Processing the midterms, part two
After a little more than a week, Republicans finally won 218 House seats, giving them a majority. That is one of the very few things they have to celebrate. Since I wrote my last post, Catherine Cortez Masto has been declared the winner in Nevada. That now gives Democrats control of the Senate even if they do not win the runoff in Georgia next month.
On Monday, Katie Hobbs was declared the winner in the gubernatorial race in Arizona. She beat Kari Lake, arguably this cycle’s biggest election denier who had some glowing profiles written about her in the lead up to the election. She was supposed to be the heiress to MAGA and pick up where Trump leaves off. After her loss, election deniers are now winless in swing state races. Democrats now control 24 governorships, up from 22 last month. Democrats also continued to make gains in state legislatures. They now have control of the state house in Pennsylvania for the first time since 2008.
Despite Republicans winning the House, their most likely majority will be 220-222 seats. 222 exactly the number Democrats had before the election. Of the many surprising plot twists to come from this election, the maldistribution of Republican votes is certainly one of the biggest. Traditionally, it was Democrats who had problems with their voters being heavily concentrated in a few areas with so many of their votes “wasted” in districts that were solidly blue.
Now, it looks like it is Republicans who have that problem. Despite a large vote shift towards Republicans compared to 2020, they gained just a handful of House seats. How did that happen? In districts that were solidly red, they got redder while some districts that were solidly blue got a little less blue. The problem is that solidly red districts already had Republicans representing them and solidly blue districts still had Democrats representing them. In purple or light red/blue districts that decide who controls the House, Republicans made very little progress. Democrats running in competitive districts largely held their own.
Although candidate quality in House races usually matters less than in statewide races, it is not irrelevant. There were several districts, including in Ohio, Michigan and New Hampshire where Republicans nominated MAGA cranks and lost winnable races. Similar to statewide races, election deniers in House races in swing districts tended to do poorly.
Going back to the Senate, not only did Democrats maintain control, but I would argue that they are favored in Georgia next month. With Senate control no longer being at stake, it becomes more of a contest of whose voters are more enthusiastic about their candidate. Raphael Warnock has done a great job of building a brand that people like. Despite being attacked in every way possible, he has maintained a positive image. His supporters are, by and large, voting for him because they like him.
For Herschel Walker, it is the opposite story. The biggest reason for supporting him by far was control of the Senate. Hardly anyone is voting for him because they like him. A large majority of those who voted for him in the general election will likely do so again in the runoff, but it does not take many to sit out to make a difference, as the last runoffs showed. With Senate control off the table, the incentive to swim through lava to vote for someone very few people like is a lot weaker.
Another major tailwind Warnock has is Trump running again. There is a reason Republicans did not want him to declare he was running before the runoff. He is not popular in Georgia and his presence on the campaign trail puts him back in the news. It also allows Warnock to tie Walker to Trump. Check out this ad from the Warnock campaign. All it features is Trump praising Walker during his announcement on Tuesday. The fact that Warnock is favored does not guarantee he will win, but I would rather be in his position.
Predictions are tough, especially about the future
I wrote last month about how we are really bad at predicting future events, especially as it pertains to things that are outside of our lived experience. The timing could not have been better. What happened in this election is outside of our lived experience.
It is not the first time the party in the White House has done well in a midterm. It is the first time the party in the White House has done well in a midterm while the president has an approval rating in the low 40s. The other outlier midterms all had mitigating factors that defied the normal gravitational pull against the party in the White House. Examples of those mitigating factors include the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), a booming economy and the party not in the White House overreaching on impeachment (1998) and 9/11 (2002). In all of those cycles, the president had an approval rating in the 60s.
This year, there were no mitigating factors. There was no rally around the flag effect from an external event like 9/11 or the Cuban Missile Crisis. There was no booming economy or sky-high optimism about where things are headed. By virtually all measures, there should have been a red wave.
Although I did not write about it, I am not going to lie, I thought there would be a red wave. I am not sure how confident I was of it, but in my gut it seemed like a much greater possibility than what happened. Was there evidence that what happened could happen? Yes! There was plenty of it. I just did not believe it. Even some of the people conducting polls and looking at every bit of data out there did not believe it either.
Pollsters were scarred by what happened in 2020. The polling errors of that cycle were the worst in decades. Making matters worse, the errors were not random, but systematic. That is to say they consistently understated support for Republicans almost everywhere. True, there were many plausible explanations for it. One that I find convincing and that is unique to 2020 is the pandemic. Democrats were more likely to be at home compared to Republicans and so were more likely to respond to pollsters when they called. I do not know this for sure, but I would guess that whites without a college degree were the least likely to be at home. That just happens to be the most pro-Republican group.
In this cycle, there were no stay-at-home orders and life for most everyone had gone back to normal. Trump was also not on the ballot. The biggest polling errors were in 2016 and 2020, when he was on the ballot. Although polling errors happened in 2018, they were much less significant. Still, I did not believe the polls. They had botched the last two presidential elections and there may well have been fundamental changes in who responds to polls, making their numbers unreliable.
On the generic congressional ballot, 538’s final average had Republicans ahead of Democrats by a drop over one point. That is basically a tie. I did not believe that was how it would end. I thought that the most likely outcome was that those who were undecided would break heavily for Republicans because they are not the party in the White House. My guess was that those voters were going to be voting based on the economy and while they may not like Republicans, they were unhappy and were going to take that out on Democrats. Republicans only winning the congressional popular vote by 1-2 points seemed way too good to be true.
