SALEM — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Oregon earlier this month to pump up local Democratic candidates for Congress.

The California Democrat said she rejects the idea that Republicans are poised to retake the House in November.

“We intend to grow our numbers,” Pelosi told reporters in Portland on Sept. 6. “Oregon is very important in that regard.”

With three open congressional seats, Oregon is a key battleground between Democrats and Republicans in 2022.

Democrats currently hold a razor-thin 221 to 212 majority, with two vacancies.

Democratic control of the 50-50 split in the U.S. Senate — with Vice-President Kamala Harris as a tie-breaking vote — is harder to predict. The 100 senators run in three staggered groups for six-year terms.

All 435 U.S. House seats will be on the ballot in 2022. The chamber’s two-year terms make it the most volatile barometer of political trends.

If history is a guide, odds are Pelosi will have to hand the gavel over to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, when the new Congress convenes in January.

Any other outcome would be the rarest of political anomalies. Pelosi began her second stint as U.S. House Speaker in 2018, when voters handed the gavel back to Democrats two years after President Donald Trump won the White House.

The same historical tides would have the likely outcome of Democratic losses two years after the election of President Joe Biden.

The new president’s poor job approval rating was seen as a drag on the Democratic Party coming into the 2022 race.

The possibility of a “red wave” fueled Republican hopes — including a pledge of $3.3 million to buy ads for Oregon congressional races pledged by a political action committee tied to McCarthy.

One model created by the website The Cook Political Report cast Democrats as losing up to 42 seats. That’s a sizable but not unusual total in midterm elections.

But as summer ends and the election is just six weeks away, some forecasts are seeing an odd disconnect between the fortunes of the White House and the outcome of races to decide who rules Capitol Hill next year. Democrats may avert a disaster — though even small doses of bad news will be enough to upset the balance of power.

Historic lookOver the past 100 years, the party of a new president most often lost seats in the first midterm after taking the White House. It happened to Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, presidents from Harry Truman to Donald Trump.

Only twice has the trend not held up: Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, in the first midterm after the Great Depression, and George W. Bush, in the “war election” of 2002 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The history is more than of passing interest to Oregon congressional candidates running in at least three districts.

The tightest race is in the 5th Congressional District, where Terrebonne attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner knocked off incumbent U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Canby.

While Democratic leaders in the district rallied to McLeod-Skinner’s progressive campaign, her victory spurred national forecasters to place the seat as a “toss-up.” The Republican in the race is former Happy Valley Mayor Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

The brand-new 6th district has been forecast as tilting in favor of Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Lake Oswego, who is looking to trade Salem for Washington, D.C. She’s up against Republican businessman Mike Erickson, also of Lake Oswego.

In the 4th district, incumbent U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield, opted to retire from the seat he has held since 1986.

Labor Commissioner Val Hoyle won the Democratic nomination and redistricting has shorn the 4th district of some heavily Republican areas.

Republican Alek Skarlatos, of Roseburg, ran a strong race against DeFazio in 2020, but is trying again in a more Democratic-leaning district.

The other three districts are prohibitively partisan. U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Beaverton, is running for reelection in the heavily Democratic 1st district in northwest Oregon. U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Portland, has the district with the heaviest concentration of Democratic voters.

But a winner in the overall outcome in November could be U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario. He’s vying for his second term in the state’s 2nd district that covers most of eastern and southwestern Oregon.

What is the prognosis for November? Projections of a “red wave” that would swamp Democrats have faded. But the small majority is a longshot to withstand the usual shifts that come with midterms.

Even if Democrats sweep the other races in Oregon, that would leave Bentz as the sole member of the majority party in the U.S. House.