Republicans inch closer to taking majority in House as vote counts continue

Republicans are on track to take control of the House of Representatives by a narrow margin, although votes are still being counted in several states.

“I think it’s gonna be very close, but I don’t think we’re gonna make it,” President Joe Biden said on Monday at a press conference during the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia.

Over the weekend, Democrats clinched control of the Senate following Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s victory in Nevada. But in the House, a majority remains unsettled, with neither party having yet reached the 218 seats needed to control the 435-member chamber. As of Sunday, Republicans had 212 seats compared to 204 for the Democrats, with 19 races still to be called.

The only undecided seat in New York is the newly drawn NY-22 district in the Syracuse area, where Republican Brandon Williams leads Democrat Francis Conole by nearly 4,000 votes, with mostly only provisional ballots left to count.

Republicans in New York State and the New York City metro area bucked the national trend by flipping a half dozen Democratic-held seats, giving the GOP a good chance of retaking the House by the slimmest of margins.

In several seats across the nations, the winners will definitely not be known until later this week as states face legal deadlines to certify winners.

One high-profile race that should be decided this week is the reelection effort of right-wing firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who leads by about 1,000 votes with several thousand mail ballots still to be tallied.

In Maine and Alaska, Democratic candidates appear to be in a dominant position heading into the ranked-choice tallying of ballots. And In California, several Republicans held relatively narrow leads over Democratic challengers, potentially giving Democrats a window to holding the House majority.

While the votes continue to be counted, Trump is poised to announce his 2024 bid for the White House on Tuesday. The GOP is torn between those remaining loyal to the former president and those who blame him for the midterm losses and prefer to move on from his “Make America Great Again” brand. Some lawmakers begged off from joining Trump at his Mar-A-Lago club for the announcement because of their own work on Capitol Hill.