House Republicans fear primary losers could sink their razor-thin majority

Some House Republicans are worried about the prospect of their colleagues quietly resigning after losing their primaries as the election season heats up, threatening to shrink the Republican Party’s already dangerously thin majority.

House Republicans will likely only lose two votes on a party-line measure after a special election in a deep-red Georgia district this week.

Some told Fox News Digital, however, that they fear their colleagues could start missing out on key votes before the end of their terms if their ambitions for higher office don’t go as planned.

“It’s a real problem,” a House Republican who was granted anonymity to speak candidly told Fox News Digital. “Will one of them leave for his second round? Will another not come back at all because he’s angry? Will another not come back because he lost?”

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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and other House Republican leaders walk through National Statuary Hall on their way to his daily news conference on the government shutdown at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 4, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Asked whether such absences could translate into a loss of a functional majority for Republicans in the House, the Republican lawmaker replied: “We could do it, that’s why everyone is nervous about it.”

In the Lone Star State alone, two House Republicans are guaranteed not to return next year after last week’s primaries. Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, lost his bid to unseat Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is headed to a runoff with state Attorney General Ken Paxton. And Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, faced an upset against a primary challenger running to his right, conservative lawmaker Steve Toth.

Neither has indicated they will skip House votes for the remainder of the term because of those losses, but Hunt’s attendance record has already generated frustration among his colleagues.

Apart from them, 18 other Republicans in the House of Representatives are currently vying for different positions in the upcoming primaries and general elections.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, told Fox News Digital he also worries about GOP turnout as the election season heats up.

“Our margins are as thin as they can be, so we need everyone to show up,” he said. “So yeah, that could potentially be a problem. I hope it’s not.”

Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., told Fox News Digital, “I think it’s a problem.”

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Rep. Wesley Hunt, Republican of Texas and candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks during an early voting kickoff event at Sandlewood Manor in Tomball, Texas, February 17, 2026. (Marc Félix/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“I hope they recognize this moment. There’s still a long way to go in this Congress, and people have trusted their elected representatives to get the job done. So they need to be here,” Fry said.

But the start of the election season is not the first time that this Congress – or even this year – has been concerned about the Republican Party’s margins.

For example, a small group of Republicans managed to join Democrats in forcing a vote on extending expired Obamacare subsidies, which the Republican largely opposed. And last month, President Donald Trump’s tariff strategy faced a public setback when an equally small number of Republican lawmakers voted with Democrats to reject it.

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Neither measure is likely to pass the Republican Senate, but it speaks to the slim margins under President Mike Johnson, R-La.

And legislative setbacks seen earlier this year aside, the sudden and tragic death of one House Republican and the abrupt resignation of another served to further depress the conference’s numbers.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, left, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speak during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, November 5, 2025. (Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Car accidents and other health problems have also sometimes forced the House to change its schedule. That prompted Republican leaders in the House of Representatives to warn their lawmakers to be as careful as possible when outside Washington.

“The margins are really, really close. A few of us were in a car the other day, driving…if it became an accident, that would have tipped the scales,” Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital in January. “It’s a big deal to change power outside of a normal election cycle.”

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House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told reporters last week that turnout was “always a concern” but was optimistic about how to navigate it.

“We’ve had elections along the way, and yet we’re still able to move our agenda forward,” Scalise said. “We track people who are having surgery, we warn about it in advance, and we work around it. But at the end of the day, we were able to advance President Trump’s agenda and our own, and get things done for the American people that we ran for.”