Somebody somewhere — a cable television news pundit, a talk radio host, your uncle — is going to have predicted all along exactly what is going to happen in the midterm elections by the time all votes are counted Nov. 8, or at some point thereafter.
Republican wave? Massive new GOP majorities in the House and Senate? Somebody will have called it. Democrats held the Senate and stemmed their losses in the House despite losing the majority? Somebody will have called it. Democrats held the House despite a nonexistent cushion of just a handful of seats? Somebody will have been as lucky as a Mega Millions or Powerball player — and called it.
But for Democratic and Republican strategists working furiously in the campaign trenches, for the professional political analysts and handicappers tying their brains in knots to game out where the 2022 election cycle is headed with less than six weeks to go, there is a real debate underway about where the voters are going to land when they finally head into the booth and pull the lever or fill out their absentee ballot and drop it in the mailbox.
First, a quick reset: Around Memorial Day this year, the Republicans looked on track for a tsunami of historic proportions, with some in the GOP saying 2022 could be bigger than 2010, when the party nabbed 63 House seats from the Democrats and picked up seven Senate seats. Then, around Labor Day, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision and incremental improvements in President Joe Biden’s job approval ratings, Democrats were all of a sudden competitive again, hopeful of at least preserving a 50-seat Senate majority that rests on Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote.
Late last week, Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight published a piece headlined “The Polls Still Do Not Show a GOP Bounceback.” Here’s a key line from Silver’s analysis after reviewing House and Senate polls, generic ballot polling, and Biden’s approval ratings:
“Ever since we launched our election model in late June, it has moved entirely in one direction: toward Democrats. Pretty much every week, they’ve either gained ground in our forecast or held steady. … That Republicans could win doesn’t mean that their situation is improving. I’ve seen several recent claims about Republican momentum in the polls that I don’t think are yet justified in the evidence.”
HOUSE GOP TOUTS ‘COMMITMENT TO AMERICA’ AS BETTER MIDTERM BLUEPRINT
Speaking with some knowledgeable Democrats on Wednesday, this reflects their state of mind.
Yes, it’s a tough midterm election for them — they are the party in power in the White House, after all, and that party historically loses seats in midterm elections. But voters’ concerns about the loss of federal protections for abortion rights brought about by Dobbs, plus factors ranging from the media spotlight on former President Donald Trump to a flurry of legislation passed by Democrats in Congress late in the summer, have boosted enthusiasm among their voters, putting them in position to weather the political storm.
“I think things have shifted further in our favor since Labor Day,” a Democratic operative said. “That’s a real shock given where this election cycle started, candidly.”
Republicans simply disagree with that assessment.
According to every metric that ultimately decides which party triumphs in midterm elections, Republicans say they are in the poll position. Their argument is rather viable.
Biden’s job approval rating? 42.6% — check. The generic congressional ballot? Republicans hold a slight edge, 46.1% to 45.1% — check. Right track/wrong track? 28.4% to 64.1% — check. Voters’ top issues? Inflation, the economy, crime, and border security — check, check, check, and check. (Caveat: Abortion is also a top issue, and it works against the Republicans.) Last but not necessarily final, the party in power in the White House historically loses an average of 25 House seats and four Senate seats in midterm elections — check.
“Independents look a lot more like Republicans when it comes to the most important issues, listing rising prices/inflation, the economy, and crime as much more important than abortion and climate change, the two issues motivating Democrats,” a veteran Republican strategist said.
“We still see President Biden’s job approval at very bad if not historically bad levels,” this GOP strategist continued, “which means that Democrat candidates will likely have to outperform [him] by 6 to 9 points in the most competitive districts and states. Can an isolated incumbent do that? Possibly. But historically, that is a very difficult hill to climb.”
Even Ronald Reagan, winner of two blowout landslide presidential elections, couldn’t escape history.
In the 1982 midterm elections, his Republican Party lost 26 House seats. Four years later, in the 1986 midterm elections, Reagan’s GOP lost eight Senate seats. Do the math. You can hardly blame Republicans for feeling pretty darned good about their position 41 days before midterm Election Day 2022.
Now, to the field …
By the #s: Beginning with this week’s memo, the Washington Examiner is going to provide a brief weekly cheat sheet on the relevant polling numbers as it relates to the midterm elections, with a focus on the averages. As a rule of thumb, the averages tend to smooth out the surveys that are a little too good (or bad) to be true, depending on your vantage point.
