Following the 2024 elections, the Republican Party now hold the US House of Representatives with a thin majority of five. Regina Wagner writes that this narrow majority reflects voters’ dissatisfaction with both parties and the polarized nature of current politics. She warns that the growth of the Republican Freedom Caucus in the House, in combination with the GOP’s narrow majority, may lead to further confrontations within the party and legislative gridlock.

• This article is part of ‘The 2024 Elections’ series curated by Peter Finn (Kingston University). The series has explored the 2024 US elections at the state and national level. If you are interested in contributing to the series, contact Peter Finn (p.finn@kingston.ac.uk).

On November 5, 2024, Americans elected a new House of Representatives for the 119^th Congress. The results were both surprising and predictable in their own ways. They also managed to please no-one. Republicans held the House, but Democrats gained one seat, leaving the GOP with an even narrower majority than before the election, and making any attempt at governing potentially trickier for both the incoming Speaker and incoming president. These results exemplify modern American politics, and suggest that factional differences within both parties, but especially within the Republican Party, show no signs of abating.

When the votes were counted, Republicans had gained eight seats, but lost nine, leading to a net gain of one seat for Democrats. Republican gains came primarily from Pennsylvania and Michigan, with some redistricting-based pick-ups in North Carolina. Democrats gained almost exclusively in California and New York. While these geographical patterns hint at both parties’ strengths and challenges in this election, the further narrowing of Republicans’ majority suggests additional headaches for newly reelected Speaker Johnson as well as for the incoming President.

Presidential patterns

Between 1992 and 2016, the broad electoral pattern in American politics was as follows: presidents would alternate between Democrats and Republicans, generally serving two terms. Incoming presidents would have unified government, with their party holding both the House and the Senate at the beginning of their first term. They would then – apart from in 2002 – lose at least one chamber of Congress at the earliest possibility (the midterm during their first term) but would go on to win reelection, nonetheless. After the end of their second term, unified government would be in the hands of the other party.

In some ways, these patterns have continued under Presidents Trump and Biden: Trump did come into office with unified government in 2016 and lost the House during the first Midterm of his presidency, in 2018. Biden likewise lost the House in 2022, though in a much less dramatic fashion than anticipated. However, both presidents failed to win a consecutive second term, a break with previous patterns.

Polarization means voters try to moderate a party’s power

When looking more closely, election results since 2016 appear to be more complex: in 2016, Republicans did pick up the presidency, and they did hold both the House and the Senate, but they lost seats in both. In 2018, Democrats won the majority in a wave election in the House, but in that same election, their party lost seats in the Senate. In 2020, Democrats won the presidency and picked up enough seats in the Senate to flip the chamber, but lost a significant number of seats in the House. In 2022, Democrats lost additional seats in the House and with them their majority, but picked up a seat in the Senate. Finally, in 2024, Republicans won the presidency, picked up the Senate, and held the House, despite losing a net of one seat. As I argue, together with Byron Shafer, in earlier work, these long held patterns and their more recent extension suggest dissatisfaction among the voting public with both parties and their polarized nature, leading the electorate to repeatedly seek to moderate one party by handing parts of the government to the respective other party.

“House Chamber, United States Capitol, Wa” (CC BY-NC 2.0) by Billy Wilson Photography

This polarization is also on display in the 2024 election results. Specifically, the more ideologically cohesive nature of the parties compared to earlier decades, coupled with narrow majorities as well as factional divisions within the Republican Party in particular will pave the way for gridlock and intra-party bickering over the next few years, likely increasing voter dissatisfaction with the government as a whole and its ability to deliver on policy.

Managing the GOP Freedom Caucus

Republicans held a nine-seat majority going into the election. Afterwards, this margin had shrunk to just five seats. As first experienced by Kevin McCarthy, and then by Mike Johnson in the previous Congress this narrow margin combined with a larger bloc of ideologically more extreme caucus members, the so-called Freedom Caucus, is likely to cause the Republican Speaker some headaches.

The caucus has both grown and become louder during the first Trump term as well as the Biden years. In recent years, they have aligned strongly with Donald Trump and frequently openly opposed Republican leadership in the House, even leading to the ouster of former Speaker McCarthy in October 2023, the first time a speaker was removed by members of their own party. These same circumstances continue after the 2024 election, except the Speaker has even less room for losing votes of his own caucus. A narrower majority increases the leverage more ideologically extreme members hold over their party’s leadership, paving the way for future confrontations.

On the other hand, with Donald Trump returning to the presidency, Freedom Caucus members may have fewer incentives to sabotage the policy making process, as they may be inclined to support the President, which could align their interests more closely with House Republican leadership than was the case in the previous Congress.

Going forward, this recipe – polarized, closely balanced parties, which means narrow majorities with few incentives to work across the aisle – seems likely to endure into future elections, due to larger political forces as well as incentives of individual members running for reelection in increasingly safe districts. This in turn means gridlock and grandstanding by individual members, especially those of ideologically more extreme factions, such as the Freedom Caucus or the “Squad”, will become more frequent in this Congress and congresses to come. 

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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics. 
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