A year from now will mark the start of the traditional campaign season for the 2018 midterms—which will see all the seats in the House of Representatives plus a third of the Senate up for grabs. Obviously, these contests are too far away to estimate results, but a general outline is coming into focus, and it looks to be a good cycle for the Democrats, though likely not good enough to overcome the gridlock that has gripped Washington for most of the last decade.
Democrats should gain seats in the lower chamber. Majority parties almost always shed seats in the first midterm elections after they gain the White House; the sole postwar exception was 2002, when President George W. Bush’s job approval was still above 60 percent. The real question is whether the GOP will lose enough seats to threaten their majority, which stands at 240 to 194. Democrats would have to win 24 seats to take control of the House.
The major election handicappers—Stuart Rothenberg, Larry Sabato, and Charlie Cook—all see about 50 Republican seats being in jeopardy. Working in the GOP’s favor, though, is the fact that only a handful of members have so far chosen to retire—although the number could rise Open seats, in which neither candidate is the incumbent, tend to be the best pickup opportunities for the opposition. And so far, the Democrats do not have a lot of those.
However, the national mood clearly favors the Democrats. President Donald Trump’s job approval rating remains under 40 percent, and the Gallup poll finds him at just 32 percent among self-identified independents, a very precarious number. Trump’s weak standing seems to be putting pressure on congressional Republicans. The “generic ballot” poll—in which respondents are asked if they plan to vote for a Democrat or Republican for Congress—shows a healthy Democratic lead of around 8 points among registered voters.
Optimists on the right may be tempted to dismiss the idea that Democrats can win back the House. After all, they are lurching leftward, far outside the views that facilitated their 2006 midterm victory or even Barack Obama’s pseudo-centrist campaign of 2008. But that need not matter. If Democrats recruit good candidates in the 50 or so competitive GOP seats—if they find people who are a good fit for their communities—the image of the national Democratic party is not going to be that influential in these races. Winning a net 24 seats in a midterm is no mean feat. Yet the Democrats have a real shot at it.
The Senate, on the other hand, looks much better for Republicans. Because only a third of the Senate is up for reelection in any cycle, the fate of each party depends heavily on the calendar. In 2018, the calendar decisively favors the GOP. This is “Class 1” of the Senate, those who were elected in 2012, 2006, and 2000. All of those years saw Democratic gains in the upper chamber—meaning that the handful of Republican seats in this class are among the most secure in the country. The GOP is defending seats in Arizona, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming, plus a special election in Alabama this December. Every one of these states except Nevada has been reliably Republican on the presidential level for at least a generation.
Meanwhile, Class 1 includes a whopping 25 Democrats (counting the 2 nominal independents who caucus with them). This is the downside of picking up those seats 6, 12, and 18 years ago. Democrats now have a surfeit of seats that need defending, many in states won by Trump: Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Montana, Missouri, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.
Of course, the forces aiding the Democrats in their effort to capture the House will likewise hamper the GOP’s quest to pad its Senate majority. Trump, simply put, is too unpopular at this point for most of these seats to be competitive. Instead, the real action will probably be in the deep-red states—Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia.
Complicating matters for Republicans is the peculiar case of Arizona’s Jeff Flake. Perhaps the most outspoken anti-Trumper in the Senate caucus last year, Flake has continued to criticize the president and the GOP more generally—including in his new book The Conscience of a Conservative. This is not a good recipe for winning a Republican primary, and sure enough Flake is trailing in polls to Republican challenger Kelli Ward, who lost handily to John McCain in 2016. Even if Flake manages to win the primary, the general election is no guarantee. His strong opposition to Trump has not endeared him to Arizona Democrats, who will no doubt strongly support Rep. Kyrsten Sinema should she decide to run.
Despite the uncertainties, the GOP has to be considered the favorite to retain control of the Senate, at least nominally. An effective majority is another matter altogether. After all, the GOP caucus right now hinges on two moderates, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, as well as the unpredictable John McCain of Arizona. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cannot get much of anything done with the current caucus of 52 members, thanks to these 3. He will accomplish even less if it shrinks to 50 or 51 seats.
And should the Democrats win control of the House, their majority would probably not be overwhelming. Combine an evenly divided House with the fact that President Trump will retain the veto pen through at least 2020, and the prescription for 2018 and beyond becomes fairly obvious: gridlock and lots of it.
For Beltway pundits, who love to see Congress pass legislation just for the sake of it, this will no doubt be a fount of endless think pieces on the broken nature of our government. But is this not a reflection of the people themselves? We are, after all, closely divided—and neither party has offered a plan of governance that has been able to draw and maintain clear majorities at the ballot box. And while most everybody adores the idea of bipartisan cooperation in theory, in practice it is hard to identify subjects on which public opinion is sufficiently firm and fixed that the two sides could join together.
Republicans have benefited over the last eight years, not because the country embraced GOP policy ideas, but because of a vague dissatisfaction with the status quo. This discontent remains, and Democrats are set to reap the bounty. But the result in terms of policy victories will be virtually nil—because our government, as fractious and divided as it may be, is a fairly accurate mirror of the people.
Jay Cost is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
