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Rare is the member of Congress who represents a district who voted for the other party’s candidate for president. Gerrymandering has made these political survivors harder to find than unicorns, while reducing truly competitive House districts to so few that they fit on a single whiteboard in strategists’ offices. But it is these oddities that attract intrigue and, with it, campaign money. And looking at the money flowing to these 22 lawmakers, a telling trend emerges that could indicate something important about 2024.
In the first three months of this year, the official campaign committees of the five Democrats representing districts that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 are outperforming the 17 Republicans from districts supported by Joe Biden by a margin of more than two to one. (An 18th Republican, George Santos, started this Congress as a political unicorn, but became an Icarus and former member of the House. His seat is now in Democratic hands.)
Every day for the past three months, these mismatched Democratic lawmakers in the House have raised, on average, more than $12,000 in campaign dollars, according to a new TIME analysis of filings filed with the Federal Election Commission this week. (This analysis ignores super PACs, joint fundraising efforts with state or national parties, and independent and advocacy groups.) Republicans, who face an incredibly narrow and fractious majority in the House, raised an average of $5,200 per day for your campaigns in the last quarter. Put bluntly: This is not to suggest that the most vulnerable Republicans are succeeding in convincing donors to stockpile the war coffers.
In terms of the total dollars that donors have given, each of these Democratic lawmakers has, on average, an advantage of about a million dollars over their Republican counterparts. (Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright’s $280,000 personal loan explains only part of this disparity; Republican Rep. David Schweikert lent himself about $240,000, and Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, an Oregon Republican, lent himself to his campaign more than US$880 thousand.)
It is certain that the balance of power in the Chamber does not depend on this eccentric group. Democrats are looking far beyond the 17 mismatched Republican lawmakers to target GOP nominees, linking them to the unpopular end of federal abortion rights and to Trump, who will almost certainly once again be at the top of the ticket. And Republicans are banking on Trump’s die-hard base to keep them in office, proving more enthusiastic than anyone wearing their Biden fliers, with a mix of exhaustion and disillusionment. Still, this analysis indicates that Democrats – and their donors – understand how close they are to taking back the House gavel.
A CQ call analysis from the same records show battleground Democrats with an average 21% advantage over similarly positioned Republicans. O CQ call The report considered 77 seats considered competitive, including the crossover group and others.
There was a time, not so long ago, when this crossover group would have been quite common. In 2000, for example, 46 Democrats were elected in districts that supported George W. Bush’s Republican campaign, while 40 Republican legislators went to Washington to represent districts that favored Democrat Al Gore. These 86 seats represented one in every five seats in the House. As recently as 2010, 62 Republicans came from districts that supported Barack Obama, although only 12 Democrats came from places favorable to John McCain.
But as political hackers have learned to make maps — and state legislatures and leaders have largely enabled them — competitive districts shrink every time someone tries their hand at district cartography.
Take, for example, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the die-hard Democratic politician who has represented her northern Ohio district since 1983. The district sided with Trump in 2020 by about 3 points. She was reelected by 6 points four years later in a newly drawn district that was expected to force her retirement. National Republicans hope she finally stumbles upon a District where more than half of her voters have never met her no be Congress. But since she began her bid to win a twenty-second term this year, she has raised about $2 million.
No seat saw a bigger swing than the one representing all of Alaska. Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola’s constituents voted for Trump over Biden by 10 points in the last election. When she won the full term, she did so by the same comfortable margin, representing an impressive 20-point swing. It has raised more than $1.6 million since the start of the year and has collectively raised about $4.7 million; both are records in this group of 22 mismatched lawmakers.
Of course, money alone does not determine winners or losers. The quality of the candidate is important; just ask New York about George Santos. The same goes for the national climate. But it is telling of the advantage Democrats enjoy within this group, at least as represented by the latest campaign finance documents. It’s an admittedly blurry window into how this campaign is unfolding, but it’s one of the best glimpses we’ll get until the nominees are determined and the debates begin.
Republicans know that losing even a few of those 17 seats would be enough to cost them the House. Five of them are in parts of California that support Biden, six are in New York and another four come from swing states. So far, as a group, they have raised over $43 million. But none of them should be feeling arrogant. They will need every penny if they want to stick around for another term, and at least in the last quarter, they are far behind comparable Democrats.
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