On Nov. 8, every race for the House of Representatives will be in play as the two parties grapple for control of Congress. Republicans are favored, but the big question now is by how much. So some districts will count more than others as bellwethers signal more significant trends at work, political analysts say.
Some key districts are suburban, others exurban, as cities generally trend blue and rural areas trend red. There are some seats left open by retirement or by incumbents forced to move because of redistricting, and thus no candidate has the inherent advantages incumbency provides.
Some are seats leaning Republican in districts Joe Biden won comfortably only two years ago. If a Republican takes one of those, it sends a message to Democrats.
In some races, analysts watch to see if an incumbent who flipped the seat from the other party in the last election can hold on to it. And they watch others to observe key demographics at work.
House races can be significant question marks. Fewer polls are taken, as most are thought to be partisan and therefore less reliable.
Watching bellwether districts was more critical in the days before exit polling, Charles Bullock, University of Georgia political science professor, told The Epoch Times.
Here are four districts political analysts believe will indicate whether there will be a red wave this year—and if so, how big it will be:
--North Carolina’s 13th District is an open seat in the suburbs and outskirts south of Raleigh. Running against each other are Democrat Wiley Nickel, a veteran state legislator, and Republican Bo Hines, Trump-endorsed and making his first run for office. The seat was vacated by Republican Ted Budd to run for Senate, but redistricting moved it to an entirely new territory.
What makes this race interesting, says political analyst Geoffrey Skelley of the FiveThirtyEight political forecasting website, is it being precisely in the middle of congressional districts ranked from most Republican to most Democratic. It’s the tipping point. Which way it goes on election night will suggest how many other districts will go.
“If you look at how the 2020 election results break down in that district; if you took the presidential and U.S. Senate and governor’s races and took all the votes, it would be 52 to 48 Democratic,” Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, told The Epoch Times.
“But in this environment, it’s more a 50-50 or 51-49 Republican district. It’s kind of a canary in the coal mine. If the Democrats can win that seat, they can probably stem any Republican tide. If the Republicans win it, the margin would indicate the likely size of the Republican wave coming through.”
“It will also be one of the earliest competitive seats we’ll have results from,” Skelley said in a discussion on his website’s podcast. “The polls close at 7:30 p.m. EST. If it’s very close, it’s a decent sign for Democrats that they’ll not have a terrible night. If Bo Hines is winning by a larger margin, it suggests a good night for the GOP.”
Each candidate represents what his party wants right now in North Carolina. Nickel is the relatively moderate Democrat who plays well to party voters in the state’s smaller cities and suburbs but also to swing voters, while Hines has an endorsement from Donald Trump, essential for Republicans in the rural counties they dominate.
Bullock said an incumbent moving on represents an opportunity for the opposing party, because an incumbent has a personal following that makes him harder to beat. With an open seat, a district reverts to its usual partisan split, giving analysts a better idea of what’s going on there.
—Iowa’s 3rd District. This district stretches from Des Moines south, and southwest toward Omaha, Nebraska. It includes Des Moines suburbs and fast-growing exurbs as well as rural areas. Democratic incumbent Cindy Axne has won the seat twice without reaching 50 percent of the vote. And, after redistricting, the district voted narrowly for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in 2020.
It’s the second most likely tipping point after North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District, said analyst Nathaniel Rakich in the FiveThirtyEight podcast. Rakich said it’s a good seat to watch because it has two reasonably strong candidates in the incumbent Axne and Republican state Sen. Zach Nunn.
Ads in the race have mainly featured national issues like abortion and crime, rather than local ones.
“It’s the epitome of an everyday American average Joe congressional district,” Rakich said in a podcast on his website. “Republicans will have to beat some tough Democratic incumbents to have a majority or at least a sizeable majority.”
With the addition of Republican-trending rural counties, the district has become a little easier for Republicans than it had been in two previous races against Axne.
—Texas’s 15th District, stretches from southeast of San Antonio south to McAllen and the Mexican border. FiveThirtyEight analyst Galen Druke said he’ll be watching this race between Republican insurance agent Monica De La Cruz and businesswoman Michelle Vallejo, a Democrat, because 80 percent of district voters are Hispanic.
The open seat has been represented by Democrat Vincente Gonzalez, who opted to run in the neighboring 34th Congressional District.
Druke said his two big questions nationally were what would happen to upscale districts trending Democratic since 2016, and what would happen with Latino voters.
Because this district is heavily Hispanic, analysts can get a quick read on election night about how that demographic is voting, Druke said. Analysts can’t make that call on election night watching districts with fewer Hispanics because they don’t have a demographic breakdown yet.
Hispanic voters shifted 8 points toward Donald Trump in 2020. One thing Druke said he'll be watching for is whether they “revert to the mean” or whether, alternatively, Republicans hold their gains among the demographic. Polls suggest the latter. Druke noted the Hispanic vote isn’t monolithic and depends on factors such as country of origin and how long voters or their families have been in the United States. Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley have been there since before the state of Texas and tend to be more conservative than, say, Puerto Ricans in New York City, Druke said.
Social conservatism as well as issues like immigration, energy, and border security, may affect the Hispanic vote in south Texas, Shawn Donahue, a political science professor at the University at Buffalo, told The Epoch Times.
“A lot of people are related to border agents or are border agents themselves.”
—California’s 27th District was chosen by FiveThirtyEight editor Maya Sweedler because it’s a suburban-exurban district that trends Democratic by 8 points. Meanwhile, it’s represented by a Republican, Mike Garcia, who won a special election in 2020 and then again in that year’s general election. He’s in his third match against the same opponent, Democrat Christy Smith, whom he defeated by only 333 votes in 2020’s general election.
“It would be a stretch seat for Republicans normally,” Sweedler said. “But if Garcia is running hot on election night, it will be notable for Republicans.” She said it is the only congressional seat in Los Angeles County currently held by a Republican.
“I’m curious if Garcia can hang on to this,” she said.
The 27th, since redistricting, has become more difficult for a Republican, losing the conservative Simi Valley. On the previous map, most of the area has been in the 25th Congressional District, which Garcia represents. The 27th’s current Representative, Judy Chu, this time is running in the 28th Congressional District.
Born to Mexican parents and raised in the area, Garcia is a former Navy fighter pilot who worked for Raytheon. According to the Los Angeles Times, he is conservative, having co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, a national ban on abortion, and some types of birth control.
Smith, a former California Assemblywoman, has worked for the U.S. Department of Education and, according to the newspaper, is “an outspoken supporter of abortion rights.”
