GOP leader wagers on winning back Congress in 2022: ‘I will bet my house’
On Saturday, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said that he was confident Republicans would take control of the House majority in the 2022 midterm elections.
"I will bet my house," he added.
The party outside the White House nearly always gains seats in the House during midterm elections. The only postwar midterm elections where this did not happen were 1998, when Republican efforts to attack the popular President Bill Clinton generated public backlash, and 2002, when panic over the 9/11 terrorist attacks convinced voters to support the Republicans already in power. Moreover, Democrats have an unusually narrow House majority, requiring Republicans to net only five seats.
Nevertheless, there are obstacles to a GOP takeover of the chamber. Unlike in 2010, where Democrats had dozens of vulnerable rural House seats, the current Democratic majority is made up of suburban seats that have trended away from the GOP. Moreover, while redistricting may benefit Republicans who enjoy an advantage in state legislatures, there are long delays in Census data that could push out redistricting in some states past the midterms in unpredictable ways.