House, Senate control up for grabs in 2024 election as voters elect a new Congress

WASHINGTON – Americans are poised to elect a new Congress, with control of both chambers at stake as every seat in the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate go before voters on Election Day.

Every non-incumbent president since 1992 has entered office with their party controlling both houses of Congress, but there’s no guarantee that will happen this year for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.

The stakes are high, with the Senate tasked with confirming the next president’s judicial and cabinet nominees, while the makeup of both chambers will determine the fate of the legislative agenda and key bills to pass.

Republicans favored winning the Senate

In the Senate, Democrats currently hold a 51-49 advantage, but Republicans prefer to capture the majority. They are all but guaranteed to win an open seat in ruby-red West Virginia, where Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Manchin is retiring.

That seat alone would be enough for the GOP to control the chamber if Trump wins the presidency, in which case Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, would become vice president and cast the tie-breaking vote in a 50-50 Senate.

If Harris wins, Republicans need one more seat beyond West Virginia to capture the Senate. The party is also looking to flip Democratic seats in the red states of Montana and Ohio, where Democratic senators Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown will again have to defy gravity in states Trump is expected to win handily. They face Tim Sheehy and Bernie Moreno, respectively, both of whom the GOP is heavily invested in.

And Democrats are defending five more seats in purple states that are highly competitive at the presidential level: Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania; an open seat in Michigan where Sen. Debbie Stabenow is retiring; Late. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin; an open seat in Arizona where Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Krysten Sinema is retiring; and Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada.

Meanwhile, Democrats’ best hope for capturing a Republican seat is in Texas, where Sen. Ted Cruz is seeking a third term, and Florida, where Sen. Rick Scott is running for a second term.

In deep red Nebraska, populist independent candidate Dan Osborn is polling competitively against low-profile Republican Sen. Deb Fischer in a race that could produce a surprise.

A close battle for the house

The race for the House is on a knife edge.

Republicans currently hold a 220-212 majority, with three vacancies — two in safe blue seats, one in a safe red seat. Democrats will need to pick up just four seats to capture control of the House, and with it the speaker’s gavel and the chairmanships of all committees.

The battlefield is narrow. According to the Cook Political Report, there are 22 “throw-up” seats at the heart of the race — 10 by Democrats and 12 by Republicans. A few dozen more seats are hotly contested but lean toward one party.

In particular, the blue states of New York and California host 10 ultra-competitive House districts. Those two states are expected to be comfortably won by Harris at the presidential level, but Republicans are investing heavily in holding and flipping seats there.

In New York, Republicans are defending four seats, flipped in 2022, giving them a majority in the House. These seats are held by reps. Marc Molinaro, Mike Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito and Brandon Williams, all of whom are seeking re-election. D’Esposito’s and Williams’ districts are rated by the Cook Political Report as “skinny Democrats,” as the party has fielded Laura Gillen and John Mannion to try to reclaim those seats. Lawler’s race is rated “lean Republican.” Meanwhile, Rep. Pat Ryan, DN.Y., faces a tough challenge from Hudson Valley Republican Alison Esposito in a race rated “lean Democrat.”

And in central and southern California, at least five GOP members also face tough re-election bids.

Freshman Rep. John Duarte faces Democrat Adam Gray in the 13th District; Rep. David Valadao has a rematch against Democrat Rudy Salas in the 22nd District; Rep. Mike Garcia fends off a challenge from Democrat George Whitesides in the 27th District; longtime rep. Ken Calvert is trying to hold off Democrat Will Rollins in the 41st District; and rep. Michelle Steel is running against Democrat Derek Tran in the 48th District.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and the man seeking to replace him, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., have spent the past few weeks traversing these key House battlegrounds, as well as a number of swing districts in Pennsylvania, Michigan , Arizona, Nevada and the Pacific Northwest.

A full plate

The new Congress must work with the new president right from the start.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act, a product of a deal between President Joe Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, extended the nation’s debt limit until January 2025. The Treasury Department will be able to stave off an immediate catastrophic debt default by using extraordinary measures to free up cash, but there another bipartisan agreement will probably be needed.

The Senate will spend the first part of the new year confirming the president’s judicial and cabinet nominees, as well as hundreds of other nominees for other policy roles.

If the Republicans succeed in winning complete control of the White House and Congress, they will be in the same situation as they were in 2016 – with Trump back at the helm.

In that scenario, Republicans will have to decide how to use the budget vote, a mysterious process that would allow them to fast-track legislation without Democratic support: Do they move forward with another round of Trump tax cuts first? Or are they trying once again to repeal or overhaul Obamacare, as they failed to do in 2017?

Johnson, whose political fate is tied to the outcome of the election, has recently said that Republicans would go big and pursue “massive reform” of the Affordable Care Act if his party wins.

“The ACA is so deeply entrenched that we need massive reforms to make this work, and we have a lot of ideas on how to do that,” Johnson said at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania.

If Democrats are able to capture the White House and Congress, it would be a remarkable coup for a party facing one of the scariest Senate maps in the modern era. That would give Harris’ aggressive economic agenda a fighting chance and put legislation to codify abortion rights high on the agenda.