Midterm checkup; Democrats' obsession with gerrymandering

We are now one month and one day away from the midterm elections. As of now, Democrats have a roughly 66% chance of keeping the Senate while Republicans have a roughly 70% chance of winning the House. On the generic congressional ballot, Democrats lead Republicans by about one point. Those numbers are very close to where they were one month ago.

The Senate

The fundamentals have not changed that much since I wrote last month about the state of the midterms. If I had to guess the outcome, it would not be significantly different from last month. The biggest change since my last piece is that New Hampshire had not yet had their primary. They now have and I think it is safe to say Maggie Hassan, the Democratic Senator up for re-election, is the luckiest candidate of the cycle. She could have faced Chris Sununu, the Republican governor. Instead, she is now facing Don Bolduc, an election denier and crank conspiracy theorist with virtually no money. Anything is possible, but I am hard pressed to think she loses absent some huge new development. New Hampshire elects Republicans to statewide offices, but not lunatics.

On Monday, the Georgia race got a big revelation. The Republican candidate, Herschel Walker, reimbursed a girlfriend of his for an abortion she had in 2009, which he had encouraged her to have. The woman provided the Daily Beast, who broke the story, with a reimbursement check with his signature on it as well as a get well soon card from him. She is also the mother of one of his secret children, which undercuts his claim that he did not know who she was. His son, the one who was not a secret, has now turned on him. What makes it such a big story, among other reasons, is that Walker is campaigning on banning abortion nationally with no exceptions. It is not the first time he has engaged in flagrant hypocrisy, but it is the starkest example of it.

This is certainly not a story that is good for him. He had already been struggling compared to other Republicans running in Georgia and was clearly a weak candidate from the start. That his campaign is now having to spend time talking about that is not what they want to be doing during the final stretch. There is a reason why almost all Republicans in Georgia did not want him to run. He was long known to have serious liabilities, especially as it pertained to his personal life, but Republicans decided to clear the field for him and now they are stuck with a terrible candidate in a pivotal race. That has been a recurring pattern this year.

The revelation does not mean Walker cannot win. Partisanship alone likely guarantees him a high floor of support. Religious conservatives and anti-abortion figures are still backing him. That is no surprise given that they all backed Trump and have made it clear that their talk about morals and family values was just that. National Republicans are still supporting him and are still going to spend money on the race. That is understandable because, since they are already behind in Arizona and New Hampshire, they cannot afford to abandon Georgia. If they did they would be pinning their hopes on winning the Senate on just Nevada and Pennsylvania and guaranteeing, at best, that they only win 51 seats.

While Walker can still win, some seem to have concluded that scandals no longer matter, citing Trump, which is way overstating things. Scandals do matter at the margins. Hardcore partisans will always vote for their candidate, but elections in Georgia are no longer decided by them. Georgia is a purple state where close elections, for now, are probably the norm. Close elections are decided at the margins. Walker does not have to bleed support to lose. He just has to lose a slice of undecided voters or soft Republicans.

I am obviously biased being a Democrat, but it should go without saying that Walker has absolutely no business being in the Senate. The latest revelation, especially with his son now turning on him, is just sad. Whether his troubles are caused by football injures, pre-existing mental illnesses or his belief that rules are for suckers, I do not know. He is clearly a disturbed person who has a lot of serious personal problems that he needs to deal with. He needs to do that as a private citizen, not a public official. 

In Pennsylvania, the Senate race between John Fetterman and Dr. Oz has tightened somewhat, but that was always going to happen. Fetterman enjoyed double digit leads over the summer, but that had to do with Oz’s weak support among Republicans. They were always going to back him in the end. Despite the tightening, Oz’s favorable numbers are still terrible. Fetterman, despite being attacked relentlessly on crime, has managed to have favorable numbers that are, at worst, even and otherwise are positive. I expect the final margin to be close with maybe an edge for Fetterman due to his being a much better candidate and Republicans all but forfeiting the governor’s race.

