Red Tsunami update: Cook Political Report shifts forecast in favor of Republicans

It has been conventional wisdom for months now that Democrats were facing a very bad outcome in the coming midterm elections. But while a shellacking seems inevitable, there has been a sub-debate among experts over just how big that shellacking might be. At the beginning of April, Cook Political Report published a piece titled “How Big Is the House Playing Field?” which argued that because there are fewer competitive districts than there used to be, the red wave in 2022 was likely to be more modest than it had been in previous years.

Every metric we use to analyze the political environment — the president’s approval rating, the mood of the electorate, the enthusiasm gap — all point to huge gains for the GOP this fall. But, those metrics are bumping up against an increasingly ‘sorted’ House with few marginal seats and few incumbents sitting in the “wrong district.” As such, the more likely scenario for this fall is a GOP gain in the 15-25 seat range.

Fifteen to 25 seats isn’t bad, especially when you remember that the GOP picked up 13 seats in 2020. The Cook analysis also seemed to be backed up by this FiveThirtyEight chart which shows there are a lot fewer competitive districts now than there used to be.