visualizations of the composition of the Senate, either as a map or as a series of dots in a half-circle. Both visualizations have major disadvantages. The map massively overstates the importance of large-area, low-population states, resulting in a skewed view. The dot-half-circle view fairly represents the balance of power by depicting area, but removes all geographic context.
With my passion for data visualization and mapmaking, I figured we can do better. So here is the state of the U.S. Senate at this moment. All states have equal areas in the map, are in their approximate relative locations, and are surrounded by yellow borders. Each hexagon shows one Senator, gives that Senator’s last name, and is color coded by party. Red means Republican, blue means Democratic, and light blue means independents who vote with the Democratic Party. The red hexagons with ? labels mean that we know the Senator will be Republican, but we don’t know which Republican. The white hexagons with ? labels mean that we don’t know either the next Senator or the next Senator’s party. Click on the image for a larger view.
The current state of the Senate, with 5 seats undecided. Red = Republican Blue = Democratic Light blue = Independent but votes Democratic White = party undecided Click for a full-size version.
I’ll keep updating the map as we learn more. Check back here to learn what the future of the USA will look like!
