Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats have virtually no shot of winning back the House of Representatives in next month’s election, the Washington Post reports.
“They called the fight. It’s over. We’re going to have a House next year that’s going to look an awful lot like the last House,” Stu Rothenberg, of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, told the Post.
According to Rothenberg, Democrats can be expected to win a handful of seats, although not nearly as many as Pelosi had hoped.
Just last month, Pelosi told CNN that the Democrats had a “very excellent chance” of winning the net gain of 25 seats that they need to take control of the House.
Pelosi, who served as Speaker of the House from 2006 to 2010 before becoming Minority Leader, has not indicated whether she will stay in her leadership post after this year’s election.
More than 80 first-term GOP freshman are up for re-election this year. Only 15 of them, according to the Post, are in any real danger of losing, thanks in part to Republican redistricting efforts.
House Speaker John Boehner has focused on retaining seats this year, rather than increasing the GOP’s majority in the House.
The Democrats, do however, have a chance to beat some of the marquee names of the tea party movement in November. Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh is down in the polls against his Democratic challenger, and Florida Rep. Allen West may not be able to fend off wealthy young newcomer Patrick Murphy.
Reps. Michelle Bachmann and Steve King, two of the most prominent conservative voices in Congress, may be on their way out as well. Bachmann’s short-lived presidential campaign, in which she often played up her Iowan roots, opened her to charges of ignoring her Minnesota district. King, meanwhile, is in a tough race against Christie Vilsack, the well-funded wife of popular former governor and current Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.