GOP makes substantial gains in House; media mum

GOP makes substantial gains in House; media mum
Nancy Pelosi (Image via Political Insider)

You would never know it from the media, but Republicans are currently leading in 218 of 435 House seats. If vote-counting stopped right now, they would take control of the U.S. House of Representatives from the Democrats, even though the mainstream media declared last night that the Republicans would lose seats in the House.

Of course, vote counting continues. Late-counted ballots are likely to flip a couple races, and thus give Democrats a narrow majority of at least 220 seats. But the possibility of Republicans taking control of Congress cannot be completely ruled out. But you would never have known this from reading this morning’s newspapers.

Even as preliminary election returns showed more than a dozen Democratic members of Congress losing their races, newspapers continued to claim that the Democrats were likely to expand their margin of control in the House of Representatives.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

Even as I am writing this, the Washington Post claims that “the majority that Democrats won back in 2018 is safe; the question is whether they can expand it beyond the 41 seats the Party picked up” in the 2018 election.

On November 4, the day after the election, the New York Times wrote, “Democrats aimed to add to their majority in the House. … Democrats were on track early Wednesday to maintain a firm grip on the House.”

Twenty Democratic members of the House are currently trailing in votes to their Republican challengers. Six of these trailing members are listed as in “Strong D” districts, meaning that pollsters gave them no chance of losing their races. Of the remaining 14 who are trailing perhaps two were considered likely to lose by the pollsters. So pollsters got many of these races wrong. (RELATED: America to media/pollsters: Drop dead)

Polls also predicted Joe Biden comfortably winning the Presidential election, with a lead over Trump of 8%. But Biden is leading Trump by only a couple percentage points at this juncture, making this a close election.

Pollsters did not do a great job in the election. The media did a dreadful job in reporting the results, and erroneously predicted a lopsided Democratic victory.

Hans Bader

Hans Bader

Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law. He also once worked in the Education Department. Hans writes for CNSNews.com and has appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.” Contact him at hfb138@yahoo.com

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