Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, in an interview with RealClearPolitics, said Democrats could take back the House in 2018, winning as many as 35 seats.

"First of all, we're optimistic moving forward in 2018. Second of all ... a president of one party facing a minority after the first two years of his term, almost invariably loses his own members and sees the minority party grow. And in fact, that average is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 35,” Hoyer told Associate Editor and columnist A.B. Stoddard in an interview for RCP’s “First 100 Days” podcast. “So we need 24 [seats] to get into the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives – we do not see that as impossible. As a matter of fact, we see it as a very possible result of a public that has now got Donald Trump at the lowest [approval] number of any recent president this far into his term."

However, the pathway to the majority has its own set of challenges for Democrats. Even though the minority party does typically pick up seats during midterm elections -- the president’s party has lost ground in the House in 36 of 39 midterms dating back to the Civil War -- the 2018 races may shape up differently.

According the Cook Political Report ratings, the odds favor the incumbent Republican Party. Even if Democrats sweep the toss-up and GOP-leaning seats, as well as maintain their solid and Democratic-leaning seats, they would only have 206 seats.

The final push to the needed 217 majority may then rely on national conditions, such as Trump’s approval rating.

The Republican takeover of the House worked much the same way in the 2010 midterms, when Barack Obama was in the White House and Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. During the week of the midterms, national polls put Obama’s approval rating in the mid-40s. This worked to Republicans’ advantage – they gained 63 House seats, winning control of the lower chamber (although Democrats kept the Senate).

In the 2014 midterms, Republicans maintained their House majority and added 13 more seats.

Trump, on the other hand, has never had a positive approval rating since taking office. The RCP average has his job approval at net negative 6.4 percent.

This low rating is due in part to “the chaos” Americans are seeing out of Washington, Hoyer said. He believes their concern stems from “the lack of a jobs bill, the lack of a national security effort.” Trump has also tabled his plan to balance the budget, a promise he made often throughout his campaign, the Maryland Democrat pointed out in his interview with RCP.

Hoyer likewise mentioned an overall lack of communication coming out of the White House, despite the president asserting his willingness to reach across the aisle during his address Tuesday to a joint session of Congress.

“The president has essentially not reached out to anybody,” Hoyer said. “He has not reached out to anybody in the Democratic Party as far as I know with respect to policy formulations and the working together that he talked about in his speech, but has shown little inclination of pursuing.”

Hoyer chalked up Trump’s failure to speak with many fellow Republicans as a sign of the division within the GOP.

But he pushed back against the idea that the Democratic Party is likewise divided.

“I'm not sure that I accept the premise ... that the Democratic Party is a divided party, or that, frankly, we are leaderless,” Hoyer said. “When you look at the votes on the floor of the House on an almost daily basis with respect to opposition to the Republicans trying to undermine regulations which protect our people – in terms of health care, protecting our consumers, protecting our environment – you don't see any division in the Democratic Party."

A spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, responded to Hoyer’s 2018 forecast with skepticism. "True to form, House Democrats are starting off another election cycle with outlandish predictions,” said Jesse Hunt. “There are a few certainties in life: death, taxes, and House Democrats’ failure to meet their stated electoral objectives, and history will repeat itself once again.”

This article was updated at 1:47 p.m. March 2.

David Byler contributed to this article.