Erik L. answered • 04/30/19
10 Years Teaching Experience - all levels: Honors to Credit Recovery
The actual term for this is an open seat election and these can become the most embattled and widely covered elections in a given cycle. Unless it is a safe district or state, an open seat presents both parties with a chance to increase their membership in the House or Senate, making them highly desirable and hotly contested. These races can also become some of the most expensive. In the 2018 mid-terms, 52 open seats were up for election in the House. Most were relatively safe, but 13 were contested enough to change hands with the Democrats flipping 10 of them, to the Republicans only flipping 3. These results played out across the country as the Democrats gained enough to capture the majority in the House, but they did not have the same advantage in the Senate, where many of their incumbents lost tough races in states that President Trump won in 2016.
