The 2020 US House elections

House Democrats didn’t fare as well in the 2020 election as they expected, and the blame game has started.

To moderate members like Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Conor Lamb (D-PA), the problem is clear: members of their own party. Both have said Democrats need to put distance between themselves and left-wing activists. But to more progressive Democrats, that’s scapegoating for broader failures. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and others argue the party’s organizing efforts largely failed in 2020 and have urged leaders to not ignore its base.

Republican Beth Van Duyne, the former mayor of Irving, Texas, has claimed victory in a race to replace Republican Rep. Kenny Marchant in Texas’s 24th District, quashing Democrats’ hopes of picking up the seat.

Van Duyne, who stepped down as mayor in 2017 to work in the Trump administration as a regional official for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, had received an endorsement from the president and cast her Democratic opponent Candace Valenzuela as too liberal for Texas. She advocated for reopening schools and against further pandemic-related shutdowns. And she espoused pro-police policies, stoking fear about “violent criminals” and the decline of Texas cities in the face of protests over racial injustice.

In 2018, Chrissy Houlahan (PA-06), Elaine Luria (VA-02), Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11), Elissa Slotkin (MI-08), and Abigail Spanberger (VA-07) flipped Republican-held districts running on their national security records and moderate bona fides. Now, all five of them have been reelected to Congress.

Luria, Slotkin, and Spanberger were in seats Cook Political Report rated as “toss-ups” two years ago, but this year their districts were uniformly rated “Lean Democratic.” In 2018, Houlahan and Sherrill were in seats rated Likely and Lean Democratic, respectively but this year didn’t face competitive challenges — Cook Political Report didn’t even include them in its list of competitive races.

House Democrats did not have the election they expected.

Decision Desk HQ projected Democrats will keep their majority in the House after calling races for Democratic Reps. Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Tom O’Halleran in Arizona, officially bringing their count to 219 seats. Many more races have yet to be called.

Republicans have held Georgia’s Seventh Congressional District, which stretches over Atlanta’s northern suburbs, for a quarter-century. That will change when the new Congress is sworn in this January, however. Carolyn Bourdeaux, a Democrat, defeated Republican Rich McCormick, who was running to replace retiring Republican Rep. Rob Woodall.

Bourdeaux, who also ran for the seat and narrowly lost in 2018, benefited not just from the lack of an incumbent, but also from the district’s changing demographics and an emerging shift toward Democrats among white suburban women.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (NJ-2), who was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat before switching parties and declaring his “undying support” for President Donald Trump, has won reelection.

The now-Republican first-term Congress member defeated his Democratic challenger, Amy Kennedy (yes, she’s one of those Kennedys), according to a call by Decision Desk.

Ten years ago, Republicans routed Democrats in state legislative races across the country — gaining control of more seats than they had since 1928 and earning control of 54 of the 99 state legislative chambers, their highest total in 58 years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

State House races are extremely important every cycle — they can decide to expand Medicaid, pass restrictions on abortion, enact criminal justice reform, or any array of policy decisions. But every 10 years, their importance is magnified after the census is taken and they are tasked with the process of redistricting legislative and congressional boundaries (which can decide partisan control of state legislatures and the US Congress for the next decade).

Republican Tony Gonzales, a former Navy cryptologist and professor at the University of Maryland, has claimed victory in a tight race to fill the vacancy left by Rep. Will Hurd in Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, dashing Democrats’ hopes of picking up the seat.

The San Antonio native had received an endorsement from President Donald Trump and was part of the National Republican Campaign Committee’s “Young Guns” program, which aims to recruit and support candidates in battleground districts.

Cori Bush, a rising progressive star in the Democratic Party, handily won a first term in the US House of Representatives on Election Day.

The Black progressive previously defeated a 10-term incumbent Democrat, Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr., in this year’s primary for Missouri’s First District, which covers the Democratic stronghold of St. Louis. Insofar as Bush won an election as a Democrat in St. Louis, that’s not too surprising. But as Aaron Ross Coleman wrote for Vox at the time, Bush’s victory in the primary was a surprising upset — one spurred by her strong support for the Black Lives Matter movement:

Republican challenger Yvette Herrell defeated Rep. Xochitl Torres Small (D-NM) to flip New Mexico’s Second Congressional District red.

Torres Small’s district represented one of the Republican Party’s best chances to pick up a House seat this cycle, and Herrell came through. Torres Small won the seat after prevailing over Herrell by a margin of fewer than 4,000 votes in 2018. President Donald Trump won the district by more than 10 points in 2016, however, and endorsed Herrell in October.