Democrats Retake the House of Representatives

With results still coming in, newsmedia projected the Democratic Party fulfilled their goal of flipping the United States House of Representatives from red to blue.

And at almost 3:00am EST Wednesday morning, it became official when Democrats were declared the winners in 218 House seats. The 116th Congress will convene in January 2019 with Democrats in control of the House.

The House flipped from blue to red in the 2012 presidential election year. The 114th and 115th Congress saw Republicans controlling both houses after successfully taking control of the Senate from the Democrats during the 2014 midterm election.

MSNBC first projected a Democratic flip of the House with CNN, NBC and The New York Times following soon after.

Democrat Jennifer Wexton of Virginia beat incumbent Republican Barbara Comstock of Virginia to flip the first seat in the House.

She was soon followed by Democrat Donna Shalala winning the seat of retiring Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Florida.

Other notable Democratic wins included Sharice Davids of Kansas and Deb Haaland of New Mexico who will became the first Native American women to ever serve in Congress. Ayanna Pressley became the first Black woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress.

Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota become the first Muslim women to win seats in Congress as well.

And New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez becomes the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

New Democratic Representatives begin their terms in January. Several notable GOP incumbents failed to win their reelection bids.

Democrats flipped seats in Florida, New York, Kansas, Iowa, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas. The GOP flipped two seats, one in Pennsylvania and one in Minnesota.

In Maine's 2nd Congressional district, the state's new ranked choice voting came into play as neither of the two frontrunners, incumbent Republican Bruce Poliquin nor Democratic challenger Jared Golden managed to garner over 50 percent of voter support.

Maine became the first state in the nation to begin using ranked choice voting which allows voters to rank all candidates in order of their preference on the ballot, making a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc... choice. Those rankings are used to decide the winner if no candidate receives over 50 percent of the initial tally. Once all precincts are at 100 percent reported, the instant runoff process begins using voters ranked choices.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi predicted a Democratic win, but people had doubts.

People blamed outgoing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan—who retired rather than run for reelection.

While the President referred to the night as a success despite losses in the House and in Governor's races.

Plenty of people celebrated online.

Many also projected what a blue House of Representatives would mean for the Trump administration.

Winning candidates took to Twitter to thank their supporters and congratulate each other.

By the next afternoon, Democrats flipped 29 seats with 222 House seats designated as won by a Democrat. Over a dozen seats still had no declared winner by late Wednesday afternoon.