Paths to a Democratic Supermajority, Part 4: How to Rule the House
Note: This is the fourth in a series of blog posts that explore what it would take to usher in a new era of Democratic dominance. Read part 1, “Does Anyone Have a Plan?”; part 2, “Scenarios for an ‘Electoral Lock’ on the White House”; and part 3, “Dominating the Senate.” This series is a thought exercise in possibility. Those of us who work in Democratic and progressive politics need a North Star. We should know what it might look like to win big — and to keep winning big.
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For much of the 20th century, Democrats dominated the U.S. House of Representatives, enjoying large majorities that made possible historic legislation. They held over 300 seats at the height of the New Deal in the 1930s and 295 seats in the mid-1960s when Congress enacted Medicare and other Great Society programs. Even during the Reagan years, Democrats were firmly in control of the House.
That era came to an end when Republicans swept the 1994 election and the House has been closely contested since. It flipped back to the Democrats in 2006, then to the Republicans in 2010, then again to Democrats in 2018, and now the GOP is once again in control — this time, holding just a five-seat margin.
That slim margin gives the Democrats a good chance at regaining the House in 2024. But unless they win a large number of seats, the stage may be set for control to flip back yet again to the GOP.
What would it take for Democrats to break this pattern and come to dominate the House once more? What kind of coalition would the party need to build? What are the characteristics of districts that are most likely to flip in coming election cycles? And what strategies should donors look to support over the long term to make such big gains?
These questions haven’t received much attention from Democratic strategists. In today’s closely divided era, just eking out a small House majority can feel like enough of a victory — especially since the rules of that chamber allow the party in control to do whatever it wants (unlike in the Senate).
But building up a big Democratic edge in House seats would be a very good thing. Hefty margins would reduce the chances of losing control in backlash elections and give Democratic presidents more leeway in enacting legislation. Also, let’s not forget that in the event of a tied vote in the presidential electoral college, the winner would be chosen by whichever party controls a majority of state delegations in the House. The GOP currently has such an edge, with 26 delegations — a lead that could persist even if Democrats flip a bunch more districts in blue states like California and New York.
Picking up many more House seats across a diverse set of states won’t be easy. But there is a path forward and it has two tracks: First, Democrats need to do a much better job mobilizing New American Majority voters (nonwhites, young people and unmarried women). And second, Democrats need to do much better with disaffected and independent voters — many of whom are white, politically moderate and live in rural or exurban areas.
These strategies are usually seen as at odds with each other. They’re not. Both are essential if Democrats of all ideological stripes want to achieve their goals. Donors who want to help achieve reliable House majorities must invest in both strategies.
The U.S. House in an Era of “Great Alignment”
It’s no secret why Democratic dominance of the House of Representatives ended in the 1990s. Once the party embraced civil rights and other socially liberal causes starting in the 1960s, the New Deal coalition began to unravel. Over the past five decades, as Alan Abramowitz describes in his book “The Great Alignment,” voters have resorted into parties that are largely centered on social identity.
Think of what’s happened as a mass two-way migration. Culturally conservative voters — many of them non-college-educated whites with high levels of racial resentment — have moved over to the GOP, while socially liberal voters — many of them college-educated — have become more Democratic. These shifts have tracked closely with geography. Democrats are increasingly bunched into urban areas, while rural and exuburan areas are now heavily Republican.
This political resorting is clearly seen in congressional districts. “Republican districts are predominantly white, and for the most part, less affluent than the national average,” write Oscar Pocasangre and Lee Drutman in a 2022 study for New America. “In contrast, Democratic districts are less white than the national average but tend to be more affluent than average.”
Similarly, another recent study, by the Equity Research Institute at the University of California (USC), found that Republicans have become ever more dominant in districts populated mainly by non-college-educated white voters, while Democrats have gained in districts with large numbers of college-educated and non-white voters.
Michael Podhorzer makes the same point in a paper on the “Congressional Class Reversal” — adding that, while this reversal has been most dramatic in former Confederate states, it’s also seen in a swath of Rust Belt states stretching from West Virginia to Minnesota. He also spotlights a “staggering” urban-rural divide, noting that in 2008, 40% of Democratic House members represented either rural or sparse suburban districts. That share has since plummeted — a huge problem for Democrats, since such districts account for just over 40% of all congressional districts.
