Daily Kos Elections recently completed calculating the 2016 presidential election results by congressional district. With ticket-splitting rates at historic lows, and presidential results highly correlated with congressional results, these numbers serve as a strong predictor of future House election outcomes. We previously analyzed the 23 Republican-held districts that Hillary Clinton won, but since Democrats need to gain 24 seats for a majority, they will need to expand the playing field, and the 17 additional seats that Donald Trump won with under 50 percent offer some potential opportunities.
As shown on the map above (see here for a larger version), the Republican-held seats that Clinton won are mostly highly educated suburban seats and several heavily Latino districts. However, the 17 GOP districts that Trump carried with less than a majority are a bit different. They include a mix of both suburban districts and also a handful of seats with more rural populations that are overwhelmingly white and have lower education levels, two demographics that have recently been trending Republican. (They also include all four Utah districts that Trump won with just a plurality mainly thanks to the presence of conservative independent Evan McMullin, which means they would likely be much tougher for House Democrats than the rest of the seats on this list.)
Winning these 17 Trump districts won’t be easy for Democrats. However, Barack Obama did carry three of them in 2012, and several of them saw Trump win by a far smaller margin than Mitt Romney did four years ago. House Republicans won nearly all of these districts by a larger margin than Trump did, but if the national trend of low ticket-splitting catches up with these incumbents, they could find themselves in trouble in future elections. Democrats are particularly energized to win the upcoming special election for Georgia’s 6th District once Rep. Tom Price joins Trump’s cabinet. Romney’s 61-37 landslide collapsed to just a 48-47 victory for Trump in this highly educated suburban Atlanta seat.
You can find a chart of all 23 Clinton-Republican districts and the 17 where Trump won with just a plurality below. We’ve also examined the 20 Democratic-held districts where Clinton lost or won with below 50 percent of the vote in this post. Be sure to check out our previous maps and analysis of the presidential and congressional results for all the districts, and also our Congress guide spreadsheet, which compiles those results along with demographics and member information for every seat.
This first chart below shows all 17 GOP-held seats that Trump carried with under 50 percent of the vote:
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This second chart shows all 23 Republican-held districts that voted for Clinton:
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