Three undecided House races will determine size of GOP’s narrow majority

CNN
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Nick Begich’s flip of Alaska’s lone House seat will pad Republicans’ slim House majority — but with several members departing to join President-elect Donald Trump’s administration and just three races left to be decided, the party could enter the new year with very little room for error.

That narrow majority could shape a great deal on Capitol Hill — from how House Speaker Mike Johnson handles a looming government funding fight and unhappiness from his right flank, to who governors consider appointing to fill Senate vacancies — when the new Congress is sworn in on January 3 and Trump takes office 17 days later.

Two weeks post-Election Day, both parties are closely watching a handful of House races in which a winner had not yet been decided. On Wednesday, winners emerged in two of those races: Begich ousted Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola as Alaska tallied its ranked-choice ballots late Wednesday. And, hours earlier, final vote tallies in Ohio padded Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s narrow edge in the Toledo-based 9th District.

Those outcomes mean Republicans have won 219 House seats to Democrats’ 213, according to CNN’s projections. The undecided races are California’s 13th and 45th districts, where ballots are still being counted, and Iowa’s 1st District, where GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks leads by about 800 votes ahead of a recount.

However, Trump is poaching the Republicans who hold — or until recently held — three of those seats, to join his still-forming administration. The president-elect could select more GOP House members as he fills out the remainder of his Cabinet and other administration positions.

So far, he has tapped Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Florida Rep. Michael Waltz as his national security adviser and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik as his nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations. Gaetz immediately resigned his House seat and said he wouldn’t take his seat in January. Waltz and Stefanik remain House members for now.

Their seats, which are all expected to remain in Republican hands, will be filled via special elections — but when those elections will take place, and when the winners will be seated in Congress, is not yet clear.

The thin House Republican majority could further shape Capitol Hill, as governors look to fill Senate seats such as that of Vice President-elect JD Vance, who was two years into his term in Ohio, and Florida’s Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is weighing up to a half-dozen Republican contenders to fill Vance’s seat, officials say, but is in no rush to make an announcement about the appointment before January. A handful of Ohio members of Congress have expressed interest in the Senate post, officials say, but the narrow Republican majority could complicate elevating a House member to the Senate.

Vance has yet to decide when he will formally step down from his seat, officials say, but it’s likely to be closer to the date of the January 20 inauguration. If he decides to do so sooner, DeWine could adjust his timing.

Here’s a look at the three races in which CNN has not yet projected a winner:

Miller-Meeks — the winner of 2020’s closest race, notching a six-vote victory before redistricting shifted Iowa’s congressional boundaries — leads Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan by about 800 votes in southeast Iowa’s 1st District, which stretches from counties near Des Moines east to the Mississippi River and includes Davenport, Iowa City and Burlington.

Miller-Meeks has already declared victory, but Bohannan’s campaign requested a recount, which is funded by the state in races decided by less than a percentage point. That recount began Wednesday.

The race was a rematch of Miller-Meeks’ 2022 win over Bohannan, a former state House member. Miller-Meeks, an ophthalmologist and Army veteran, was first elected to Congress in 2020 after three failed House runs, and a brief tenure in the state Senate.

Republican Rep. John Duarte holds a narrow edge against Democratic challenger Adam Gray in another rematch of a 2022 race — this one in California’s 13th District, based in the San Joaquin Valley.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Duarte led Gray by just 227 votes out of more than 201,000 cast, a margin that has narrowed significantly as more votes have been counted.

The district is one of the nation’s most competitive. Duarte, a pistachio farmer, is wrapping up his freshman term in Congress. He defeated Gray, a four-term state assemblyman, by four-tenths of a percentage point in a 2022 race that wasn’t decided until early December.

California is notoriously slow to count ballots. The state has universal mail-in voting, and votes are counted as long as they arrive at county elections offices no later than seven days after Election Day. Those ballot envelopes then have to be processed, and signatures verified, further slowing the process.

In California’s 45th District, a predominantly Asian American district in Orange County, Democratic challenger Derek Tran leads Republican Rep. Michelle Steel by 314 votes in another knife’s-edge California congressional battle.

Steel made history in 2020 as one of three Korean American women elected to the House. Tran, a lawyer and Army veteran who is Vietnamese American, is a first-time candidate who is vying to represent a district that includes Little Saigon.

CNN’s Ethan Cohen and Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.