Does the House GOP have the same problem of Senate Dems?

[ProgressiveModerate]

I feel like it's well known that in order for Dems to win the Senate in 2024, they'll have to win races in fairly red Trump 2020 states like FL, TX, OH, or MT

Yet it seems really underdiscussed how many of the House seats the GOP needs to hold if they want to hold the House majority are pretty blue often double-digit Biden seats. This list includes:

AZ-01: Biden + 1.5
AZ-06: Biden + 0.1
CA-13: Biden + 10.8
CA-22: Biden + 12.9
CA-27: Biden + 12.4
CA-40: Biden + 1.9
CA-45: Biden + 6.2
NE-02: Biden + 6.3
NY-04: Biden + 14.5
NJ-07: Biden + 3.7
NY-17: Biden + 10.0
NY-19: Biden + 4.5
NY-22: Biden + 11.4
OR-05: Biden + 8.8
PA-01: Biden + 4.6
VA-02: Biden + 2.1

If the GOP wants to hold the hold the House they'll likely need at least half the districts on the above list. Sure, some of these seats were marginal in 2020 and others have circumstantial factors that have allowed the R-incumbent to historically have big overperformances (i.e. PA-01), but many of these seats are over Biden + 5; just Dems flipping back all the seats Biden carried by over 10% would be enough.

I feel like many of the people who are optimistic on Dems chances in Senate races like Montana and Ohio are the same people arguing that seats like NY-04 are too blue for Republicans to hold in a Pres year. On the flip side, many of the folks who think Republicans can hold seats like NY-04 and CA-22 are the same people arguing that partisanship will cause Dems to easily lose MT and OH-Sen.

While it is true Democrats hold some Trump won seats, they're largely extremely marginal (< Trump + 5) and/or cases where a strong incumbent has repeatedly shown they can heavily outrun partisanship (AK-AL, ME-02).

If we acknowledge the Senate playing field is in pretty red states, we should acknowledge the House battleground is mostly in blue-leaning seats.

[Roll Roons]

I think the key difference is that the actual number of competitive House seats is a lot larger.

There are probably 40-50 House seats that are considered varying degrees of competitive, but only around 10 Senate seats at most, so it's a bit easier for an individual House incumbent/candidate to sneak under the radar.

Individual House members also tend to be lower profile than individual Senators (with a few notable exceptions), so it can be easier for them to avoid scrutiny.

An added wrinkle is that there is recent precedent for an exact tie in the Senate, allowing any single Senator to play kingmaker. There is no such precedent in the House, even if the current Congress and the previous one have had razor-thin majorities. Someone like Tester would be more likely to fit this role compared to, say, a Lawler or Golden.