The party could roll to a 20-seat House majority after picking up dozens of seats in cities, suburbs, and even rural areas.

By DAVID A. GRAHAM, The Atlantic

Democrats recaptured control of the House of Representatives Tuesday, ending eight years of Republican control and dealing President Donald Trump a stiff rebuke.

With most results in, Democratic candidates either had won or were leading in enough districts to win the 23 seats needed to capture the chamber and then some—perhaps ending up with as much as a 20-seat edge. The question now is how big the Democratic advantage will be when results from all races are in. The outcome is in line with early predictions, though early returns Tuesday suggested that the scale of Democratic victories might be smaller than anticipated, and some pundits declared the hope of a blue wave dead. Yet despite tough losses for Democrats in Senate and gubernatorial races, the House has shaped up about as well as the party could have hoped.

The Democratic takeover of the House will reshape the terrain in Washington, providing a genuine counterweight to Trump for the first time in his presidency and breaking the unified Republican control of the House, Senate, and White House. While it will be all but impossible for Democrats to actually turn any of their priorities into law, House control provides them a position to conduct strict oversight of the Trump administration and to further bog down an already sclerotic presidency.

“Tomorrow will be a new day in America,” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the leading candidate to be the next speaker of the House, told Democrats at a party in Washington. “Today is more than about Democrats and Republicans. It’s about restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances to the Trump administration. It’s about stopping the GOP and Mitch McConnell’s assaults on Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the health care of 130 million Americans.”

The Democratic wins on Tuesday came across the country, in traditionally Democratic districts and in ones that Trump captured in 2016. They came in cities, suburbs, and even some rural areas. They came in traditionally progressive states but also in locales where Democrats have become a rare, exotic species in the modern era, such as Kansas and Oklahoma. Democrats also showed their strength in suburban districts, expanding their dominance from urban areas to outlying constituencies that Republicans have controlled.

Three wins in Virginia showcase the Old Dominion’s recent emergence as a solid Democratic state. In addition to Tim Kaine’s easy victory in the U.S. Senate race, the first flipped seat of the night featured Jennifer Wexton handily defeating Barbara Comstock in Northern Virginia’s 10th District. Comstock is a longtime Republican soldier, and the party poured millions of dollars into the race, but it was unable to save the two-term representative. Elaine Luria also beat Scott Taylor in the 11th District. But the most astonishing result came in the strongly conservative Seventh District, where the former CIA agent Abigail Spanberger defeated Dave Brat. Brat, an extremely conservative Republican, entered Congress in 2014 after beating Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a GOP primary. Now the seat is in Democratic hands.

Pennsylvania is another bright spot. Democrats had expected to win the state  in 2016, but it favored Trump. Earlier this year, the state supreme court ordered new congressional districts to be drawn, saying that the old maps were the result of an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The new maps were far more favorable to Democrats, who netted three new seats in the state.

Democrats picked up two seats in Florida, including in the 27th District, where former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala survived a late scare. In eastern Iowa, the celebrated young Democrat Abby Finkenauer beat the veteran Republican Rod Blum. Republican incumbents Peter Roskam and Randy Hultgren were tossed out in Illinois, too. Democrats won two seats in Minnesota, three seats in New Jersey, and three in New York, including on Staten Island, a GOP stronghold in deep-blue New York City.