The transformation of the two political parties isn’t over, either. We can see that in recent GOP gains among nonwhite voters, particularly those without a college degree. We can also see it as Democrats continue to improve their margins with socially liberal, college-educated voters. Like the growing education divide, geographic partisan sorting is also ongoing, with rural voters moving further to the right in recent election cycles.
These shifts in the electorate have scrambled the electoral map for House elections over time — creating profound challenges for Democrats in some districts, but new opportunities in others.
What Do Competitive Districts Look Like?
In thinking about how Democrats could pick up many more House seats, it’s helpful to divide current Republican-held districts into two rough categories — those that today’s Democratic Party could win with more work and those that will remain out of reach unless the party reinvents itself in a significant way.
Let’s start with the first category. Cook Political Report rates 21 districts as toss-ups in 2024 and another 22 as leaning toward one party or another — so 42 districts altogether. FiveThirtyEight classifies 40 districts as competitive. Another site, Split Ticket, rates 21 districts as evenly split, 31 as moderately Democratic, and 21 as moderately Republican.
If Democrats can figure out how to consistently win the lion’s share of the battleground districts, they’ll have a reliable majority in the House. For example, using Split District's analysis, Democrats would have a 22-seat majority if they could hold the moderately Democratic districts and also win all the evenly divided districts. To bolster that edge, they'd have to win some of the moderately Republican districts. That’s hardly a pipe dream, given that Democrats enjoyed a 36-seat majority after the 2018 midterms.
What do the competitive districts look like? Drawing on census and other survey data, Drutman and Pocasangre say that they are mostly in the suburbs and tend to be whiter on average, but “not as white as Republican districts.”
Ideologically, the voters in competitive districts tend to be all over the map. These districts, say Drutman and Pocasangre, have “some of the highest levels of heterogeneity in the policy views of citizens.” In a challenge for Democrats, though, their study found that voters in most of these competitive districts leaned to the right. Of the 27 competitive districts in 2020, “70 percent were more conservative than the national average on economic issues and 59 percent were more conservative than the national average on social issues.”
The USC study suggests that the GOP has an edge in the competition for power in the House because “there are still many more seats where whites exceed their share of the national population than seats with more minorities than average. Likewise, the number of seats with fewer white college graduates than the nation overall exceeds the number with more.”
This picture of competitive districts — suburban, right-leaning and whiter on average — helps explain why Republicans won the majority of such districts in the last two cycles. And it will unnerve progressives who don’t want to see Democrats tack to the center in pursuit of electoral gains.
But is wooing white moderates the only way to win competitive districts? Maybe not. Below, I argue for a two-track approach that combines a larger investment in a NAM mobilization strategy with more attention to persuasion, particularly of disaffected voters. Both approaches can and should be grounded in progressive priorities — albeit tailored for specific districts.
Strategies to Win in House Battlegrounds
Over the past few months, I’ve been looking closely at 20 or so congressional districts with Republican incumbents that fall into two categories: President Joe Biden won them in 2020 and/or the Republican won by 5 points or less. In talking to former Democratic candidates and progressive organizers, I’ve been struck by just how winnable all these districts — and others like them — should be going forward, if Democrats do three things:
1. Democratic donors need to get enough money to the right places. In many cases where Democrats narrowly lost last year in swing districts, their campaigns were underfinanced and so was independent GOTV work. For example, Jevin Hodge — who lost his race in AZ-1 by just 3,000 votes — didn’t have the resources to fund a field program, an essential part of any congressional campaign. Kirsten Engel, who narrowly lost in AZ-6, faced the same challenge. In other close districts with significant numbers of Latinos, like CA-22 and CA-45, only limited work was done to mobilize these voters. Low Democratic turnout was the main reason that Will Rollins and Jay Chen lost in those two districts last year.