In Arizona, not much has changed in the last month. Mark Kelly is still ahead. He has run a stellar campaign. He has also lucked out in having an opponent with very little money, a terrible favorable rating and who he has successfully portrayed as an extremist.

Ultimately, if I had to guess, I would say that control of the Senate will be determined by Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania. I wish it was it wasn’t so, but Tim Ryan is highly unlikely to win in Ohio. That is a shame because he has run a great campaign while JD Vance has barely lifted a finger and deserves to lose in a landslide. The same is true in Wisconsin. Democrats do have an outside chance of winning there, but it is less likely than not. If Democrats were not the party in the White House, they would probably be heavily favored in both of those races.

The House

With respect to the House, it would be very unusual if Republicans did not win it. They only need to gain six seats, which is not a tall order. If the generic congressional ballot numbers today hold true on November 8 and Democrats win the vote by 1 point, Republicans could still net six seats. Because there are so many races, I cannot make any predictions about any one of them.

Helping Republicans is that candidate quality matters a lot less in House races. There have been a few districts where Republicans have nominated lunatics in races that a normal Republican would have a much better chance of winning. While that is not irrelevant, it matters much less in the House because individual races get much less attention compared to statewide races and most people will vote just based on party.

The party in the White House almost always loses seats in midterm elections. Between that and the fact that Republicans only need to net six seats, they are significant favorites for winning the House next month. Besides those two things, there are other reasons why Republicans are favored to win the House. For example, Biden’s approval rating is still low. Democrats do have more motivation than usual for the party in the White House, especially because of abortion, but it is probably not enough to offset all the other countervailing forces.

Governors

Not much has changed in the gubernatorial landscape in the last month. In Pennsylvania and Michigan, the Democrats, Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer, respectively, look to be in great shape. Both of them have very weak opponents with almost no money who they are vastly outspending. Their opponents are both examples of what I wrote about last month arguing that there is only one Trump. They both act like him, i.e., they are election deniers and culture warriors, but they do not have his appeal. They are stuck with his negatives while having none of his positives.

While bad Republican nominees in Senate races have gotten the bulk of press coverage, in key gubernatorial races they have also nominated terrible candidates. Pennsylvania and Michigan are states where Republicans should be competitive if not favored. Barring an implosion or a massive polling error far worse than anything in 2020, both Democrats should win by a decent amount.

Arizona is a state where Republicans should be favored. Like in some other states, they have nominated an election denier who is running even with a not-so-great Democratic candidate. Unlike Michigan and Pennsylvania, that race is a tossup, but it should not be.

Currently, there are no governorships held by Democrats that are solid Republican pickups. The most likely pickups are in Kansas, Wisconsin, Oregon, Nevada and maybe New Mexico. Those races could go either way although New Mexico is probably Democratic-leaning.  

Stop griping about gerrymandering, Democrats

While there are many reasons why Republicans will likely win back the House, there is one reason they will not: gerrymandering. That drives me off the wall every time I hear a Democrat complaining about it. Democrats griping about gerrymandering is so common it is almost like a pastime. If I had one penny for every time I heard a Democrat say Democrats can never win the House because of gerrymandering, I would be a trillionaire.

Listening to Democrats’ non-stop griping about gerrymandering being an insurmountable barrier despite repeatedly being refuted makes me feel like Bill Murray from Groundhog Day.

Scene 1: Republicans control the House, Democrats gripe about how they can never win back the House because of gerrymandering.

Scene 2: Democrats win back the House. Radio silence from the gripers.

Scene 3: Democrats keep the House and win the White House. Radio silence from the gripers.

Scene 4: Democrats lose the House in the midterms because that is how midterms work. Return of the gripers.

Scene 5: Republicans keep the House and win back the White House. Democrats gripe about how they can never win back the House because of gerrymandering.

