The second explanation for the House results is even more straightforward. Given these results, Democrats did well to hold their seat loss to 13. The Democrats’ popular vote margin in House races fell by more than half, from 8.6% to an estimated 3%. Although Democrats increased their total House votes by an estimated 16.8 million over 2018, Republicans did better, gaining an estimated 21.9 million. With President Trump at the top of the ticket, Republican turnout for House races was bound to increase significantly over the depressed levels of 2018. It was, in short, a spectacular year for House Democrats.Īgainst this backdrop, Democratic leaders’ expectations of additional gains in 2020 rested on improbable assumptions. Democratic candidates received almost 10 million more votes than Republican candidates, a margin of 8.6%, the highest ever for a party that was previously in the minority. Without Donald Trump at the head of the ticket, Republican voters were much less enthusiastic, and the total House vote for Republican candidates fell by nearly 20% from 2016. Compared to its performance in 2016, the party’s total House vote fell by only 2%. Democrats were fervently opposed to the Trump administration and turned out in droves. Turnout in the 2018 mid-term election reached its highest level in more than a century.

And as always, the inefficient geographical distribution of Democratic voters hampered the party’s effort to gain ground. Second, more Democrats than Republicans who voted in the presidential contest failed to vote for their party’s candidate, reducing their chances of prevailing in close races.

First, 2018 was such a strong year for House Democrats that they would have been hard-pressed to equal it in 2020, unless Republicans had stayed home in droves and Joe Biden had won the presidential election in a landslide. What happened? Two explanations stand out.

Presidential popular vote totals