Florida GOP gains likely to help push Republicans into House Majority

Based on current vote counts, it appears Republicans will secure a narrow lead in the U.S. House, though GOP gains were a far cry from the red wave initially projected.

With the GOP underperforming nationwide, Florida’s new Republican seats like District 4 in northeast Florida, ended up being critical to flipping the House.

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Taking the House will enable Republicans to potentially launch investigations into the Biden administration and even block budget proposals.

“I’m at our nation’s capital. Orientation is about to begin,” said Congressman-elect Aaron Bean (R-FL 4th) in a video posted to Twitter Monday.

Bean is one of four new Republican additions to Florida’s congressional delegation that scored victories in Tuesday’s midterm election.

“I’m confident in saying that Florida did its part to flip the House,” said Rep Mike Waltz R-Fla., 6th.

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Waltz said success in Florida came down to registering new residents to vote in the state and work on the ground by local party officials reaching out to Black, Hispanic and Jewish voters.

“And that’s what I think we need to do more broadly in other states and nationally,” said Waltz.

On the other hand, UNF political science professor Michael Binder attributed Florida’s GOP gains largely to the new congressional map pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“That four net gain, on top of what happened in New York where the courts threw out the Democratic gerrymander and enabled Republicans to pick up four seats. That’s an eight-seat swing,” said Binder.

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Binder said short of Florida’s new map being struck down in court, it’s likely the 20-8 Republican lead in the state’s congressional delegation will remain for many years to come.

“This was not a circumstance of a half a dozen competitive seats that just leaned to Republicans that could come back the other way. These 20 seats are Republican seats,” said Binder.

There are still about 20 congressional races nationwide that haven’t been called yet.

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Of those, Republicans lead in 10.

If they manage to pull off all those victories Republicans would end up with 222 seats.

Just 218 seats are needed for a majority.

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