Dear John, Poll after poll shows Americans believe their elected representatives don’t care about what they think. Why? Uncompetitive elections lead to unrepresentative outcomes. Most U.S. House members have little reason to care what most of their district’s voters think – they are nearly guaranteed to win re-election anyway. That’s the main takeaway of two new reports we released today, capturing the complete lack of competition in our congressional elections: - 84% of House seats in 2024 were decided by 10+ points or completely uncontested, meaning that just 16% of House seats were even somewhat competitive.
- The average margin of victory in House races was 27 points, and 12 states had no races decided by fewer than 20 points.
- We’re bound to repeat the cycle in 2026 – the outcome for 352 of 435 House elections (81%) has effectively been decided, 18 months before Election Day.
- Only 37 seats – or 9% – will be true tossups in 2026.
Competition has steadily declined since we began tracking this data for our Monopoly Politics report in 1996. See how in the chart below:
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