2024 will be the largest election year in history. For the first time ever, nations consisting of over four billion people will participate in elections – including eight of the ten most populous countries and the three largest democracies: India, the European Union, and the United States. This is inspiring, but it comes in the wake of a recent struggle for liberal and electoral democracies, whose march – once buoyed by the postwar and post-USSR expansion of liberties over the course of most of the last 80 years – has become stagnant, or even diminished, in the last decade. Democratic backsliding has strengthened its grip in much of the free world as a result of increased tolerance for political violence, the failures of nation building, an overall lapse in trust of core institutions, and citizen disengagement. In general, we at The Postrider attempt to eschew the easy takes, even if writing about discontent is easy – we try to ground it in reality. And, we pretty exclusively cover American elections, which – while not the largest election this year in terms of sheer numbers – will incontrovertibly be the most important in the course of the globe for the next four years.

We’ll have a lot to say in the year to come. Our Senate and presidential ratings will be back – we’re hoping with some additional features! – and we’ll have a fair share of complementary content to boot, but we’re now within a year from November 2024. As everything comes together, we’re wondering: what can we say right now that frames how we’re viewing the race that lies ahead?

By no means our official “rating,” and still much too early to effectively assess the state of many races, it is at least useful to think of where, once we do start to look into the state of the nation’s major elections, we can start. What are the fundamentals, factors, and elements that we can use to frame that starting point? This series of articles are written in that vein, to peer through the murkiness of early polls and commentary, looking at what actually will matter when we turn to the particulars of each race.

The House of Representatives | The Senate | The Presidency

Since they (barely) retook the House of Representatives in 2022, Republicans have not exactly had a “good” or “stress-free” time. First, when the new Congress came in, they failed to elect a speaker until the 15th ballot – an out-the-gate embarrassment for their then-leader, Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy’s compromises to achieve his ultimate victory back then meant he was stuck dithering with reliance on moderates and Democrats to unstick the major priorities, with far-right Republicans holding a knife to his throat as he did it. This, as you may recall, resulted in a historic ouster of McCarthy as speaker – the first ever in American history – and threw the House into even greater chaos this October. After a couple weeks of public furore by House Republicans in which they named, withdrew, and publicly embarrassed speaker pick after speaker pick as well as their entire conference,1Republicans’ first post-McCarthy nominee for speaker was Steve Scalise, who was the nominee for a day and withdrew because he realized he could not get the votes; then they picked Jim Jordan, who was the nominee for about a week, and was voted down on three floor votes; and then there was Tom Emmer… their nominee for a few hours who also withdrew and never got a vote. Republicans finally settled on and elected Mike Johnson, a relative unknown, as speaker.

All of this tumult has not exactly created a compelling case for Republicans as premier stewards of the lower chamber! And, with McCarthy’s ouster (he’s now said he’ll resign from Congress by the end of the year), Republicans will be without their most prolific fundraiser as they march into 2024’s elections.

That’s a rough starting point for the GOP as they look down the road towards November, but what’s the situation on the ground look like? Well, with 221 members (in yet another example of their conference’s chaos, Republicans are now down one after New York Congressman George Santos’ expulsion from Congress), Democrats only need to pick up five seats to reclaim the chamber. There are 19 districts currently represented by Republicans (including Santos’ district) which Joe Biden won in 2020, compared to only eight represented by Democrats which Donald Trump won. Nine of the Biden-won districts were won by Biden by over 7%, whereas Trump carried just four of the Democrat-held districts by a margin greater than 7%. Even assuming Democrats lose all of the “Trump districts” they currently hold and win merely half of the Biden districts that the Republicans currently hold, they’d still gain a seat or two. 

But that’s not all – some major redistricting news this year has generated a lot of goodwill for Democrats’ efforts to retake the House:

1. First, Alabama was required to draw a second majority-Black district, all but assuring one new Democratic seat.
2. Second,in a set back for Democrats, North Carolina passed a new congressional map effectively wiping out three incumbent Democrats in favor of three new Republican seats. 
3. Finally, New York’s high court authorized a redrawing of its congressional districts, permitting the Democratic legislature to gerrymander out Republicans in favor of at least two, but maybe up to six, new Democratic seats in the Empire State, possibly offsetting the North Carolina loses.

Meanwhile, there’s a case simmering in Louisiana which could have a similar impact to the matter concerning Alabama’s map.

So with three new Republican-leaning seats being replaced by probably around four or five new Democratic-leaning seats, Democrats are set to widen their advantage come November and are likely favorites to retake the House, even in a close presidential year.