We’ve all felt it: the burgeoning resistance to Donald Trump and his Republican Party. We’ve seen it in the mass protests that have stiffened the spines of Democrats in Congress; we’ve seen it in the ceaseless waves of phone calls to senators that have helped thwart Trump’s agenda; and we’ve seen it in special elections across the country, where Democrats have outperformed historical voting patterns again and again.
But what about the 2018 midterms? Is there a way we can quantify this enthusiasm?
Indeed there is. Thanks to an excellent and simple new site called Project 435 from activist Dan Johnson, we can now see how many House districts Democrats have filed to run in with the Federal Elections Commission—and the number is big: We’re only in August of 2017 and already Democrats have filed to run in 385 seats out of 435 total.
Helpfully, Project 435 also shows us which Republican-held districts still need Democrats, broken down by state. If you know someone who lives in one of these 50 districts and might make a good candidate—hell, maybe that someone is yourself!—you should encourage them to run. Most of these seats are very red turf, but it’s important to field candidates everywhere we can.
For one, you never know what kind of disaster might befall a Republican candidate. For another, we as a party should always give voters the option of supporting a Democrat, even if it’s in seats we have little chance of winning. Organizing always begins at the local level, and if we want to strengthen and rebuild our party, that has to start from the bottom up. Just imagine if we could fill an entire nationwide slate.
To put these numbers in context, we can also look at how far along Republicans are with candidate filings. The short answer: way behind. GOP candidates have only filed in 307 districts, meaning that 128 Democratic seats are, as of now, uncontested.
Note that these totals—the 385 seats for Democrats and 307 for Republicans—include incumbents, so when you drill down further, the disparity is even starker, since Republicans of course hold the majority in the House. Of the 241 seats held by the GOP, Democrats have filed in 191, or 79 percent. Republicans, by contrast, have only done the same in 66 out of 194 Democratic seats—just 34 percent. In other words, the GOP has a much smaller list to fill but is less than a third of the distance that Democrats are toward completing their own, much larger dance card.
Now, there are two important caveats here. First, just because someone submits paperwork to the FEC does not necessarily mean they’re going to run—some people simply take preliminary steps toward a campaign but don’t follow through—so it’ll be a while before we can confirm who our candidates actually are. Second, even in cases when we do have a candidate, that doesn’t necessarily mean we have a good candidate, ready to run a serious race, so we need to keep encouraging strong contenders to enter the fray.
In aggregate, though, these numbers are still a very good proxy for the kind of energy we’re seeing out on the campaign trail. The road to the majority in the House remains a daunting one, thanks to Republican gerrymandering and their never-ending supply of dark money. But by expanding the playing field as wide as possible, and recruiting capable Democrats wherever we can, we can put ourselves in position to take the gavel out of Paul Ryan’s hands next year.