The latest polling data collected by RealClearPolitics predicts Democrats will win 227 seats, and Republicans will have 182 seats, after the midterm elections. That leaves 26 toss-up seats, and Democrats are projected to win most of them.
A party needs 218 seats to secure a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Looking at the polls predicting Democrats will be the majority after next week, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) is also counting the number of Democrat candidates who are card-carrying members of Democratic Socialists of America.
If the Democrats win the majority based on current polls, Griffith said, that will be a five- to 10-seat majority, and some of those Democrats will be freshman lawmakers with a DSA background.
“There are enough Democratic Socialists of America running in the Democratic Party that they can insist on getting pieces of their platform into various bills in the next two years,” Griffith told the “Washington Watch” program.
Griffith’s prediction is backed by election website Ballotpedia and its detailed web page documenting DSA’s political influence. It reports there are nine current Democratic congressional candidates, all involved in the DSA, who won their primaries and have moved to the General Election. Five of the candidates challenged a Democrat incumbent and won, such as Darializa Chevalier winning New York’s 13th District primary in May.
Two more DSA members are courting voters for an open seat, Ballotpedia reports, and two remaining DSA-aligned Democrats are incumbents in Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.
When they won their elections in 2018, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Tlaib (pictured at right) made history as the first female DSA members elected to Congress.
Soon after Rep. Griffith shared his views on the DSA wielding influence in Congress, Fox News reported Thursday that GOP Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) plans to invoke a congressional maneuver to prevent those DSA members from becoming members of the U.S. House of Representatives next January.
“You cannot swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution while actively working to destroy it,” Self, referring to the DSA’s stated goals, told Fox News.
DSA once banned communists
In its utopian plans for reimagining the United States, Democratic Socialists of America calls the historic U.S. Constitution an “undemocratic constitution” that should be “scrapped” and replaced.
Along with getting rid of that foundational document, the DSA also advocates for abolishing the U.S. Senate and allowing a newly formed unicameral legislature to choose the U.S. president and members of the U.S. Supreme Court. It also wants to scrap the Electoral College and allow a popular vote model.
DSA's vision for the future conflicts with the U.S. Constitution, and with Article 4, Section 4, which mandates a "Republican Form of Government" with its constitutional checks and balances in Washington, D.C.
AFN has previously reported how DSA was founded in the 1980s as an alternative to authoritarian, Soviet-style communism. Its goal was to nudge the Democratic Party to embrace European-style socialism and its worker-friendly welfare state.
The organization banned Marxists and Communists until they formed their own caucuses in recent years and won key leadership slots to steer the DSA toward a revolutionary future. That ban was officially struck down and removed in 2025, opening the door for advocating a "violence process" to crush "fascism."
“The oath of office is not just words you say at a ceremony. It is a belief. It is an oath to our country and our fellow countrymen," Self told Fox News.
Citing an analysis by the Center for Renewing America, the Fox story said a House member can verbally challenge a member-elect’s fitness to take the oath of office. If that happens, that kicks off a floor debate in which the objecting member presents documentary evidence. That would be followed by a House vote, the story explained.
Farther down in the Fox story, however, it said that plan could fall apart if Hakeem Jeffries, the current Minority Leader, is elected the new House speaker. He could ignore that challenge and dismiss it.
The story also points out that Rep. Mike Johnson, the current House speaker, has publicly stated he would not go along with a challenge to unseat lawmakers.
There is Supreme Court precedent, the 1969 ruling Powell v McCormack, that backs up Johnson’s statement, Fox reported.
American Family News has asked the White House for comment about Rep. Self's plan to challenge DSA Democrats.
