An update now that we pretty much know how the House is going to end up:
Redistricting cycles always create some fun patterns in terms of seat distribution. This year, they helped Democrats hold on surprisingly well in the West and Midwest. In both regions, Democrats wound up holding the same number of seats as they did after the 2020 elections. Since the West gained seats and the Midwest lost some, the net result is a slight improvement for Republicans in the former but for Democrats in the latter. Democrats' performance in the Midwest is remarkable - it's actually their best result in the region in a year when they lost the House since 2000. Of course, this has a lot to do with favorable redistricting - the egregious IL gerrymander combined with a genuinely fair map in MI and a fair-ish one in OH meant that the playing field was a lot more level than in the past. Still, Democrats did overperform expectations in that region, as they did in much of the West (even CA, while disappointing, still effectively flipped only 1.5 seats to the GOP if the current numbers hold).
Meanwhile, the Northeast was brutal, with Democrats losing another 5 seats there (Republicans gained just 3 since the region as a whole lost seats) on top of the 3 they lost last time. Of course, these losses come down almost entirely to New York, and there's still a lot to be learned about how Democrats f**ked up so badly there. Sadly, this obscured their solid performance in PA and their continued dominance of New England. The South also saw some significant losses, partly due of brazen Republican gerrymanders and partly to their underperformance among Hispanics in Texas and Florida. Democrats had actually held up well in the South in 2020, but this year showed that the bottom hasn't yet entirely fallen out (and things could get worse if NC Republicans revert to a gerrymander).
I know mapmaking rules complicate this, but this chart makes it look like 2016/18 trends have reversed.
