GOP Whip Tom Emmer Says House Majority Race Is 'Too Close to Call' With Election Seven Weeks Away

With the November 3, 2026 midterm election roughly seven weeks away, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) says control of the chamber remains genuinely up for grabs. Emmer laid out his case in an interview with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle, published following the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. Asked directly whether Republicans can hold the House, Emmer didn't predict victory. He called the race "too close to call." "You can't rely on polls," Emmer said. "You look for trends in polls." He said the party's first job is defense: holding the seats it already has, singling out competitive districts in Pennsylvania, Iowa, New York, New Jersey and California as places Republicans need to protect. "The cheapest seat to win is the one you already hold," he said.

The Redistricting Math

Emmer's path to a majority starts from a deficit. He acknowledged Republicans expect to lose ground in California and Utah, both of which redrew congressional maps ahead of this cycle. From there, Emmer walked through a seat-by-seat offset: a win in Maine gets the GOP to "negative four," Tennessee to "negative three," Alabama to "negative two," and Louisiana to "negative one." That calculation, by Emmer's own account, doesn't include additional targets he named in Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Washington State. "So that's how you do it," Emmer told Boyle. "You keep what you've got, and then you build." Emmer pushed back on any narrative that the House has effectively already been decided one way or the other, noting that forecasters have identified more than 200 seats as safe for each party, leaving a relatively small pool of true battlegrounds to fight over. He suggested the number of genuinely competitive races would come in somewhere around two dozen, though his full answer on the exact figure was not completed in the portion of the interview made available.

Convention Turnout and Campaign Message

Emmer described the Dallas convention, which he called "this brainchild of Donald J. Trump," as evidence of Republican enthusiasm heading into the stretch run. He told Boyle the arena "was absolutely packed" and said he'd been told the crowd outside rivaled the one outside the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. On message, Emmer echoed Trump's framing of the stakes. "Quite frankly, communism is on the ballot," he said, describing it as the president's pitch to Republican voters to turn out. This is campaign rhetoric aimed at motivating the base, not a factual description of either party's platform. Voters can judge for themselves how it lines up with what Democratic candidates are actually running on in their districts. Emmer also criticized media coverage of the economy, saying outlets don't want to talk about "any of the good stuff that's happening," pointing to a recent jobs report he said included high-paying, high-tech and manufacturing job gains. He did not cite specific job numbers or wage figures in the portion of the interview provided, so those claims stand as Emmer's characterization rather than independently confirmed data.

The Other Side of the Math

Emmer's framing leaves out a well-documented historical pattern: the president's party has lost House seats in nearly every midterm election over the past several decades, including in a president's second term, according to nonpartisan election trackers like the Cook Political Report and the University of Virginia's Sabato's Crystal Ball, which have both flagged that history as a headwind for whichever party holds the White House. Whether that pattern holds in 2026 is exactly what Emmer's own "too close to call" framing concedes is unresolved. Democrats have their own version of this math, built around the same redistricting fights in California and Utah that Emmer cited as GOP losses, plus contested districts in states like New York and New Jersey that Emmer listed as Republican must-holds. Neither party's internal count is an independent forecast; both are campaign talking points designed to shape expectations before votes are counted. What's left unresolved on the record is the exact number of truly competitive seats and which of Emmer's targeted pickups in Maine, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Washington actually materialize. That answer arrives on Election Day, November 3, 2026.