Who are the House Democrats who lost?

So far in the 2020 House elections, 13 seats in the House of Representatives have been flipped by Republican challengers. As I write this on December 5, 2 House races have still not been called. Of the 13 seats the GOP has flipped, however, not all of them are races in which the incumbent Democrat ran for reelection and lost. I describe each of these 13 races below:

1. CA-21: Incumbent Democrat TJ Cox, who was first elected in 2018 when he beat incumbent Republican David Valadao by less than a single point, lost to Valadao this year, also by less than a single point. Notably, in his successful campaign this year, Valadao distanced himself from Trump and attempted to portray himself as a more moderate Republican. An article in the Los Angeles Times published shortly after election day last month noted: “Allies of the centrist Cox said it wasn’t noise about Medicare for All or defunding the police that hurt him — it was that his campaign lacked robust outreach to Latinos working in the area’s meatpacking plants and farms.”
2. CA-39: Incumbent Democrat Gil Cisneros, who was first elected in 2018 when he beat Republican Young Kim, narrowly lost reelection to Kim in their rematch this year. Cisneros originally won his seat in the 39th district, “a firmly purple district that has been represented for years by Republicans”, as “a first-time candidate who campaigned on immigration reform, support for veterans and job growth”. In her successful challenge to Cisneros this year, Kim criticized him for campaigning as a moderate but voting in line with the Democratic Party’s orthodoxy, as manifested in Nancy Pelosi’s legislative record.
3. CA-48: Incumbent Democrat Harley Rouda, who was first elected to this seat in 2018 when he defeated unpopular incumbent Republican Dana Rohrabacher, narrowly (by about 2 points) lost reelection to his anti-mask Republican challenger Michelle Steel. New York magazine noted before the election this year that Rouda’s “goal is to paint Steel as a Trump stooge and himself as a moderate in a district that’s slowly becoming more Democratic.” The magazine also pointed out Steel’s advantage of a larger number of registered Republicans than Democrats in the district, meaning that “her campaign may eke out an edge simply because she has an R next to her name on the ballot.” After Rouda lost, local news outlet KTLA similarly noted that he had “sought to position himself as a moderate problem-solver and highlighted his efforts to work across party lines.”
4. FL-26: Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who was first elected in 2018 when she narrowly beat incumbent Republican Carlos Curbelo, narrowly lost reelection to her Republican challenger, Carlos Gimenez. Her defeat is somewhat unsurprising given that, just before this year’s election, her seat was considered the most vulnerable Democrat-held House seat in Florida. In her reelection campaign this year, she criticized Gimenez for leveling false attacks against her and for failing to limit the spread of COVID-19 in Miami-Dade County, of which he serves as mayor. Since her defeat, she has noted on Twitter that Trump did 22 points better in her district in 2020 than in 2016, which, as she puts it, is “not easily explained by this false narrative of progressives versus moderates.” She has emphasized that while the fear of socialism is a major reason that Latino voters in Florida were scared away from Democratic candidates this year, there were other factors at play as well. She identified some of these factors as “a targeted disinformation campaign to Latinos; an electorate desperate to re-open, wracked with fear over the economic consequences; a national party that thinks racial identity is how we vote.”
5. FL-27: Donna Shalala, a Democrat first elected to this seat in 2018, narrowly and somewhat unexpectedly lost reelection to a second term to her Republican challenger, Maria Elvira Salazar. Though her district is heavily Spanish-speaking, Shalala herself, unlike Salazar, does not speak Spanish. Shalala had previously served as Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton. Shortly after being elected to this seat in 2018, Shalala acknowledged being, as the New York Times put it, “more centrist than leftist”.
6. IA-1: Incumbent freshman Abby Finkenauer, who was first elected to this seat in 2018 when she beat incumbent Republican Rod Blum, narrowly lost reelection to Republican Ashley Hinson. Finkenauer is considered to be a moderate Democrat.
7. MN-7: Longtime incumbent Collin Peterson, who was first elected to represent this district in 1990, ran for a 16th term this year, but lost his reelection bid to Republican challenger Michelle Fischbach. Peterson has a longstanding and well-deserved reputation as an unusually conservative Democrat, having been a founding member of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats caucus back in 1994. (Note that the Blue Dog coalition is sometimes described as centrist and sometimes as conservative.)
8. NM-2: Incumbent freshman Democrat Xochitl Torres Small, who was first elected to this seat in 2018 to replace retiring Republican Steve Pearce, lost her reelection bid to Republican candidate Yvette Herrell, whom Small had narrowly defeated (by less than 2 points) in 2018. Small is “a water rights lawyer who beat Ms. Herrell in an upset in 2018 by campaigning as a moderate”. This time, however, Herrell beat Small by about 8 points.
9. NY-11: Incumbent Democrat Max Rose, who was first elected to this district in 2018, lost reelection this year to his Republican challenger, Nicole Malliotakis. This district is located mostly in the most conservative of New York City’s five boroughs, Staten Island, though a small sliver of it is in Brooklyn. By defeating incumbent Republican Dan Donovan to win it in 2018, Rose became the first Democrat to win this district since 2010. The New York Times noted that in his unsuccessful reelection bid this year, Rose “ran as a centrist, even attacking a fellow Democrat, Mayor Bill de Blasio, in campaign ads, calling him the “worst mayor in the history of New York City.”” While he had been elected to this seat in 2018 by about 6 points, he lost reelection this year by about the same amount.
10. OK-5: Incumbent freshman Democrat Kendra Horn, who was first elected to this seat in 2018 when she just barely defeated incumbent Republican Steve Russell in a stunning upset, lost reelection to her Republican challenger Stephanie Bice by about 4 points. Like McAdams in Utah, Horn has been the only Democrat representing her generally deep-Red state in Congress since being elected two years ago. In running for reelection, Horn “upheld her moderate credentials and her willingness to break with her party”. She joined the Blue Dog coalition in January 2019, her first month in office.
11. SC-1: Joe Cunningham, a Democrat who was first narrowly and unexpectedly elected to this seat in 2018, narrowly lost reelection to his Republican challenger, Nancy Mace. The South Carolina newspaper the State described Cunningham as “a moderate Democrat who thought his bipartisan pitch could cut through a caustic partisan presidential election.”
12. UT-4: Incumbent freshman Democrat Ben McAdams, who was first elected to this seat in 2018 by just barely defeating Republican incumbent Mia Love by less than a quarter of a percentage point, just barely (by roughly half a percentage point) lost reelection to Republican challenger Burgess Owens. McAdams was (and will remain until leaving office in January) the only Democratic member of the Congressional delegation of the otherwise deep-red state of Utah. McAdams is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, has repeatedly distanced himself from those members of his own party who speak favorably about “socialism”, and as the Salt Lake Tribune noted last month, he attempted to “walk a moderate tightrope” ever since being elected in his Republican-leaning district.

