2020 House Overview: Can Democrats Keep Their Majority?

Cook Political Report ^ | Mar 1, 2019 | David Wasserman

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The spectacle in North Carolina's 9th District makes 2018 feel like the election that will never end. And, the looming presidential primaries are rapidly overshadowing congressional politics. But the 2020 fight for the House is already underway, with both the DCCC and NRCC working behind the scenes to identify the most ideal recruits and releasing ambitious lists of targeted districts to declare they are "on offense."

Republicans will need to gain 18 seats to win back the majority (or 19 depending on the outcome of a new election in NC-09), and have no shortage of good-looking targets, at least on paper: there are now 31 Democrats sitting in districts carried by President Trump in 2016 and just three Republicans sitting in districts carried by Hillary Clinton.

But Democrats have history on their side: the House majority hasn't flipped twice in a row since 1954 and hasn't flipped during a presidential cycle since 1952. Democrats have gained House seats in five of the past six presidential elections and in seven of the past eight presidential cycles, the net partisan seat shift in the House has been in the single digits.

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A huge advantage for many Democratic challengers in 2018 was that they could hammer Republican incumbents for "voting with President Trump 95 percent of the time" and didn't have a voting record of their own to defend. Remarkably, of the 43 Democrats who captured Republican-held seats in 2018, only six had ever served in a state legislature and only eight had held any kind of elective office at all.

Republicans note that won't be the case 20 months from now. GOP strategists hope to make Democratic freshmen "one-term wonders" by tying them to "radical," economy-disrupting proposals such as a Green New Deal and Medicare for All.

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Test for 2020?

primary May
election Nov

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/04/dates-north-carolina-election-redo-1233148