Six California House races that could help determine control of Congress
LOS ANGELES — Over 2,000 miles west of the nation's Capitol, the battle for control of the House of Representatives in 2025 is being waged in farmland along Highway 99, fast-growing commuter communities north and east of Los Angeles and Orange County beach towns and inland suburbs.
While Republicans currently have a razor-thin majority in the House, partisan makeup of next year's Congress will almost certainly be decided this November — at least in part — by a handful of hypercompetitive California races.
California "is, along with New York, one of the two most important paths to potential Democratic control of the House," said Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Democrats underperformed in both states in 2022, in part because their in-state political dominance helped Republicans channel voter frustration into anger toward Democrats, Wasserman explained.
But many of these districts are likely to perform better for Democrats in a presidential cycle, given former President Trump's spot at the top of the Republican ticket. (The former president remains unpopular in California and faces criminal prosecution in four separate trials, all of which make his presence on the ballot a potential hindrance for California GOP candidates.)
"If Democrats are to have any hope of winning the majority, they probably need to win at least three Republican seats in California," Wasserman said.
The Cook, with six of them rated as either lean Democratic or lean Republican or a tossup.
