Solid Democratic
Solid Republican
Democrats hope they can finally flip a Syracuse-seat that favors the party on paper but has eluded it for years.
President Biden won three of Long Island’s four House seats, but two years later, Republicans are competitive
in all of them.
Republicans are trying to undo years of Democratic gains in the Hudson Valley and flip three seats running north from New York City.
With favorable new lines, Republicans are confident they can hold onto their only New York City House seat.
Now, even Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, who once hoped New York would ease his burden as chairman of House Democrats’ campaign arm, is facing a viable challenge, with internal polls from both parties showing a dead heat in a suburban area President Biden won by 10 points.
“I watch this stuff closely, and I feel I need a neck brace,” said Steve Israel, the former Long Island congressman who held Mr. Maloney’s job during the 2012 and 2014 elections. “Midterms this cycle are the most unpredictable and fluctuating I’ve ever seen, but no state has demonstrated that more than New York.”
The reversal of fortune in New York, where there are more than twice as many registered Democrats than Republicans, is all the more striking given the broader national backdrop. In a year when many states used redistricting to minimize the number of truly competitive districts, New York is virtually alone in moving toward more competition, after an attempted Democratic gerrymander backfired and state courts intervened at the 11th hour to draw more neutral lines.
Democrats tried to reconfigure the 11th District to include liberal Park Slope, tilting it from red to blue. The courts blocked it.
NY-11 rejected district boundaries
NY-11 approved district boundaries
It also underscores just how daunting a task Democrats face as they seek to hold on to the slimmest of majorities nationally in the face of Mr. Biden’s middling approval numbers, high inflation and a restless electorate that believes the state and the nation are headed in the wrong direction.
Whereas the Democrats’ initial plan positioned them to reasonably pick up three seats and protect existing ones, the party now finds itself trying to guard five of the most competitive districts in New York across parts of Nassau and Westchester Counties and in the small towns of the Hudson Valley. Republicans, by comparison, are defending only a single Syracuse-area seat that is considered at real risk of flipping, and three other seats that look increasingly safe, including a coveted New York City swing seat encompassing Staten Island and a portion of South Brooklyn.
Democrats still have reasons for optimism. An upset in an August special election in the Hudson Valley showed that outrage over the Supreme Court’s decision to end a national right to an abortion is motivating the party’s otherwise sluggish base and keeping most races here closer than once expected. Mr. Biden’s numbers have stabilized. And the retirement of John Katko, a Republican moderate, has given Democrats the best shot in years at flipping the Syracuse-area seat that has been their white whale, election after election.
Yet, if the election were held today, public and private polling and interviews with strategists responsible for allocating budgets for races across the country suggest that Republicans, not Democrats, are now best positioned to flip seats in New York. The Republican Party needs to net just five seats nationally to win control.
“We could build the majority just in New York State alone,” said Representative Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican whose North Country district is considered safe. That might have been different, she added, but when it came time to redistrict, Democrats “got greedy and overreached.”
