That is not, however, the case for 2022. I have had elections where at this point I wasn't quite ready to call the White House, Senate, & House, but it's very rare that I wasn't ready to call more than one of them. And yet...this race is odd. There are too many factors that we can't decide, too many things that feel not-quite-right. I figured we'd talk through that a little bit today by discussing three things. First, what is causing me to be confused as we head into the final five weeks of the campaign. And second/third, why I think the Senate is still Democratic-favored (but narrowing) and conversely why I think the House is Republican-favored (but narrowing). Let's dive in, shall we?
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| President Joe Biden (D-DE) |
Most midterms become a reflection on the person in the Oval Office, and right now that's Joe Biden. Biden's approval ratings have seen some improvement in the past few weeks compared to the nadir of earlier this summer, but they're still pretty low. They wouldn't be be a death knell in a presidential election two years out (just ask Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama, who had similar numbers & still won comfortably), but they're not great for a midterm if the country wants to send him a message. Inflation still is pinching pennies (if you haven't been impacted good for you, but the rest of us are definitely wondering why it is we're leaving the grocery store with less than we normally would), and the price of gas, after a steep decline, has started to go up again as the fall continues. This is reflected in polling, which has shown a slight turn toward the Republicans in the past couple of weeks, though not one that is insurmountable for Democrats. Given these factors & the slim majorities Democrats hold in both houses of Congress, it would normally indicate that they would lose both houses-that's what conventional wisdom would suggest, and generally that's what you should rely upon in an election (American elections rarely buck the norms).
But a few things are keeping me from pulling that trigger (for now-we'll see when I write the guide if I chicken out a bit and just go with two Republican takeovers, which is definitely an option for my predictions). First and most importantly, there's ample evidence that Dobbs (the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade) has been a uniquely election-changing experience. I'm not as focused on the surprisingly high number of women who are registering to vote or young people who are registering to vote. Those are good for Democrats, sure, but I find that relying upon new registration data is the political equivalent of betting on a horse because you like it's "feeling"-it rarely bears out in fact.
But what concrete evidence I do have is special elections, all of which have been uniformly good for Democrats since the Dobbs decision. In states as diverse as New York, Minnesota, Nebraska, Alaska, & Kansas, abortion rights have truly driven higher turnout, and perhaps most crucially-they've done it in a way that was unexpected, and didn't show up in polling. We have gotten used to several cycles where Republicans over-performed public polling. In both 2016 & 2020, Republicans were underestimated at the polls, and the assumption is that this year's polls will be the same...but what if they're not? What if they're right, or if Dobbs is hiding a couple of points on the Democratic side? This would be a huge deal, and not unexpected-if there is ever going to be a cycle again where Democrats are underestimated, it'd be a year where an unusually high demand for the party on one issues (abortion rights) would drive out otherwise apathetic voters. Quite frankly, if a year like this still is underestimating Republicans, public polling is essentially broken in the United States. There's one other issue (candidate quality) we'll get into when it comes to the Senate, but the impact of abortion rights on politics this year is the real question mark. People rarely vote on anything other than economics, national security, & healthcare, but if there's going to be a year where it happens...it'd likely be 2022.
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| Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) |
This gets me into the Senate. Because if you look at public polling, Republicans are pretty much banking on polling being wrong in order to take the Senate. The basic reason is simple math. Both sides have fifty senators currently, but unlike the House, not all of those senators are up for reelection, and so the actual math here is confined to a handful of races. Thanks to superior campaigns by Mark Kelly & Maggie Hassan, it seems likely that both of their once-competitive seats stay in the Democratic column (by what margin they win is a decent question, but pretty much everyone is in agreement that they're likely to be reelected). That leaves really six seats that are seen as genuinely competitive: Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, & Wisconsin. Republicans need to win five of those seats, Democrats only need to win two, which is one of the reasons why Democrats are favored.
Republicans have definitely gained some ground in these contests in recent weeks. Nevada, for example, has seen a noted slip for incumbent Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, to the point where you could say that Attorney General Adam Laxalt has the slightest of leads (though officially this should be treated as a Tossup). Attacks on their stances on crime have cost Lt. Govs. John Fetterman (PA) and Mandela Barnes (WI) in their races. By my count, the Senate becomes a 60/40 race-I currently am guessing that Republicans will win at least 3, likely 4 of those Senate contests...