- President Joe Biden’s job approval rating: RealClearPolitics: 42.9%; FiveThirtyEight: 42.2%.
- Generic ballot: RealClearPolitics: Republicans edging Democrats 46.1% to 45.1%; FiveThirtyEight: Democrats edging Republicans 45.3% to 43.9%.
- Direction of the country: RealClearPolitics: right track 28.4%/wrong track 64.1%; (FiveThirtyEight average unavailable.)
California’s 26th Congressional District. Republicans believe they have an upset brewing in this decidedly Democratic Ventura County seat held by Rep. Julia Brownley (D).
Now, it should be said that this district was redrawn in decennial redistricting and is a slightly lighter shade of blue than before. But the 26th is still rated D+15, and had it existed in its current form in 2020, Biden would have defeated Trump there 58.9% to 39%. But Republicans, pointing to internal polling from mid-September, say they have reason to be optimistic that Republican challenger Matt Jacobs might knock off Brownley.
What did the polling show? 1. Voters in the district narrowly prefer a generic Democrat over a generic Republican, 45% to 44%. 2. Brownley was leading Jacobs 47.8% to 43%, with 9.2% undecided. 3. Jacobs led Brownley among crucial independent voters, 44% to 34%, with 22% undecided.
The incumbent congresswoman does have one thing going for her, at least: Biden’s job approval rating in the district was 51%, low for such a Democratic seat but still above the 50% Rubicon line. (The survey, conducted by the GOP firm On Message, Inc., surveyed 400 likely voters Sept. 13-18 and had a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.)
Battle for Congress. Priorities USA, a prominent super PAC aligned with the Democratic Party, announced this week plans to spend $5 million on an advertising blitz in key battlegrounds to “combat GOP voter suppression.” Another way to view this is voter education, which Democrats excelled at in 2020 amid a confusing array of new rules and regulations that popped up in various states in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic.
This latest investment by Priorities USA, part of an overall expenditure of $20 million focused on what the group describes as “voting rights initiatives,” aims to provide voters who typically support Democratic candidates — Hispanic voters, black voters, young voters, and low-income voters — with the information they need to participate in the midterm elections.
“Through 15-second ads and banner ads, voters are directed to websites and hotlines that can help them find their polling place, ensure they have what they need to vote, and know their rights at the voting booth,” Priorities USA said in a press release. These educational spots are slated to run on digital platforms, such as Google and Facebook, in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada.
“At Priorities USA, we remain committed to making the most strategic investments possible to turn out the majority of Americans who seek to move our country forward,” the group’s executive director, Aneesa McMillan, said in a statement.
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2024 watch. Former Vice President Mike Pence is keeping himself busy in the key early primary states.
Earlier this month, Pence headlined a Republican unity breakfast in New Hampshire, the state that hosts the first traditional primary on the GOP’s quadrennial presidential nominating calendar. The event, among multiple political gatherings the former vice president has attended in New Hampshire, occurred the day after divisive Republican primaries for Senate and two House seats.
Pence, who knows a little something about taking friendly fire in the wake of his exit from the vice presidency, was there to drum up support for GOP Senate nominee Don Bolduc and bring intraparty factions together to focus on beating Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) and Reps. Annie Kuster (D) and Chris Pappas (D) in November.
Now, Pence is headed to Iowa, scheduled (as usual) to vote first in the Republican Party’s 2024 primary, via caucuses that tend to maximize the influence of committed grassroots conservatives — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) won the Iowa caucus in 2016, the last time the GOP primary did not feature an incumbent candidate. (Trump finished second in the caucuses that year, and just barely.)
On Thursday, Pence is headlining the “15th Annual Kaufmann Family Harvest Dinner” in Wilton, Iowa, put on by state Rep. Bobby Kaufmann (R). And, who else is a prominent member of the Kaufmann family, you might ask? (Go ahead, ask.) That would be none other than Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party.
Meanwhile, Pence’s political nonprofit group, Advancing American Freedom, is up with fresh attack ads hitting Reps. Elaine Luria (D-VA) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who are defending two House districts highly coveted by the Republicans as they look to recapture the majority after four years in the minority.
