POROUS DEFENSE — Democrats are on their heels in the House. They are being forced to pump money into districts that President Joe Biden carried handily two years ago — in other words, seats that should be fairly safe in a typical election year. Redistricting has imperiled some incumbents. And there aren’t many opportunities where the party can hope for a pickup of a Republican-held seat. Still, there are signs that a full-blown red wave may not be in the cards. In our latest preview, Nightly spoke with Scott Bland , POLITICO’s national politics editor, about the state of play in the House. This conversation has been edited. A consensus seems to be gelling around the idea that Republicans will win back control of the House, but Democrats have a shot at retaining their Senate majority. Is there a case to be made that Democrats might still keep the House? Or do most Democrats concede that the House is a lost cause? That is what most Democrats are saying. I’m sure there are bank-shot scenarios that it would be unwise to completely, totally discount, because we all know how unpredictable elections can be. But you can see what a dire situation House Democrats are in by looking at where the last-minute money is flowing — into very Democratic-leaning districts that were once seen as safe. As that spending might indicate, we’ve frequently seen big victory waves in midterm elections like this one, marked by huge gains by the party out of power. What is the range of Republican House seat gains that we’re talking about here? Well, Republicans have 213 seats rated “lean Republican” or better in our colleague Steve Shepard’s Election Forecast . Another 27 are toss-ups and another 23 are “lean Democratic” right now, so that gives you a pretty good sense of the outside lines for gains. Do the seats that profile as potential Republican gains fit a specific demographic profile? Are they clustered in specific regions? What about the (fewer) number of seats that look like they could potentially flip toward a Democrat? There’s a whole range — geographically, demographically, all the other -lys out there. One of the big patterns, though, is that Democrats have a lot of open seats out there from retirements and redistricting. The whole election for them hinges on where their candidates are able to float above Biden’s bad approval ratings, and it’s a lot easier for incumbents to do that, especially those with their own strong brands. (That’s also a reason why the Senate landscape has looked better for Democrats, though they could lose the Senate as well.) The open seats have been a real problem for House Democrats. Can we dig into redistricting a bit more here? The process, studied probably closer than ever this cycle, has led to opportunities for pickups and also potential losses for both parties. Can you highlight some of the ways that redistricting has scrambled the map and some of the opportunities it’s afforded each party? One of the big things that happened before the election even started is that Democrats’ big gerrymanders in New York and Maryland got undone by state courts, while the GOP’s gerrymander in Florida was upheld. However, given the environment, I wonder if Democrats’ attempted gerrymanders in the first two states would have worked out. And the reason I say that is because Democrats in Nevada and Oregon tried to stretch their voters thin over as many districts as possible to paint a bunch of them light blue instead of making a smaller number of them more Democratic. And now there are three Democratic-leaning districts in each state that are in danger of turning red. That’s not an exhaustive list of how redistricting affected things, to be clear! But it’s pretty interesting, I think. Switching gears a little, as someone who has closely followed the House elections unfold, which race would you say is the most interesting from your perspective? It’s so hard to pick one House race. That said, it’s hard to look away from the late flurry of campaign activity in Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s district. What could be more emblematic of an environment going out of the majority’s control than the campaign committee chair having a tough race on his hands? And if you could know the outcome right now of one race — maybe one that you think might be predictive of some sort of larger trend if it’s decided in one direction or another — what would that one be? Virginia closes on the early side, and Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s seat went for Biden in 2020 and then Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2021 in the governor’s race. The very definition of swing territory. What’s a sleeper race (or two) that people should watch on election night? Maybe the races — House and Senate — in New Hampshire? It has such a reputation as the quintessential swing state — and then Biden went and won it by 7-plus points and it hasn’t been as big a part of the national conversation as usual the past couple years. But there’s a lot of evidence the Senate race there has become more competitive, and the state’s reputation for revolt against the party in power might come to the fore again. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on Twitter at @calder_mchugh .
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