With victory for Republican President-Elect Donald Trump and his party’s control of both chambers of Congress, the GOP will have a chance to enact the sweeping deregulation and cost-cutting they promised on the campaign trail.
But late-hour victories for California Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have whittled down Republicans’ control to the slimmest majority in almost a century. That may throw a wrench in the GOP’s plans to enact its agenda.
With all the votes counted a month after Election Day, Democrats in Southern California and the Central Valley flipped three Republican seats in the House, and successfully defended an open Democratic seat. Candidates spent tens of millions of dollars and intensely canvassed these districts, boosted by an avalanche of outside spending by the national parties, as part of the nationwide jockeying to control the House.
“It’s one of the bright spots in a tough election cycle,” California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks said of the victories. “I’m certainly proud of what we were able to do.”
A spokesperson for the California GOP did not return requests for comment. California GOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, in a statement on Election Night with several House seats undecided, said “California voters are sending a clear message to Democrats: they are fed up with failed, radical policies that have taken our state and nation in the wrong direction.”
However, political analysts say Democrats should be alarmed by Republican gains throughout the deep-blue state — and prepared to campaign hard for these seats in two years.
“Dems are going to have to defend some of the seats they just won,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of elections forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Statewide, Democrats had sought to win six battleground districts this year. Five were held by Republican incumbents considered vulnerable by national forecasters, including Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
In the last House race to be counted in the U.S. this year, Democratic former Assemblymember Adam Gray ousted Republican incumbent Rep. John Duarte from his Merced County seat. The race was razor-thin, decided by less than 200 votes. On the campaign trail, the candidates had sparred on abortion, electric vehicle mandates, inflation and more.
Several hundred votes propelled Democratic attorney Derek Tran to victory in a heavily Vietnamese district in Orange County, unseating Republican Rep. Michelle Steel. Of the California Democrats that won in a California battleground House district this year, Tran is the only one who was out-spent by his opponent. Steel spent about $9.9 million and Tran spent $5.7 million.
However, out-of-state Republican political committees, such as the Congressional Leadership Fund, spent more in all of the state’s battleground districts except for two: the contest between Gray and Duarte in Merced County, and the Orange County race between Min and Baugh. Democrats won in both races.
For instance, outside Democratic groups spent $14.1 million to support Gray. Out of state Republican groups spent $10.7 million to support Duarte.
In a neighboring district, Democratic former state lawmaker Dave Min defeated Republican Scott Baugh, keeping that seat blue after Rep. Katie Porter bowed out to run unsuccessfully for Senate.
And north of Los Angeles, Democrat George Whitesides handily unseated Republican Rep. Mike Garcia in a suburban district that includes Palmdale and Santa Clarita.
The Democratic victories were “quite a feat” in an “unfavorable national landscape” this year, said David McCuan, professor of political science at Sonoma State University.
McCuan noted that these races were complex and, in two cases, decided by merely hundreds of votes. But he said Democrats wisely targeted these handfuls of races and poured funds into on-the-ground organizing and advertising campaigns instead of spreading themselves thin.
“Even though they have a lot of money, they usually find ways to lose,” McCuan said. “They tend to be more frivolous…with their spending.”
National Democratic and Republican committees spent heavily to support candidates in these districts, led by the Democratic House Majority PAC. In the Orange County district where Min sailed to victory, for instance, the group spent $8.4 million. Its Republican counterpart, the Congressional Leadership Fund, spent $352,000, according to the nonpartisan analysis site Open Secrets. But these two heavyweight committees often matched each other in battleground districts.
“California Republicans spent the last two years talking about how they were going to not only protect their incumbents but also flip seats,” Democratic House Majority PAC spokesperson CJ Warnke said in an email. “Their extremism backfired on them, and that’s why strong Democratic candidates won in 2024.”
Despite the Democratic victories, Republicans prevailed in two purple districts that proved critical to their control of the House.
Republicans captured a slim majority with 220 seats to Democrats’ 215. That’s in part because GOP incumbents prevailed in two districts in the Inland Empire and San Joaquin Valley. Nationally, the GOP was also buoyed by victories in Colorado, Arizona and Pennsylvania.
In a rural Kern County district, Republican Rep. David Valadao — well-known as one of the few Republicans in Congress to vote for Trump’s impeachment in 2021 — easily defeated former state Assemblyman Rudy Salas by seven percentage points. The race was a rematch of 2022.
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In another rematch, in an Inland Empire district including Palm Springs and the red-leaning swath of Riverside County, Republican Rep. Ken Calvert defeated Democrat Will Rollins by more than 8,000 votes. Calvert is the longest-serving Republican in California’s congressional delegation.
Rollins, a former federal prosecutor, was “the perfect candidate,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican political strategist who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. His defeat suggests that Democrats should engage in “serious introspection,” he said.
Madrid contends that swaths of Hispanic voters in California, like others nationally, are increasingly voting for Republican candidates. McCuan of Sonoma State and Coleman of the University of Virginia said that may be true, but they’re waiting to analyze voter data that will become available in the coming weeks.
Analysts expect that the thin Republican majority in the House could hamstring the GOP as Speaker Mike Johnson tries to push through legislation. Trump is slated to tap two representatives for roles in his cabinet, slimming the Republican majority by two more seats until special elections are held. And Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz resigned last month when Trump tapped him for Attorney General. Gaetz then removed himself from consideration amid a sexual misconduct scandal.
