House Republicans are heading for the exits

The writing is on the wall ahead of the midterms.

House Republican leadership on Tuesday. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty)

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Earlier this month, four more Republicans announced their pending retirements from the House of Representatives: Darrell Issa (CA-48), Tony Gonzales (TX-23), Burgess Owens (UT-4), and Ryan Zinke (MT-1). Their decisions to retire raised to 34 the number of House Republicans not seeking reelection this November.

Entering Donald Trump’s second presidential midterm, those 34 vacancies are tied for the most GOP House retirements in a midterm cycle during the past 100 years.

What year shares the record? Answer: 2018, Trump’s first midterm cycle.

That November, Trump lost his House majority when the Democrats flipped a net of 40 seats. And 2026 is not over yet: More House Republicans could still announce they are packing it in.

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Most of these Republicans are not retiring from politics entirely. Twenty-one are giving up their seats to seek other offices; of these, 20 are running for either US Senate or governor. The twenty-first is GOP firebrand Chip Roy, who announced his retirement to run for Texas attorney general. (Roy is in a runoff with state Sen. Mayes Middleton to be party’s nominee.)

To be clear, 21 Democrats have also announced their retirements, so the pattern is hardly one-sided. And the departure of the embattled Gonzales, whose sordid affair with a female staffer led to her suicide, is probably more of a blessing that a liability for House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican colleagues, some of whom have called upon Gonzales to resign immediately.

But retirements are significant because they can serve as both a symptom and a cause of a bad cycle for the party suffering most of them. Why?

Because even though most House districts are strategically gerrymandered to provide safe seats for one party or another, rookie candidates are qualitatively different from veteran incumbents. These candidates often must spend a lot of resources winning a contentious primary, and tend to have fewer connections and lower name-recognition with district constituents.

Incumbents aren’t just a surer bet to hold a seat for their party, but a less expensive one, too. Open seats force the so-called “Hill committees” — the Republican National Campaign Committee (RNCC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) — to spend resources they would prefer to dedicate to other contests.

Still, what matters more than who is retiring and whom the two parties will nominate to fill vacant seats is how competitive those open districts might be in the general election. With Johnson’s razor-thin House majority, any and every advantage for either the Republican RNCC or the DCCC is crucial. (California Rep. Kevin Kiley’s recent declaration that he has left the GOP and filed for reelection as an independent gives Johnson yet another headache.)

House forecasts provide a sense of how significant these retirement-fueled open seats may be this November. Below, I cross-pollinate the analyses and projections of the University of Virginia’s Crystal Ball, founded by political scientist Larry Sabato, and the Cook Political Report’s namesake and noted psephologist Charlie Cook.

Presently, Crystal Ball rates seven of the GOP open seats as less than safely Republican: three rated as “likely Republican,” three “toss-ups,” and one “lean Democratic.”

The three likely GOP holds include Zinke’s Montana seat, plus the House seats of Senate hopefuls Andy Barr (KY-6) and Ashley Hinson (IA-2). The three toss-ups are Issa’s California seat, plus James Sweikert (AZ-1) and John James (MI-10). The lean-Democratic seat belongs to frequent Trump critic Don Bacon (NE-2).

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To control for incumbent popularity and performance, Cook Political Report assigns every House district a baseline “partisan voting index” score based upon the two-party presidential performance in that district. The PVIs for these seven districts, from most to least competitive for the Republicans, are: Owens (+14R), Barr (+7R), Gonzales (+7R), Issa (+7), Zinke (+5R), Hinson (+4R), James (+3R), and Schweikert (+1R).

Crystal Ball rates only three open Democratic seats as less-than-safe holds for the Democrats: “lean Democratic” for the districts vacated by Angie Craig (MN-2, PVI +3D) and Chris Pappas (NH-1, PVI +2D), and “leans Republican” for the seat held by departing Jared Golden (ME-1).

Netting out these differences give the Democrats perhaps a three- to four-seat advantage in a non-wave election cycle. But 2026 is shaping up to be a strong Democratic cycle. The “thermostatic” effect in national elections almost always delivers a rebuke to the presidential party.

And if the Democrats’ performance in 2025 special elections and the 2026 polling forecasts are any indication, the party enjoys a clear electoral tailwind. Trump’s agenda is unpopular and the Democrats consistently lead in almost every “generic congressional” ballot. In these electoral conditions, open seats are at greater risk for the disadvantaged party, which the GOP almost certainly will be this autumn.

Keep your (Hawk)eyes peeled on Iowa

Kyle Kondik, Crystal Ball’s House expert, says retirements are not always predictive, but they can indicate each party’s expectations about the cycle.

“Retirements can sometimes tell us something about what the members themselves think will happen in the House. The fact that there are so many Republicans retiring may suggest some internal GOP pessimism about holding the House. That was also the case in 2018, when there also were a lot of Republican retirements — although it wasn’t as good of an indicator in 2020, when Republicans actually did well in the House despite a lot of retirements,” he explained to me by email.

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“The retirements are generally coming in safe seats (although Darrell Issa’s recent retirement is a major exception). So if Democrats make a substantial House gain — netting enough seats to get into the high 220s or even the 230s — it’ll be more about beating incumbents than flipping open seats,” he added.

That said, the state to watch on election night 2026 could be Iowa. There, Ashley Hinson’s retirement to run for governor could put her 2nd District with a PVI of +4R in jeopardy, even if Crystal Ball rates IA-2 as “likely Republican.”

But Iowa Republicans could also face danger in two seats where incumbents are seeking reelection. Indeed, Hinson’s is just one of three Iowa seats with single-digit Republican PVI values. Crystal Ball rates incumbents Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-1, PVI +4R) and Zach Nunn (IA-3, PVI +2R) as toss-ups to win reelection.

If the Democratic Party’s lopsided turnout in 2026 primaries thus far signals a cresting blue wave, red blood may be spilled across Iowa’s cornfields this November. Turning the Hawkeye State’s delegation from 4-to-0 Republican to 3-to-1 Democratic in a single cycle would be remarkable but not shocking.

A record-breaking cycle

The combined 55 retirements for House Republicans and Democrats are now second-most in the past 100 years; only 1992’s total of 65 retirees is higher.

But 1992 was an election immediately following redistricting. Hundreds of districts that cycle were redrawn to create majority-minority constituencies to help non-white members candidates win House seats. Although the Democrats and Republicans this past year have waged an ugly and unprecedented mid-decade redistricting war, that fight has been limited to a few states, most notably California and Texas. New lines surely motivated some members to run statewide or exit politics altogether.

But 2026 has already set the record for retirements in a cycle not immediately following the Census and the creation of new district maps. That’s bad news for RNCC chair Richard Hudson (NC-9), whose job is to protect the GOP’s House majority.

Ironically, Hudson announced last July that he would not retire to seek the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Tom Tillis’s retirement. But Hudson better be careful. His district has a partisan voting index of just +8R. That’s a relatively safe seat in a normal election year.

But if the anti-Trump blue wave this November is large enough, Hudson could be retired the old fashioned way: by the voters at the ballot box.

Tom Schaller is professor of political science at UMBC, and author of five books, including New York Times bestseller White Rural Rage.

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That’s it for now

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