Scene 6: Democrats win back the House in the midterms because that is how midterms work. Rinse and repeat until the end of time.

The current congressional map, while ever so slightly biased towards Republicans, is the least biased in decades. In fact, a majority of congressional districts were won by Biden in 2020. Despite much less fair maps in the 2000s and 2010s, Democrats won back and kept the House in both of those decades. I remember in 2018 hearing one Democrat after another say that Democrats could not win back the House because of gerrymandering. That year, Democrats won 41 House seats, the best they have done since 1974.

In fact, the only reason Republicans have any edge in the current House map has nothing to do with anything they did. It has everything to do with what Democrats did to themselves. Democrats have long railed against gerrymandering and non-partisan redistricting has been something they have argued for. The problem is that while doing non-partisan redistricting nationally would be great, doing it on a state-by-state basis has been a disaster. Why? Because the states that have adopted non-partisan commissions have largely been states run by Democrats.

The only states that have Republicans governors and legislatures that use non-partisan commissions are Arizona, Montana and Idaho. States that are run by Democrats that use commissions are California, Colorado, Washington and New Jersey. In New York, Democrats passed a gerrymander of their own only for the state appeals court to strike it down, which may cost them up to five House seats.

What happens when states run by Democrats refuse to gerrymander while states run by Republicans still do it? Republicans gain an advantage. The unilateral disarming by states run by Democrats may have cost them more than a dozen House seats. Had Democrats not taken away their ability to gerrymander, they may well be favorites to hold the House. At a minimum, their odds would be substantially better than what they are now.

If this was a wave year for Republicans, no amount of gerrymandering would save Democrats. But this is highly unlikely to be wave year. It is much more likely to be neutral or close to it. That is the kind of year when gerrymandering is most effective. Too bad Democrats got all high and mighty and shot themselves in the foot.

There is a case the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will be hearing soon that could, ironically, help out Democrats quite a bit. It deals with whether state legislatures have the sole authority to draw congressional districts and assign electors in the Electoral College. The latter part has understandably gotten the most attention because of its vast and awful implications. For example, if the state legislators in North Carolina who brought the case win, state legislatures could decide they will award electors to whoever they want and not to who won the most votes.

That is certainly not an outcome I hope to see. But I do hope they rule that state legislatures cannot be prevented from drawing congressional districts lines by either state supreme courts or commissions. That is to say I hope SCOTUS strikes down redistricting commissions that have been set up in mostly blue states. True, Republicans would benefit from that in a few states, but Democrats would benefit vastly more. Between California, New York, Colorado, New Jersey and Washington, Democrats could easily wind up netting themselves more than fifteen seats if they could redraw congressional district lines.

To be clear, I do not like gerrymandering at all. I want to see it eliminated nationally. SCOTUS striking down state redistricting commissions would not stop that. Congress is always free to draw its own district lines. That is not going to happen anytime soon, unfortunately. Republicans still enjoy a tiny advantage and so will not support eliminating gerrymandering. In all honesty, if the tables are turned and Democrats enjoy an advantage in the House, I am skeptical they would actually get rid of gerrymandering. On top of that, many representatives of both parties enjoy representing certain areas and non-partisan redistricting might put that at risk, which could be a source of bipartisan opposition to it.

Gerrymandering is something that either needs to be eliminated nationally or carried out ruthlessly in each state. The latter is a bad state of affairs, but it is better than what we have now where Democrats get high on their own supply and hobble themselves. Both parties should play by the same rules. Nobody gets brownie points for unilaterally disarming. As long as Republicans continue to gerrymander, Democrats should be every bit as aggressive about it.

Despite Democrats’ unilaterally disarming, they still could keep control of the House this year. The good news is that since the entire House is up every two years, they could lose it in 2022 and win it back in 2024. Given that the current map is much fairer than it has been in decades, Democrats should have no trouble winning it back the next time there is a Republican in the White House.