Plenty of Democratic cash flowed for House races in 2022 — around $1 billion. But it often didn’t go to the right places. For example, the top House Democratic fundraiser in that cycle was Rep. Adam Schiff, who pulled in $25 million, even though he’s in a safe district. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also in a safe district, raised $12 million. Neither shared much of that with candidates in tight races. Then there was Marcus Flowers, who raised $16 million for a doomed race against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that he lost by around 30 points. Meanwhile, Democratic donors channeled over $160 million to the gubernatorial campaigns of Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams, both high-profile Democrats who faced long odds against incumbent Republicans. In retrospect, these donors could have had far more impact by focusing on the House, which Democrats lost by less than 7,000 votes spread across five districts. Two years earlier, in 2020, Democrats lost 13 House seats in battleground districts even as Democratic donors lavished a combined $224 million on Senate races in South Carolina and Kentucky that Democratic candidates lost by large margins. One key to securing a long-term House majority is that Democratic donors become better informed and more strategic in their giving.
2. Democrats need to build district-focused infrastructure to organize year-round. Efforts to win congressional races tend to unfold mainly in the few months before the election and focus heavily on those voters most likely to turn out. But nearly all swing districts have large numbers of potential Democratic voters who aren’t registered and/or seldom vote. Many are nonwhite and young. Activating these voters requires year-round organizing work that meaningfully engages with people through door-to-door canvassing and builds authentic relationships. Progressive groups, such as Communities for a New California or Florida Rising, have become a lot more sophisticated in how they do this work. But they remain chronically underfunded. Many Democratic donors, including major ones, don’t even know these groups exist.
Meanwhile, neither of the two main Democratic Party entities focused on House races — the DCCC and House Majority PAC — prioritize long-term efforts to engage and mobilize voters in battleground districts. Instead, their playbook focuses heavily on advertising, usually in the final stretch. A related problem, as Steve Phillips has written, is that establishment Democratic candidates, consultants and electoral groups often lack the cultural competency to engage nonwhite constituencies, especially in ethnically complex districts. For example, progressive organizers in California believe that Adam Gray would have won his race in CA-13 if his campaign had done more to engage Latinos, who make up around half of voters in this district. Instead, he lost by half a percentage point.
Redressing this kind of failure doesn’t take either genius new ideas or an ideological makeover. It requires Democrats and their donors to better understand how they can improve the electoral math in key districts by activating new voters — and investing in what it takes to do such work over the long term.
3. Democrats must do a better job of winning disaffected voters. Mobilizing new base voters will only get Democrats so far in the quest for more House seats, given that so many competitive districts tend to have a preponderance of moderate white voters. To some party strategists, the key to winning these districts is obvious: the Democratic Party needs to tack to the center, especially on social issues.
That’s a simplistic diagnosis. To be sure, the Democratic Party’s brand is profoundly damaged in large swaths of the country thanks to its cultural liberalism and growing embrace of racial equity. But there are also other reasons that Democrats are seen negatively. As Mike Lux wrote in a recent report on Midwestern “factory towns,” many struggling voters are deeply cynical about both political parties and the ability of government to improve their lives. They feel ignored by Democrats, who they see as ineffective and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. In particular, Lux writes that Democrats are “in a hole on the economy,” with many working-class voters trusting Republicans more in this area. To turn things around, he argues that Democrats should embrace “kitchen table populism,” which entails combining “populist rhetoric with delivering practical, tangible results.” Such a strategy, he says, would help neutralize the right’s huge edge on social issues.
Communities for a New California — an organizing group that works in several regions across the state — offer a similar diagnosis. It notes that independent voters, many of whom are Latino, hold the key to victory in California’s battleground congressional districts, accounting for over a quarter of the electorate. The attitude of these voters toward the two political parties is “a pox on both your houses.” To win them over, Democrats should steer clear of partisan messaging, including attacks on Trump, and instead focus on people’s everyday concerns. That does not mean abandoning progressive priorities on issues like healthcare, housing, education and the environment. On the contrary, such concerns are very top of mind for voters — particularly Latina women — but these voters need to be convinced that Democrats are tuned into their concerns and have practical solutions.
This approach makes sense, given that a large swath of Americans is deeply disenchanted with partisan combat. A 2018 report, “Hidden Tribes,” describes around two-thirds of Americans as part of “the exhausted majority.” They tend to be ideologically flexible, open to compromise and feel forgotten in the crossfire between left and right.
