With redistricting complete in all 50 states, we can now see that the micro environment looks a lot like what we'd expect in a big GOP cycle.

Take a look at the latest House race ratings from the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections. These outfits rate individual House races on a scale ranging from "solid" to "likely" to "lean" for a given party to "toss-up." Inside Elections has a "tilt" category for races in between lean and toss-up.

What you'll see is a lot more Democratic-held seats that are vulnerable right now (i.e., only leaning toward their party or worse).

Since 2000, the number of vulnerable Democratic seats relative to Republican-held ones correlates strongly with the election outcome. If the election were held today, the average of those two outfits points to a Republican gain of about 25 seats in the House. This would give them close to 240 seats. That's roughly on par with what happened in the 2010 midterms.

This all makes a lot of sense. Republicans have won the House majority in every midterm since 1938 in which they were ahead on the generic congressional ballot at this point.

Moreover, the cause of Democrats' problems is pretty easy to identify: Everything we mentioned in the first half of this column.

President Joe Biden's approval rating when it comes to gas prices is about 30%. On inflation, it's about 30%. His net approval rating on the economy as a whole stands at -26 points -- tied with Jimmy Carter for the worst at this point in a midterm cycle since 1978.

This is a big problem for Democrats when voters list either the economy or inflation as their top issue, depending on how the poll question is asked.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/04/politics/gas-prices-democrats-election-2022/index.html