It is becoming increasingly more difficult for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to keep her job following the November midterm elections.
Fifty-five members of Congress are not running for re-election this year, which breaks down to 6 U.S. Senators and 49 House lawmakers.
Of those 49 House lawmakers who will not run for re-election, 32 of them are Democrats.
“The 55 retiring members include 32 Democrats and 23 Republicans, accounting for 11.9% of the Democratic caucus and 8.8% of the Republican caucus. The 11.9% retirement rate among Democrats is the largest since 2014 when 8.5% of Democrats did not run for re-election,” Ballotpedia reported.
“The 8.8% retirement rate among Republicans is the second-lowest since 2014. The only year with a lower retirement rate was 2016 when 8.6% of Republicans retired. Democrats had their lowest retirement rates out of the past five cycles in 2018 and 2020, when 7.4% and 3.4%, respectively, of the caucus did not seek re-election,” the report continued.
“Republicans had their highest retirement rates out of the past five cycles in those years, with 12.6% of the caucus retiring in 2018 and 11.5% in 2020,” the outlet added.
Currently, Pelosi’s Democrats have a very slim majority in the House, and the Senate is evenly divided at 50-50.
But with the political winds shifting in favor of Republicans thanks to increasingly high inflation reflected in gas, food, and commodities prices, the outlook for Democrats is becoming bleaker by the day.
CNN published a report last week titled, “Could House Democrats lose 70 seats this fall?” which detailed how Republicans are poised to have a Red Tsunami in November.
Newsweek recently published a story under the headline: “Will Democrats Lose in the Midterms? Probably.”
The Washington Post also published an op-ed claiming that “losing the midterms isn’t the worst thing for Democrats.”
Tim Persico, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, shared data with incumbents showing that several Dem House members are at risk of losing their seats to GOP challengers.
“We are not afraid of this data … We’re not trying to hide this,” Persico told Politico. “If [Democrats] use it, we’re going to hold the House. That’s what this data tells us, but we gotta get in action.”
“The point is, to make sure that we’re all on the same page, that we understand the stakes. Here’s the good news: Everything we are doing and everything we’ve talked about doing is incredibly popular,” he added.
Punchbowl News surveyed several senior Capitol Hill aides and reported that a whopping 73 percent think Republicans will take the speaker’s gavel from Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi next November.
Republicans need a net gain of 5 seats to regain the House majority in the midterms next November.
What’s more, the party that controls the White House, which is currently the Democrats, averages a loss of around 25 House seats during midterm elections.
And the once-in-a-decade redistricting process – pegged to the 2020 census – is already Republicans.
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