Johnson and GOP increasingly bullish about holding onto control of House

By Sarah Ferris and Manu Raju, CNN

(CNN) — Speaker Mike Johnson and the GOP are feeling increasingly bullish about holding onto the House of Representatives, believing they have defied political gravity in key suburban seats as President-elect Donald Trump powered his party toward what may become a full sweep of Washington.

Dozens of key races remain uncalled, and it could be days, or weeks, before the results are official. But House Republicans and Democrats alike privately believe the GOP will maintain control, according to a half-dozen senior campaign operatives.

“We’re going to hold the House,” one senior GOP campaign official said Wednesday. “The question is about what the size of the majority is right now.”

A senior Democratic source conceded to CNN that the party was unlikely to flip the House given the outstanding races. However, House Democrats insist it’s too early for a post-mortem. The caucus will have an internal call on Thursday afternoon to discuss the results so far, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

It’s not yet clear whether Republicans will maintain their same slim five-seat margin; they could still lose GOP incumbents in blue states like California and Oregon. Yet the seats the GOP is expecting to hold show surprising strength in places that Democrats were confident they’d win, like Nebraska and Pennsylvania.

Democrats are still expecting to hang onto a couple of key seats: Jared Golden in Maine and Marcy Kaptur in Ohio are both narrowly ahead, against the odds, in heavily Trump territory. And they have flipped one seat in New York, with Democrats optimistic about two more.

But several other must-hold seats have slipped away, including one seat in Pennsylvania and an open seat in Michigan. Another Democrat in Pennsylvania, Rep. Susan Wild, has conceded to her GOP opponent, though CNN has not projected that race yet.

To win the House now, Democrats believe they need to keep all their remaining incumbents – including in tough terrain like Washington state and Colorado – while essentially sweeping GOP seats in California, Oregon and Arizona, according to multiple Democratic sources.

“We need to pitch a perfect game and that probably won’t happen,” a senior House Democrat campaign official said.

Perhaps the biggest surprise so far for both parties is GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska. Democrats had been expecting to easily knock off the centrist Republican with Vice President Kamala Harris dumping millions of dollars to win the electoral vote there, while Trump put his money elsewhere. One Democratic operative called it a “must win” for their party to take the majority.

That race remains uncalled, but Republicans and Democrats alike expect Bacon to hold onto the seat.

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