It is well and truly that time of year, folks. With states starting to officially finalize their new congressional maps, we see it fit to release our first House ratings of 2022. Now, first I want to say thanks to Eric and the team for trusting me in the role as the new head of our Elections Team. They all helped in crafting these for now, and will continue to play a role this entire cycle.
Senate and Gubernatorial ratings are done, but I’m going to give those a later date to provide you all with a more in depth analysis. We will also be releasing a Google Sheet document that will be open for public viewing at that time with all our ratings on it. That way you won’t have to continually come back to the last article. Now, here are our first House ratings for 2022:
How our early ratings come out
We first want to say we did include some states who, while not technically done, are unlikely to see changes to their map. These states are Washington, California, Hawaii, Mississippi and Arkansas. They are all included in our preliminary ratings.
Each party so far has over 100 safe seats in our opinions so far, with Republicans having a slight advantage there. You’ll also see that Democrats have a larger amount of seats that we consider “Likely“ compared to the GOP. That’s in part due to the current environment and expected environment in 2022. There’s just a larger amount of Biden seats that may end up being competitive than there are similar seats for Republicans.
Republicans also currently have more flips in states than Democrats do, with Republicans favored to flip 10 seats in our ratings so far, while Democrats have four. Of those four for Democrats, three are from new seats (IL-03, OR-06 and TX-35). Only three of the ten flips for Republicans so far are new seats. Those are TX-38, MT-01 and NC-14. The rest are of seats that existed before reapportionment
However, most of those seats are relatively narrow. And Democrats will have opportunities in three Republican-held California seats and New Mexico’s new 2nd district. That also likely includes a seat or two from New York once those maps are completed. However, the early signs are clear. Republicans so far have a slight structural advantage to retaking the House compared to Democrats.