Engaging such voters is one key to Democratic dominance in battleground districts. In an era when most Americans view both parties as out of touch with their concerns and too extreme, huge rewards — including control of the House — will go to whichever party upends that perception by staying laser-focused on improving people’s lives.
What Would It Take to Put Red Districts into Play?
If Democrats can consistently win the 40 or so competitive House districts, they’ll have a big enough majority to achieve most of their political goals. But that majority would still be vulnerable in wave elections. Since 1938, there have been nine midterm elections where the party in power lost 40 or more seats.
What would it take for Democrats to score gains beyond competitive districts and make inroads into Republican districts?
A closer look at GOP-held districts reveals that about 150-160 of them aren’t even worth thinking about right now. Most are what the USC study refers to as “lo-lo” districts — those with both low diversity and low education levels. They are dominated by non-college-educated whites and form the core of the GOP base.
But there are another 40 or so GOP districts that are more competitive, according to FiveThirtyEight’s post-redistricting analysis. Split Ticket puts that number at 21. GOP-held districts have different mixes of voters. Some are “hi-lo”— with high levels of diversity but few college grads (such as those 20 or so majority-minority districts now held by Republicans). Others are “lo-hi” districts — with low levels of diversity, but high levels of college grads.
Democrats have the potential to make gains in both kinds of districts, especially the “lo-hi” districts with lots of white college voters, a group that’s been trending left. Democrats already hold a majority of these districts, according to the USC study. Organizing efforts such as Galvanize Action and Red Wine and Blue are seeking to build on that edge by targeting moderate women in suburbia and small towns. Democrats have a smaller edge in “lo-hi” districts, one that’s shrunk in recent years as more non-college-educated voters of all races have moved toward the GOP. Latino and AAPI organizing groups are working to reverse that trend through culturally competent appeals that center the everyday concerns of these voters.
Democratic who run in both “hi-lo” and “lo-hi” Republican districts do best when they can localize their races, focusing on the needs of voters and highlighting GOP incumbents who fail to deliver for their constituents. But running this kind of campaign has become difficult in an era of nationalized politics and reduced ticket-splitting. Party brand matters more than ever, and today, the Democratic Party is seen as far more liberal than was the case 20 years ago — even as the electorate as a whole has become only moderately more liberal since 2000.
Unless the Democratic Party comes to be viewed differently by voters in Republican districts, or enough of these voters shift left, it will be hard for the party to move much beyond a 30 or 40-seat majority in the House. How the Democrats might reinvent their brand and/or how the left could succeed in larger-scale persuasion efforts is a topic I’ll take up in future posts
Wild Cards
I haven’t said much about gerrymandering, although obviously, trends in this area could have an impact on future House races. Such an impact could be felt as soon as next year if conservative courts in North Carolina and Ohio approve redrawn legislative maps that further favor Republicans — and if the reverse happens in Wisconsin.
Overall, though, gerrymandering is not as big of a factor as many think, given how politically polarized and geographically sorted the electorate has become. In states like Wisconsin, liberal voters are bunched in blue urban islands that sit in a vast sea of red — making it hard to draw district maps that are more politically balanced. Some studies suggest that nonpartisan maps wouldn’t have a dramatic effect on the balance of power in the House, a conclusion reinforced by a recent analysis of congressional districts by Cook Political Report.
But what could have a dramatic effect are seismic events in the next decade or two that shift will U.S. politics in major ways — just as the Great Depression ushered in an era of Democratic dominance and the 2008 financial crisis helped fuel the rise of the Tea Party, including a gain of 63 seats for the GOP in the 2010 election.
For now, though, Democratic and progressive strategists need to work with what’s in front of them. The immediate task at hand is to build and then consolidate a robust House majority by locking down competitive districts. That will require a party that becomes more adept at defusing culture war attacks while zeroing in on people’s everyday concerns and showing that Democrats can improve their lives. As important, it requires getting money to the right places and building year-round organizing infrastructure.
None of this will be easy. But what the above analysis shows is that the deadlock in the U.S. House doesn't have to be a permanent feature of our deeply polarized politics. In fact, there is every reason to believe that Democrats can decisively shift the balance of power in the House over the next few cycles — and then build on those gains to dominate this chamber for decades to come.
