Now that we’re under two weeks out from the all-important midterm elections, data points are coming in from all over the place that make it almost impossible to guess what the political balance might resemble when the votes are counted (and recounted in some places, most assuredly). But that’s exactly what I’m going to try and do.
Mid-terms historically do not favor the party of the incumbent president. In fact, in the last 140 years, only four times did the president’s party not lose more than four seats in a mid-term election. Remember, that’s the cushion Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats currently enjoy – four seats. All four other times, the president at the time had a 60-plus percent job approval, something Joe Biden has never seen. Biden is barely struggling to hold onto 40%.
In 2010, the Republicans picked up 63 seats in the House of Representatives, and netted six new Republicans in the Senate. And that was largely due to the jam down of Obamacare and nothing else. Today’s political climate has a lot more negatives on a variety of issues for Democrats than 2010 every contained. Will that result in the same margin of seats flipped? Probably not, so the conventional wisdom tell us. Yet, maybe, just maybe, this election will truly reset power inside the Beltway for a while. Maybe.
There is an old adage in American politics that a political party faces impending electoral doom if they are perceived by the majority of the electorate as having committed one of three cardinal sins – messing with me (the voter), messing with my livelihood, or messing with my kids. In the last two years, the Democratic Party inexplicably have accomplished the hat trick.
Mask mandates and vaccine mandates alone could account for the ‘messing with me’ leg of the stool. Throw in rising crime everywhere, with the added touch of releasing the violent prisoners that actually do get prosecuted, of which Democrats seem hesitant to do these days, people don’t feel safe in this country anymore. And we shouldn’t forget to mention that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have declared that you, the voter, are going to be held responsible for picking up the debt being forgiven of students who actually took out loans in the first place.
As for messing with your livelihood, where should we start? Gas prices? Food prices? Inflation that since Joe Biden took office has vastly outpaced wage growth? How about the pending 87,000 IRS agents that will be looking through your finances to see if they can shake some more coins out of your pocket? Or telling you what kind of car you’re going to be allowed to drive, if you should be driving one at all? Or economic policy that has led to interest rates rising to the point that if you had ever thought about buying a house and grasping your share of the American dream, that dream is now just fantasy?
And as for messing with your kids, it’s surreal to me how the left is embracing the most militant position possible in wokeness, a position most of the country strongly opposes. If you have a 10-year old, should that child have the legal right to decide to smoke? How about to drink alcohol? How about consenting to sex with an adult? How about going to get tattoos? How about being allowed to vote? Of course not. That’s ridiculous and silly. No rational person believes that. There’s a reason we have laws on the books so that minors can’t legally enter contracts or do any other adult stuff until the age of 18 in some places for some things, and even up to 21 in order to participate in other activities. Why? Because they’re kids, and they simply do not have the maturity or brain development in order to weigh the consequences of such decisions. Yet the left wants that same child to have the Constitutional right to decide what gender they will be, and that they have an equal Constitutional right to have permanent life-changing gender reassignment surgery at taxpayer expense? California has even gone so far as to pass a law allowing someone who isn’t even a parent to take a minor across state lines and offer them legal refuge in the Golden State in order for gender reassignment surgery to take place. Say what you will about the gender issue, about 90% of Americans think this is just crazy. And that’s not even to mention the mission creep of wokeness in school curriculums all across the country that parents are still ticked about.
So we’re facing an election cycle predicate unlike any I’ve seen in my adult lifetime. The Democrats have taken a chainsaw to all three legs of the “Don’t let this politically happen to you” stool. But again, will we see it result in huge numbers next Tuesday?
Because of redistricting over the last couple decades by both parties, there’s far fewer seats that are considered to be swing seats. So in a neutral or static political environment, there’s not much swing in seats flipping by design. Both parties protected themselves by making fewer swing districts. It’s when the president’s unpopularity, or more precisely, the generic Congressional map swings wildly that things get interesting.
Sean Trende over at Real Clear Politics had a great analysis of this about a month ago when the Republicans reopened a significant lead in the generic Congressional map. Remember, it heavily favored the Republicans early in 2002, softened a lot in the summer as some people were reacting to the Dobbs decision handed down by the Supreme Court. But as the summer waned and fall came on, the same core issues of economics, crime, education, and immigration reestablished their dominance in the minds of voters. That resulted in the generic Congressional map spreading to the right again.
Trende suggests that in a fairly neutral election, where Republicans win by 3 or less, if you include Democratic districts that Biden won by 2 points, Republicans could see 232 seats when all is said and done. They currently hold 212. But while there’s not a lot of movement possible in neutral environments, if you do get outside of normal, like the environment in which we find ourselves, and the generic Congressional map spreads to five or better, there’s a levy that breaks on the Democratic side.
But one consequence in the near-elimination of swing districts is that there are substantial “levies” on either side of the valley. The levy on the Democrats’ side is particularly steep. So in a universe where Republicans win the popular vote by four points, sweeping all of the districts that Biden won with 54% of the vote or less, the levy would break and the Republican majority would jump from 232 seats to 245 seats. Winning by six points leads to smaller gains as we work down the other side of the levy, leading to a majority of 252 seats. Of course, these are approximations; Republicans would probably win some seats beyond Biden +10 and lose some where Biden performed worse in this scenario. This is just to illustrate how the playing field works.
This was written a month ago. Over at Real Clear Politics, there’s four new generic Congressional polls out, taken since last Tuesday. Insider Advantage has R+4, Rasmussen is at R+7, Trafalgar shows R+6, and Data For Progress, a Democratic polling firm, shows R+4. Average all four, and you have R+5.5. It won’t be 63 like in 2010, but it very well could be in the 40-plus range, which would be the largest Republican majority in over 100 years.
And it’s not just Congress where the wave is being manifested. Governor seats are going to flip all over the country. Christine Drazan is up in Oregon, Mark Ronchetti is up in New Mexico, Tudor Dixon is ahead of Gretchen Whitmer, Kari Lake is going to cruise in Arizona, and Democrats are having to spend money and time in New York to try to save Kathy Hochul from a closing Lee Zeldin.
The Senate looks more likely to be taken over by Republicans with each passing day and poll. Adam Laxalt is up somewhere around 4 points in Nevada, Chuck Schumer conceded in a hot mic moment on a Syracuse tarmac last week that they’re going downhill in Georgia, with Herschel Walker leading there by 4, and Blake Masters in Arizona has caught Mark Kelly, closing from down six just a few weeks ago. If the red wave has any size to it, New Hampshire’s Don Bolduc makes it R+4. If it’s a big wave, Joe O’Dea wins in Colorado. If it’s a tsunami, Tiffany Smiley makes it an R+6 night. And if the day after Election Day people see an ark floating around with a couple of giraffe necks sticking out the window, you’ll know that the sleeper race that Florida Senator and NRSC Chair Rick Scott said to keep an eye on in Connecticut, Leora Levy over Richard Blumenthal, made it a clean sweep and a lucky seven night.
I’m not normally optimistic going into elections. I’m always hopeful. This time, considering all the data that’s coming in, granted anecdotally in a lot of cases but unfailingly pointing towards the right, it looks like we’re in for a very good night ahead.