These are the incumbent Democrats in the House who ran for reelection and lost in 2020, at least based on the races that have been called so far. Notably, while 12 Democrats in the House lost their reelection bids this year, the Republican Party has flipped a total of 13 seats. This is because the 13th one is currently held by Justin Amash, a Libertarian who could have chosen to run for reelection this year but decided not to. Thus, both the Democratic and Republican parties nominated their own candidates, and the Republican one, Peter Meijer, ultimately won. So this district was flipped from Libertarian to Republican, not from Democratic to Republican. In addition, this is the only district to flip Republican (at least so far) in which the incumbent non-Republican candidate did not lose to a Republican challenger.

If you look at the above 12 defeated House Democrats, do you notice a pattern? You should, because for the most part, these Democrats can be described as moderate freshman Democrats who were first elected in 2018 in generally Republican-leaning districts and/or states, generally by narrow margins. Harley Rouda, Abby Finkenauer, Ben McAdams, Joe Cunningham, Kendra Horn, Collin Peterson, Xochitl Torres Small— all of them explicitly describe themselves as moderates committed to bipartisanship, and make clear they do not support “far-left” ideas they know that some voters are scared of. With two of the other three candidates on this list — Gil Cisneros and Donna Shalala — there is also evidence of them portraying themselves as moderates/centrists: Cisneros was called out by his opponent for allegedly not being a moderate like he claimed to be, while Shalala described herself as a centrist, at least in relative terms. The only real exception appears to be Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, for whom little to no evidence seems to exist that she claimed to be a moderate or centrist when running for reelection this year.