How can this election shift balance in the House of Representatives?

We want to let you hear from our guru, our election day guru. We're talking about Lena DeFlorius. She is live in the studio for us now, giving us a big picture on how this election could really shift the balance of power in the House. Lena DeFlorius is looking at the latest. Thank you so much for joining us, Lena. What can you tell us? A lot of good stuff. You got good info for us, Lena. Well, I hope so. And I appreciate the promotion to Political Guru. So thank you. I hope the bosses are listening. All right. So welcome on in. Yeah, I'm going to talk about the balance of power in the House of Representatives. Now, the House is massive, even though it's the lower chamber of Congress, right? So we have 435 representatives, 435 seats. Now, these are two-year terms. So if it feels like you're always voting for someone for the House, you are. Every time you have an election, every two years, everyone's sitting in. In this chamber has to run again all of these seats come up for election now this one is based on population now remember the Senate every state gets two, doesn't matter the size doesn't matter how many people live in each state this one is based on population and all 435 seats are on your ballot so that means today we start at zero zero Democrats zero Republicans the Congress control is up for grabs when it comes to this chamber completely You're completely up for grabs in the Senate. 35 of the 100 seats, here you have every single one of them on the ballot. Now, the good news is you don't have to vote for all of these, right? This is for all 50 states. Here in Texas, we have 38 congressional districts, which means we have 38 representatives that the state of Texas sends to the U.S. House of Representatives. Now, remember, you're voting for one out of 435. This is where redistricting comes in. Now with the Senate, the big talk is flipping control and Texas is a battleground state, redistricting focus on the House. Now, there are nine states across the union that redistricted mid-decade in 2026. Unusual. And this is the highest number of states that have done that in an off census year. But that isn't to say that it's the first time that this has ever happened because it isn't. But redistricting means that there are 38 seats here. That doesn't change. It can't change without the census. So until 2030, there are 38 representatives. Now, redistricting means you reshifted and redrew where those representatives represent. So maybe they were in a square, a small square that maybe is now a larger size, or maybe it's moved a little more A little more to the east. So the numbers are the same, but where they represent has changed. Now, remember, the focus for Republicans was five different districts. Some of them were here locally, like. congressional district 9, 18, 29, but we only have so much space to work with. We have the state border, right? So all of these had to shift. More than 20 were impacted by the five that Republicans were targeting, trying to make them more red so that Texas would be a more solid red state. So of those 22, remember, you only have to vote for one, but it may have changed. If you already got your I voted sticker, maybe you walked in and said, well, that's funny. I thought I was I was in a different congressional district, this is why. Now, the numbers, just so you know, they do increase with population. So the last time we had a census in 2020, the state of Texas gained two seats. Before that, we only had 36 representatives. The year before that, or the census before that, we gained four seats. So this one's based on population. And if Texas keeps growing the way it is, you know, if you've been on a Houston freeway, more people are out there. That means that come the next census, we could have a higher number of representatives, which doesn't, Coco, only represent us in the House of Representatives. It also affects us. in the presidential election because the presidential election the electoral votes is based on your number of representatives plus your two senators. Lena you've been watching this pretty closely so tell me what you see with all of these changes we've got a lot more people early voting what does that tell you about how things are balancing out right now? Massive, massive turnout. I'm so proud of Texas and the United States that everyone is exercising their right to vote. So overall, we had more than 51 million people early voting across the country. That is a record high. We also have a record number here. If we have 600,000 Texans vote today across the entire state, then we will beat the all-time record that we set the last midterms in 2022. So many people early voted. Now, here's the thing. We don't know how people were voting. We don't know which party they were voting for. We don't know if they voted for every single race on the ballot. Because remember, depending on where you live, you had maybe plus minus 100 races on your ballot. So it's hard to say, and I'm always cautious not to call things before Fox News calls it. But there is a chance that things could be changing here in Texas, as well as some battleground states around the country as well. And that's my way of saying I'm not going to say yes. Tell us how important Houston voters are because we have a lot of weight when it comes to Texas. That's it. We do. So Houston has several, actually, districts that impact Houston. So Houston, it breaks apart into several different districts. And this is a typically Democrat area in Harris County. That's why some of the targets were here with Congressional District 9, Congressional District 18, 29. That was the focus of Republicans to maybe make it a little less blue, maybe slip it into the purple or try to make it a lighter red or a deep red. So we'll just have to see how things shake out. But voter turnout, though, in Harris County, Also beating a record for early voting. And we have long lines out there, Coco. A lot of our viewers are sending me pictures saying they've been in line for up to an hour. And this is the early part of the day. So I'm expecting come 7 o'clock when the polls close, remember, if you're in line, you still get to vote. I'm expecting there still will be people in line after 7 o'clock. All right. Thank you so much, Lena. The good thing is we get you all day long, all of the latest and the greatest. So we're going to check in with Lena a little bit later on. And yeah, like she said, congratulations to all of you who have helped set the record here in the Harris County and Houston area.