There Are 150 Completely Uncompetitive House Races in This Year’s Midterms
29th July 2026
tReason magazine, a Voice of the Looney Libertarian Left.
When you add it all up, 150 of this year’s congressional races featured no meaningful competition, according to a new report from Unite America, a nonprofit advocating for election reforms.
“These 150 candidates, mostly incumbents, ran unopposed in the dominant party primary for districts that the Cook Political Report rates as uncompetitive in the general election,” the report explains. “In other words, we already know not only which party is all but guaranteed to win these seats in November, but which person will win.”
This is an underappreciated problem plaguing American democracy—and one that contributes to other, more visible problems, like gerontocracy and Congress’ general flaccidity in the face of executive overreach. In those 150 districts where there are no competitive elections this year, over 84 million Americans have been effectively disenfranchised. Those voters can’t make a different choice, no matter how badly they might want one.
They could move. Nobody has nailed their feet to the ground. People who “can’t make a different choice” in California and New York have been moving to Texas and Florida for quite a while now. People in ‘competitive’ districts who lose the election can “make a different choice” all they want to, but their views still aren’t represented by the winning party’s candidate. How does this improve their lives? This is not rocket science.
I am constantly scratching my head about this fetish certain people have for ‘competitive districts’ for Congress. On the part of ‘journalists’ I can understand it, because political sturm und drang pays their bills, but for people who in theory actually follow (and allegedly think about) politics don’t have that excuse. The cure for ’84 million Americans have been effectively dis[en]franchise’ is to increase the percentage of the minority so that when the election is over even more people are ‘dis[en]franchised‘? How does that make any sense?
THE PURPOSE OF CONGRESS IS REPRESENTATION. The more ‘uncompetitive’ a district is, the more accurately the resulting winner will represent the existing inhabitants of that district. A district that is 95% Democrat or 95% Republican will represent the viewpoint of the overwhelming majority of the people. If the district becomes ‘competitive’, meaning it drops to, say, 55% of one party and 45% of the other, THAT INCREASES THE PERCENTATE OF PEOPLE IN THE DISTRICT WHO, WHEN THEY LOSE THE ELECTION, ARE ‘DIS[en]FRANCHISED’ (in the sense that their ‘representative’ represents the viewpoint of the other side).
The best representation is when 100% of the people in a district favor one party; the only questions that arise in an election are internal differences within the broad range of what that party stands for. That’s democracy pure and simple.