Republicans currently hold their largest majority in the House of Representatives since the New Deal and Democrats would need to flip 30 seats next November to regain control of the chamber. It’s a tall order, but Minority Whip Steny Hoyer isn’t ruling out a wave election next year.

“I’m not predicting at this point in time we’ll take the 30 seats we need, but I do not believe that is impossible either,” Hoyer told a group of reporters in his Capitol Hill office Thursday morning. “I think it would be very possible that we could well do that.”

Hoyer pointed to the 2006 midterm elections, in which Democrats flipped 32 seats to take a majority after Republicans had controlled Congress for more than a decade. He said that in the months before that sweeping victory, he predicted the party could win 30 seats, which most observers considered a high hurdle.

But there are crucial differences between that 2006 victory and 2016. The former occurred in the middle of President George W. Bush’s second term and the vote largely stemmed from frustrations with his presidency, as midterm elections often do with second-term presidents. Next year's election comes at the end of Obama's eight years in office. Democrats also needed only 17 seats to regain the majority in 2006, while they will need to win a minimum of 30 next year to take control of the House again.

Hoyer’s argument that the majority is not out of reach essentially boils down to two main points: Republican dysfunction in Congress will cause voters to turn towards Democrats, and Hillary Clinton will provide a major boost at the top of the ticket. The Maryland congressman said there was a “temporary lull” in dysfunction after Speaker John Boehner announced his retirement and Paul Ryan took over three weeks ago, but he noted that “it took three weeks to return to regular disorder.” He pointed to the Syrian refugee bill that passed the House later Thursday – with a number of Democrats joining Republicans to support it – as an example to support his argument.

“Ryan has in less than three weeks returned exactly to the structure that he said he was going to reform,” Hoyer said. “This is a ‘special bill,’ but if you only follow regular order when it’s convenient, then you don’t have regular order. And I think the American public are going to be very concerned about that."

In terms of the top of the ticket, the minority whip all but dismissed the notion of a Democratic primary race between frontrunner Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. Hoyer called Clinton “head and shoulders above every other candidate on either side in terms of dealing with international insecurities.”

“I think we’re going to have a presidential candidate that’s going to be a strong leader in a lot of the states where we have contested seats and I think she’s going to do very, very well in those states,” Hoyer said.

However, Democrats would have to win some seats considered relatively safe for Republicans to take back the majority. Republicans hold 246 seats to Democrats’ 188 (John Boehner’s former seat will remain empty until early next year). The Rothenberg-Gonzales political report lists 31 seats as “in play” next year, 25 of which are currently held by Republicans—but the majority of those races either lean Republican or are Republican favored.

The GOP, for its part, remains bullish on the party’s chances not only to maintain the majority, but also to expand it. In a memo earlier this month assessing the race one year out, National Republican Congressional Committee Executive Director Rob Simms said he is “confident in our outlook,” arguing that voters would show “Obama and Clinton fatigue.”

Simms wrote that “52 weeks from Election Day, Republicans are in a strong position to not only maintain our historic majority but continue to strengthen it even further.”