WASHINGTON — Among the many permutations for how the elections could end, one prospect has sparked chatter in both parties: Donald Trump could win the presidency while Democrats seize control of the House.
Such a split would be rare — not since 1989 has a president entered office without his party controlling the House — and give Democrats substantial power over Trump’s legislative agenda.
Neither side is conceding defeat on any of the electoral battlefields, with both going all out in the final days to capture full control of Washington. But surveys show a stunningly close election with shifting coalitions that point to a path for Democrats to pick up the four seats they need to seize the House even if Vice President Kamala Harris loses the presidency, according to sources in both parties with knowledge of the dynamics and internal polling.
“The most likely scenario is the House goes the way of the presidential, but there’s a world in which Trump wins and we lose the House — if she keeps picking up more in the suburbs and he increases in the inner cities and rural areas,” said a GOP strategist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the unwanted possibility. “There’s only so many of those rural districts where we have real pickup opportunities.”
The theory goes something like this: The competitive districts likely to decide control of the House are disproportionately in the suburbs, which are a weakness for Trump. Republicans fear he could lose ground in those districts and hinder their candidates in those regions that are crucial for the House majority.
But surveys also show Trump could modestly improve his standing among nonwhite voters, which might propel him to win some swing states — without helping GOP House candidates, as those voters tend to be clustered in safe blue districts that aren’t close enough to contest. Trump also has a path to win battleground states by boosting his margins of victory in rural areas, which tend to form solidly red districts already represented by Republicans.
In addition, persisting signs of ticket-splitting indicate Trump voters won’t all pull the lever for his party’s candidates down the ballot.
Some Democrats see that as a real possibility, too.
“The math for our battlefield does not actually dictate that Harris needs to win the presidency in order to take the House,” said a Democratic strategist, who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
One example is Arizona, where two suburban Republican incumbents — David Schweikert in Phoenix and Juan Ciscomani in Tucson — are in trouble against their Democratic rivals, even as Trump retains a narrow edge over Harris in the state overall.
In a recent memo to donors and allies, the main House GOP super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, warned of headwinds in such districts, writing, “The political environment is worse for Republicans than it was in 2020 in a few suburban districts, namely Omaha and throughout Arizona.”
That’s especially true in areas with high concentrations of well-educated voters. A recent NBC News national poll illustrated the phenomenon, finding Trump performing 13 points worse than his 2020 margin among college graduates. But he was doing modestly better among urban core voters and nonwhite voters who didn’t go to college. Overall, Harris and Trump were tied at 48%.
A second Democratic operative said the path to flipping the House even if Trump wins is to succeed at a “vigorous flip effort” in California, where Democrats are targeting five GOP-held seats, and New York, where they’re going after four Republican incumbents.
If Democrats have a strong night in the suburbs of New York and California, which Harris is all but guaranteed to win, they could seize control of the House even if she falls short in the swing states.
The operative said they could then “afford to lose” a few seats elsewhere and still have a Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
A GOP operative involved in House races said the GOP expects the landscape in New York and California to look more like 2022 than the bluer political climate of 2020. The operative added that if Trump overperforms in rural areas, it could spell danger for a few Democratic-held House seats, such as Alaska’s at-large district and Maine’s 2nd District.
Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, warned against a split result.
“Extreme Democrats with gavels would mean years of sham investigations, politicized witch hunts and bogging down President Trump’s agenda to put America back to work,” Pandol said in a statement. “It’s why the American people will send President Trump a Republican House to secure the border, bring down inflation, and support law enforcement.”
Asked about the prospect of a Trump presidency and a Democratic-controlled House, the Democrats’ House campaign arm sounded an optimistic note that its party will win both.
“The public is sick and tired of Republican dysfunction and want to see governance that works,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Viet Shelton said. “That’s why we are going to take back the House majority so that, in partnership with a Harris-Walz administration, Democrats will get the government back to work to defend reproductive freedom, lower costs, protect Social Security and Medicare, and grow the middle class.”
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