An incisive study that shows how Republicans transformed the US House of Representatives into a consistent GOP stronghold—with or without a majority.

Long-term Democratic dominance in the US House of Representatives gave way to a Republican electoral advantage and frequently held majority following the GOP takeover in 1994. Republicans haven’t always held the majority in recent decades, but nationalization, partisan realignment, and the gerrymandering of House seats have contributed to a political climate in which they've had an edge more often than not for nearly thirty years.

The Long Red Thread examines each House election cycle from 1964 to 2020, surveying academic and journalistic literature to identify key trends and takeaways from more than a half-century of US House election results in order to predict what Americans can expect to see in the future.

Kyle Kondik is one of the nation’s top analysts of US House elections. He is the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan election forecasting newsletter published by the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He is the author of The Bellwether: Why Ohio Picks the President, also from Ohio University Press, and has edited and contributed to several recent books on US elections. As a frequently cited expert on American politics, Kondik has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, PBS NewsHour, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Politico Magazine, and other publications.