Two House races still have not been called more than two weeks after Election Day.
The Republican Party is expected to strengthen its majority in the lower chamber of Congress when those two races are officially declared as GOP candidates are leading in both contests.
In the redrawn 13th Congressional District in California, John Duarte, a Republican Party candidate, received 50.2 percent of the total votes as 99 percent of the votes have been tabulated. Democrat candidate Adam Gray trailed Duarte by 593 votes, less than 0.5 percent.
There’s no automatic recounting law in California.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) already declared victory and her Democrat opponent Adam Frisch has conceded. Boebert leads Frisch by 554 votes, less than 0.5 percent.
The race has not been called because Colorado law requires an automatic recounting when the difference is less than 0.5 percent.
With these two seats being added to the Republican majority, the GOP would have 222 seats in the U.S. House while the Democratic Party would have 213.
Data Reveals a Hopeful 2024 for Republicans
According to data compiled by the Cook Political Report, Republican House candidates received more than 3.3 million popular votes than their Democratic counterparts in the midterm elections.
Out of the total 106.6 million votes, Republicans beat Democrats with an advantage of 50.8 percent to 47.7.
Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, wrote on Nov. 14 that the Republican Party—with a 4.9 percentage point advantage at that time—would normally gain 20–30 seats in the House, but didn’t gain as many seats as anticipated.
“Simply put, Republicans picked up the votes they needed, just not where they needed them most. Clearly something or someone intervened, affecting the outcome of the election in the places that mattered,” he wrote.
American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Emeritus Michael Barone believes House Republicans won the popular vote because the turnout in Central cities worked against the Democrats.
By Allen Zhong
