The 7,309-Vote Election: How Republicans Held the House
December 11, 2024 · 11:00 AM EST
Control of the House of Representatives ultimately came down to a group of voters smaller than the crowd at a Texas high school football game. And by at least one metric, 2024 was the closest race for control of the House in recent history.
The battle was a hard-fought, race-by-race slog that remained wide open for both parties throughout the year.
Governed for the past year by a narrow and often fractious 221-214 GOP majority, the House was ultimately the closest of November’s three main events.
Republicans held onto the majority, though they suffered a net loss of one seat. Democrats would have needed to gain another three seats in order to clinch control.
In the three closest races won by Republicans, the combined margin of victory was 7,309 votes. That’s just a fraction — 0.005 percent — of the 147,675,540 votes cast for House candidates nationwide, and a lower proportion of the overall vote than any election since at least 1994.
In previous cycles, some of the closest races flew under the radar, attracting little attention from the national parties; an Inside Elections analysis showed that national Democrats did not meaningfully engage in two of the five closest races of 2022. But all of 2024’s nailbiters were considered among the most competitive races. Outside groups spent a combined $234 million on the 10 closest races — the least expensive of the bunch, Pennsylvania’s 10th, still saw nearly $14 million in outside spending.
Three’s Company
The three closest races won by Republicans were Iowa’s 1st (799 votes), Colorado’s 8th (2,448 votes), and Pennsylvania’s 7th (4,062 votes).
This is the second time in three cycles that Iowa’s 1st has played host to the closest race in the nation. In 2020, the district then numbered the 2nd was decided by six votes in favor of Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
This cycle, Miller-Meeks prevailed by a comparative landslide over Democrat Christina Bohannan. Though the race was rated Tilt Democratic, a strong performance from Donald Trump at the top of the ticket — he carried the district by 8 points — helped Miller-Meeks pull off a minor upset.
Colorado’s 8th District was also one of the closest races of 2022, when Democrat Yadira Caraveo won her first term by 1,632 votes and with a 48.4 percent plurality. This cycle, Caraveo lost to Republican Gabe Evans, who similarly won without a majority of the vote, prevailing 49-48.2 percent. Outside groups spend a total of $27 million on the race.
Pennsylvania’s 7th District was one of Election Night’s few minor upsets, with Democratic Rep. Susan Wild falling to state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie by 1 point, 50.5-49.5 percent, as Trump carried the district by 3 points.
Close Democratic Wins
Unlike in 2020 and 2022, when Republicans won a disproportionate number of the closest races (8 of the tightest 10 in 2020, 6 of 10 in 2022), the parties split the 10 closest races evenly in 2024.
The two closest races in the county were won by Democrats, both in California. Democrat Adam Gray defeated GOP Rep. John Duarte by 187 votes, and Democrat Derek Tran defeated GOP Rep. Michelle Steel by 653 votes.
In the 13th District, Gray’s win over Duarte came in a rematch of their brutally close 2022 race, which Duarte won by 584 votes in the second-closest race of that year. The 13th began as a tossup and was one Democrats’ top targets for the entire cycle, but Gray ultimately had to overperform the top of the ticket to win as Kamala Harris lost the seat by 5 points.
The 45th District was a different story. Initially a second-tier target for Democrats following a disappointing 2022, the race came online later in the cycle as Tran regained his footing following a close primary. Eventually, the priciness of the Los Angeles media market helped make this race the most expensive House contest of the year, with $34 million in outside spending.
Elsewhere, Democratic incumbents Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Jared Golden of Maine held on in the toughest races of their careers, each overperforming the top of the ticket by a significant margin to hold onto Trump-won districts. Kaptur, already the longest-serving woman in Congress, outpaced state Rep. Derrick Merrin by just 2,382 votes; she may have been saved by the presence of a Libertarian on the ballot who drew 15,381 votes.
Golden outlasted state Rep. Austin Theriault in Maine’s ranked-choice system to win a seat Trump by 9.5 points, making him once again the Democrat representing the Trumpiest seat in the country.
Missed Opportunities
While most of the closest races of 2024 attracted significant national attention, there were a few that slipped through the cracks.
Nevada’s 3rd District, represented by Democrat Susie Lee, was decided by just 10,220 votes, or 2.7 percent, making it the 11th-closest Democratic victory and 18th-closest race overall. Trump even carried the district narrowly, by 0.7 percent, at the top of the ticket.
But after 2022, when national Republicans unsuccessfully targeted Nevada’s three vulnerable Democratic incumbents, the GOP largely ignored Lee and colleagues Dina Titus and Steven Horsford.
Groups such as the NRCC and Congressional Leadership Fund did not support GOP nominee Drew Johnson, who won the primary over a candidate preferred by national Republicans. (Democratic groups House Majority PAC and the DCCC spent $562,000 on Lee’s behalf, a relatively minimal sum.)
New York’s 3rd District spent much of 2023 in the spotlight as Republican George Santos was exposed and ultimately expelled from Congress for serial fabrications and criminal schemes. Former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi won a February special election in a race that drew $22 million in outside spending.
Following Suozzi’s victory national Republicans largely gave up on defeating Suozzi, instead focusing attention and resources on defending the neighboring 4th District and three other vulnerable incumbents elsewhere in the state.
But Suozzi ultimately won by just 12,529 votes or 3.4 points against opponent Mike LiPetri — a significantly closer result than the special election, which Suozzi won by 13,893 votes (8 percent).
The New Normal?
This year marks the fourth straight cycle with relatively consistent numbers of close House races, after a stretch of decreased competitiveness in the lower chamber — though the number has ticked down each cycle since 2018, when 88 races had margins less than 10 points (the most in at least half a century).
Since 2018, at least 68 House races have been decided by less than 10 points in every cycle. From 1998 to 2016, that happened just once in 10 election cycles.
Overall, six races were decided by a margin of less than 1 percent, 32 races were decided by between 1 and 5 percent, and 30 races were decided by 5 to 10 percent.
While the 10 closest races split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, a broader look suggests that Democrats actually escaped the possibility of a more severe loss. Of the 68 races decided by less than 10 percent, Democrats won 43, to Republicans’ 25.
Trump’s unexpectedly strong performance in the popular vote likely created favorable conditions for Republicans in downballot races, even in districts that were rated as Solid Democratic heading into Election Day. In New Jersey’s 9th District, Democratic state Rep. Nellie Pou only won her seat by 5 points as Trump carried the district by the narrowest of margins; four years earlier, Joe Biden had won the district by nearly 20 points.
A lack of attention on many of those races meant Republicans did not have candidates in place with the infrastructure or resources to get across the finish line — Pou’s challenger, for instance, was a perennial candidate who raised just $40,000 — but still gave their Democratic opponents a closer race than expected.
In 2026, those Democrats will be on notice, and won’t want to make a repeat appearance on this list.