...but not five. Particularly given the near constant stream of bad candidate news that is leaking out of Georgia & Pennsylvania. Yesterday, with just five weeks before the election and as voters across the country are casting ballots, the GOP's campaigns in those states were handling stories about how one candidate secretly funded an abortion and the other killed 300 dogs (seriously-that was their day yesterday). It is hard to imagine a Republican majority in 2023 that doesn't include Herschel Walker or Mehmet Oz, and right now neither of those candidates look like they can actually win their races. The GOP is in a better place than they were a month ago (particularly in Wisconsin & Nevada), but they can't seem to hit the final level, which would be to best John Fetterman or Raphael Warnock-they've got to beat one of them to get the Senate.
One last note before we go to the House, because I brought it up before-polling error. Pretty much every assumption right now is that polling has to be wrong, particularly in Ohio & North Carolina, which show tight contests, frequently in Ohio with Democrat Tim Ryan leading. It cannot be understated what a big deal, say, a 2-3 point error in the Democrats favor would mean (i.e. what I was talking about if this is finally the election where Democrats are undercounted). If polls are right or if they are slightly Republican-skewing because they aren't catching the Dobbs bounce, the Holy Grail for the Democrats, a 52-seat majority, is very in reach. A 2-3 point error would mean PA/GA are off the table for the GOP, and would mean that the tossup races would shift to the remaining four seats. Something to think about as Democrats could break the filibuster if they won four of those six contests.
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| House Speaker Nancy Pelosi & Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy |
The House is interesting because I don't know if it's so much a case where the race has shifted as we're admitting a reality that we've seen for months-the Democrats are in a much better position than conventional wisdom is giving them credit for right now. The thought process is that Republicans are favored in a neutral environment because there is gerrymandering to favor them in the House, but while that's true, that's not really the case. Joe Biden won 226 House seats that are up this fall (using his 2020 numbers), and while 2020 was a good year for the Democrats (he won the popular vote in 2020 by over 4-points, which would certainly get the Democrats the House today), Democrats winning the generic ballot by even 1-2 points would put them in a position that they'd be a coin toss for the House...more than that, they'd likely take it. That 1-2 point margin is not unattainable-public polling shows it's within the realm of possibility.
Republicans remain favored for a variety of factors. First, gerrymandering did help them. Specifically Democrats' inability to break up Republican gerrymanders in Ohio, Florida, & Alabama, combined with their own gerrymanders in Maryland & New York being dismantled hurt the party considerably (you give Democrats' the wins in those five states they were hoping for, and you're probably sitting on a Democratic-favored House in five weeks even with Biden in the White House). But more, conventional wisdom indicates that Democrats are vulnerable because of the economy-people vote with their pocketbooks, and unlike the Senate (which has a Dem-favored map), the House is up everywhere. There's nowhere for vulnerable Democrats to hide.
The House is expansive, so I could write about it for paragraphs on end, and I can't get into the minutia of it the way I can the Senate, so I'm going to minimize my conversation here to three points (we'll do race-by-race with the guides in three weeks). First, there is not as much public polling in the House as there is the Senate, but of what there is, it's suggesting a neutral environment compared to 2020 but a neutral environment is still one where Democrats can compete for a majority (though it would become a seat-by-seat battle). Second, the Dobbs effect has been very real in special elections, and if that translates at all to the House, it would be a big deal. Particularly in a cycle like this, where partisanship will need to be thrown out in order for the Republicans to win the House (as we discussed in-depth last week, they need to net nine Biden seats in order to win the majority), if Democrats are able to hold most of their Biden ground, you can't dismiss the prospect of the Republicans under-performing to the point of losing outright. And lastly, if you start looking race-by-race, Democrats have the advantage in terms of candidate quality-while the party is giving up 1-2 seats (NJ-7, in particular, was clearly winnable with a better challenger, and several candidates in Arizona, Pennsylvania, & California are getting out-raised), it's nothing compared to what Republicans are doing in Alaska, Ohio, & Pennsylvania, basically giving up Trump seats in all three states. That likely won't matter (only in 2000 & 2020 has the House margin been less than ten seats), but given the national numbers...it's worth considering it could matter, and thus, we might be underestimating the House Democrats.
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