Democrats lead 40-3 in the House before any votes are counted

The midterm elections are about a month away, but the Democrats have already nailed down 40 seats in the House of Representatives compared with the Republicans’ three, simply because no one from the other major party is competing for those seats.

In one way, these numbers don’t mean much. Uncontested races are just a small subset of the races that will end up being blowouts. The Cook Political Report considers 68 of the 435 races to be very competitive this year.

But the party disparity in the number of uncontested races does tell us something about the energy of the party that’s out of power.

[How to vote in your state]

In a normal year, there would be a fairly equal number of uncontested seats on both sides, nearly always in districts with a very popular incumbent and voters who are so reliably red or blue that no one from the other party bothers to run.

This year, Democrats are contesting nearly every race. In 2016, 27 Republicans ran unopposed.

“This is absolutely a reaction to Trump,” said Dave Wasserman, Cook’s House analyst. “… [I]t’s not a function of the party’s strategy, it’s a function of the grass-roots enthusiasm that’s leading candidates who don’t have realistic chances of winning to run in the first place.”

This cycle looks a lot like the inverse of 2010, the first midterm election after President Barack Obama took office. Then, the tea party movement helped Republicans lead the tally of uncontested seats, 24 to 5. Republicans flipped 63 seats in that election. Currently, they hold a 23-seat majority in the House.

So about those uncontested candidates ...

These 17 are truly unopposed

Sixteen incumbents and one surprise primary winner will have no opponent at all.

One of these is Democrat Mike Doyle, who has represented his Pennsylvania district since 1995, sort of. Doyle was first elected to the House in 1994, and the boundaries of his Pittsburgh-area district were drastically redrawn — and its number changed — in 2003. Its boundaries and number will change again in 2019.

That makes Doyle the dean of the state’s delegation and the longtime incumbent from the 18th-turned-14th District and the uncontested candidate for the 14th-that-is-back-to-18th District seat in 2019.

The lone unopposed newcomer is Boston City Council member Ayanna Pressley, who upset 10-term incumbent Michael E. Capuano in the primary for the Massachusetts 7th District. Capuano won in 2016 with 99 percent of the vote, because there was no Republican in the race then, either. Pressley is poised to become the first African American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress.

North Carolina’s Walter B. Jones, who was first elected to represent the 3rd District in 1994, is the only truly unopposed Republican.

These 19 have opponents, barely

Nineteen major-party candidates — 18 Democrats and a Republican — will be opposed only by minor-party candidates. Former Michigan state legislator Rashida Tlaib almost certainly will become the first Muslim woman in Congress, as her only opponents on the 13th District ballot are candidates from the Green and Working Class parties.

Tlaib’s big hurdle came in the Democratic primary, which she won so narrowly that she waited to celebrate until every single vote was counted. She will occupy the seat vacated by John Conyers Jr., who was the longest-serving House member until he resigned in December amid sexual harassment allegations.

History and political realities are not on the side of independents or third-party candidates. They usually lack financing and name recognition, and they don’t get the benefit of straight-ticket voters who choose everyone with an “R” or “D” beside their names.

For those reasons, nearly all members of Congress come from one of the major parties, including all current House members. The Senate has two notable Independent exceptions: Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine), who both caucus with Democrats.

These are a few strange cases

The idiosyncrasies of election procedures in various states make for some unusual situations. In four California districts and one more in Washington, we know which party will win — but not which candidate.

In the state’s jungle primary system, which began in 2012, the top two vote-getters advance to the ballot for the general election regardless of party. So voters in the 6th, 27th and 44th California districts and those in Washington 2nd district will choose between two Democrats on the ballot; 8th District voters will choose between two Republicans.

Two other races are included on our list of 42 even though the two incumbents technically have major-party challengers — because those challengers were write-ins. In primaries for the California 19th and 32nd districts, the candidates who finished second got less than 1 percent of the vote.

One of those is Joshua Scott, a 25-year-old Republican, who is challenging 10-term Democratic incumbent Grace Napolitano in the 32nd District general election.

Some states allow write-in candidates for the general election as well, so it’s possible that a few votes could land in the Republican or Democratic columns that way.

[These women won their primaries. Will they be elected in November?]

The Michigan 1st isn’t included among the 42 shoo-ins but could be because of a technicality.

Yes, the challenger to Republican incumbent Jack Bergman is a write-in candidate, Democrat Matt Morgan. But that’s because Morgan was booted from the primary because of a paperwork mistake. More than 29,000 people wrote him in, far more than the 3,781 he needed to get onto the general election ballot.

FiveThirtyEight’s House forecast as of Oct. 11 gives him a 1 in 6 chance of beating Bergman, a former three-star general in the Marine Corps who is finishing his first term in office. Those are still long odds, but the race will almost certainly be tighter than any on the uncontested list.

The takeaway: Energy is good

The sheer number of Democrats willing to invest the time, effort and money to run longshot races, Wasserman said, indicates an energy that was missing when the party was in power — and it is a sign of a wave.

“What we’re seeing,” he said, “is that Democrats are ready to walk through fire to get on the ballot this year even in districts where they have no chance.”

Vote margins in 2016, by district

Pennsylvania 18th not included because the congressional map of the state was recently redistricted.