Republicans are on the right track to win a clear 230-seat majority in the House of Representatives in November, according to the CBS News Battleground Tracker model released Sunday.
The Battleground Tracker takes “a district-by-district approach to analyzing race and measuring public opinion, since control of Congress is won through hundreds of individual elections, not the national popular vote,” CBS explains.
Some Democrats have expressed hope that the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe vs. Wade (1973) and ending the constitutional right to abortion could steal some of the GOP’s momentum, but it seems high inflation and the normal pace of election cycles are too big a handicap for Democrats to overcome.
The projected net gain of 19 seats for Republicans is well above the 7 additional seats the GOP needs to secure a majority. Democrats – who currently hold 220 seats – can only afford a net loss of two.
The model has a margin of error of 12 seats, which means Republicans are expected to win between 218 and 242 seats. Even at the bottom of that range, Republicans would still come out of midterms with control of the House.
That range tracks the 235 seats Democrats won midterm in 2018 and falls short, even at the top end, of the massive red wave of 2014, when Republicans won 247 seats.