As things stand now, the 538 final number looks like it was very close to being spot on. There are still ballots left to be counted and Republicans currently lead by almost four points. Given that the remaining ballots are largely from California, I expect that number to go down and end up close to two points for Republicans. Nate Silver has a great reputation for a reason.
Looking at the Senate races, polling in retrospect seems to have been very good. That is especially true for polling done by news organizations such as the New York Times. Check out their final poll of the Senate races in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Their numbers are almost spot on. Other pollsters showed incumbent Democrats holding their own even if their races were close. I just did not believe that not a single incumbent would lose when the president’s approval rating is massively underwater in their states. Georgia has not been decided yet, but all the other incumbents won.
The same phenomenon is true for gubernatorial races. Polls showed Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania up by double digits for months. I thought he would win, but I did not think it would be a cakewalk. It was a cakewalk. Ditto with Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan. Katie Hobbs was behind in virtually every poll taken. It was a close race, but she looked like she was running a lackluster campaign and was going to come up short. The race was extremely close, but she won.
Tony Evers in Wisconsin was reelected. I did not think he was going to hang on. Wisconsin was ground zero for bad polling in 2016 and especially 2020. Polls had the race close, but the Republican tended to be ahead. I thought that undecided voters would go to the Republican. I was wrong again. Unlike 2016 and 2020, polling in Wisconsin this cycle was very good.
In general, polling this cycle looks to have been very good. While there were polling errors, they were random and generally not significant. That is to say polling underestimated Democrats as often as it underestimated Republicans. For example, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire was only ahead by 1-3 points on average. She won by 9. While it would be nice for polling to always be accurate, if it is going to miss some races, it is much better to be random than systematic.
After botching 2016 and 2020, polling has gained back some credibility. That is a good thing. If polling went away that would eliminate a key metric for measuring public opinion and finding out where individual races stand. It would make candidates’ lives much harder in terms of figuring out which policies and messages to run on and what to prioritize when in office. I am happy to say that predictions of polling’s demise were greatly exaggerated.
Republicans have nobody but themselves to blame
Republicans had everything going for them. There was no precedent for what happened on November 8. There was every reason to think they were going to kill it. All they had to do was not screw it up. They screwed it up.
This cycle is not the first one where Republicans have blown winnable races by nominating bad candidates. That happened in 2010 and 2012. Even in those cycles, though, Republicans nominating bad candidates was the exception. What is different about this cycle is that Republicans nominating bad candidates was the rule. That was their choice.
The most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate were in New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. In all of those races, the Republican candidate was terrible. The most likely pickup opportunity for Democrats was Pennsylvania. There, too, the candidate Republicans nominated was terrible. That was their choice.
Some of the biggest pickup opportunities for governorships Republicans had were in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In all of those races, their candidates were terrible. They should have had no problem keeping the governorship in Arizona. They opted to nominate the queen of election deniers and lost. That was their choice.
In races for secretary of state and attorney general in swing states, Republicans should have been able to win. They opted to nominate for secretary of state election deniers in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada and lost all of them. They nominated election deniers for attorney general in Michigan, Nevada and Arizona. Arizona is virtually tied and will go to a recount while they lost the other two races handily. That was their choice.
There was some controversy during the primary season about Democrats boosting election deniers in Republican primaries. In total, Democrats spent $36 million in 13 primaries boosting election deniers. That includes races for governor, the Senate and the House. Not every candidate Democrats boosted was nominated, but of the ones who did get nominated, all of them lost. Republican primary voters saw ads from Democrats saying “Candidate X is MAGA,” and thought, “That’s my candidate.” That was their choice.
Is it hypocritical for Democrats to say they are worried about democracy while boosting election deniers? Absolutely. Do I have any sympathy for Republicans bemoaning that hypocrisy? Absolutely not. Hypocrisy in politics is like sugar in doughnuts. It is a rare thing when someone does not engage in it. Everyone should be used to it by now.
I wrote over the summer about why I am not sympathetic to complaints from Republicans about Democrats meddling in their primaries so feel free to check it out for more detail. The fact is the reason Democrats did that is because Republican primary voters like MAGA crazies. If they did not, Democrats would not waste their money trying to boost them. That is the elephant in the room for Republicans (no pun intended). There were plenty of primaries where Democrats did not meddle and Republicans still nominated lunatics. That was their choice.
Trump is obviously a major reason why Republicans nominated so many lunatics this cycle. He endorsed one lunatic after another in primaries and they almost all won. Republicans upset over Trump undermining them need to take a long, hard look in a mirror. They covered for him for four years and excused his every action. When he committed his first impeachable act, they served as his personal cheerleaders. After he incited an insurrection, they refused to convict him in the Senate. That was their choice.
It was in Republicans’ best interest for Trump to have been convicted after January 6. Democrats were ready, willing and able to convict him. Every single Democrat in the Senate voted to convict him. Seven Republicans voted to convict him, but seventeen were needed. They were not willing to do it. Had he been convicted, he would have been barred from running for president again and his lingering shadow would have been much smaller if it existed at all. Democrats were offering Republicans an escape hatch and they refused it. That was their choice.
Nobody forced them to keep covering for Trump. Republican elected officials and voters are adults. They have minds of their own and can make their own decisions. They have chosen to make a deal with the devil by sticking with Trump and only now, after blowing what should have been an easy win, are they upset about it. Who could possibly have known that Trump cares only about himself and could not care any less about the Republican Party? Literally anyone paying even the slightest drop of attention.