Vote and discuss.
I think that the Democrats will flip the House and lose the Senate in 2024 (fun fact, if this happens that would be the first time in American history that both chambers flipped in the same cycle) while Biden wins re-election. I think that there's also a good chance that Democrats win back the Senate in 2026 because of how good the map is for them, and they could also narrowly flip back the House. My prediction is 4 years, but what do you think?
...is it? The Maine seat is kind of
sui generis (I don't think Collins loses in a Democratic midterm, but in a Republican one my guess is she's doomed and probably retires), and North Carolina is a very plausible Democratic target, but the pickings get
really slim after that. AK/IA/KS are probably all conceivable in enormous landslides, but even at a replay of 2018 with a D+8 environment my guess is probably only 1 out of the 3 flip, and I have no particular guess on which one.
GOP pickup opportunities are sort of slim too -- Georgia is by far the obvious one, but it's far from guaranteed (and also heavily dependent on turnout patterns by education and race; I can imagine Ossoff winning comfortably in an otherwise-bad Biden midterm and I can imagine him losing Bill-Nelson-style in a disastrous Republican midterm which Democrats win elsewhere), and beyond that even for a red wave only Michigan is
obvious. (NH is viable as an open seat in a good GOP year but is fool's gold if Shaheen runs again. MN/NM/VA all could be a thing in different sorts of red waves, but my guess is that at a 2014-ish R+5 environment only like 0.5/3 flip, and at 2010-ish R+7 only 1.5/3 do.
Under the present demographic alignment, the 2014/2020/2026 cycle is really starved for pickup opportunities for either party. (Three of the five seats to flip in 2020 were either specials themselves or reverting an earlier weird special; only two seats
actually flipped. Because hardly any swing states voted!)
Poll
