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The Republican Party is likely to retain control of the House of Representatives in the coming days, but with the makeup of the chamber virtually unchanged despite decisive victories in the presidential race and US Senate contests.
GOP members are projected at this point to win a single-digit majority.
Seventeen seats around the country remained up for grabs as of Monday evening, with Democrats currently leading in nine and Republicans in eight — in two cases, by just a few hundred votes.
Of the races already called, Republicans have secured 214 — four short of a majority. Democrats currently sit at 204 in the chamber.
Notable incumbents on both sides lost seats, including Anthony D'Esposito in the New York GOP and Pennsylvania's Susan Wild on the Democratic side.
The result is remarkable and would represent a clean sweep for party, with Donald Trump soundly defeating Kamala Harris, winning seven out of seven fought-over swing states, winning the popular vote for the first time, and even shrinking his margins of defeat in long-held Democratic bastions like Maryland.
But nevertheless, it could still cause headaches for the GOP next year. Case in point: the already-rambunctious state of the House Republican majority, which has hovered in the single digits for months and even before then was so unruly it resulted in the ouster and eventual resignation of Kevin McCarthy, the Republican who won the role of speaker after more than a dozen votes.
On the Democratic side, wounds remain extremely raw following last week's defeat. Harris underperformed compared to the party's Senate candidates as well as House candidates in areas where her support collapsed, like Dearborn, Michigan.
This was coupled with an admission from Jon Favreau, former speechwriter to Barack Obama, that Joe Biden's own internal campaign polling showed Trump winning 400 electoral votes in what have been an absolute bloodbath during the period his aides and campaign officials were angrily insisting he was the best candidate to put forward.
Such a loss would have been devastating to the electoral prospects of Biden's allies in Congress.
The president-elect formally announced two Cabinet nominees on Monday — GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik to be his United Nations ambassador, and former Rep. Lee Zeldin to lead the EPA.
In the days ahead, the focus will be on bigger positions being filled in Trump's Cabinet as well as news regarding the incoming administration's first big legislative push.
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