Back in 2010, Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic nominee for Arizona’s Senate seat, unknowingly gave her Republican opponent, Martha McSally, a gift. She called Arizona the “meth lab of democracy” on camera at Netroots Nation (a progressive political convention) and added that she uses the line “all the time.” McSally’s team shared the video on Friday, less than four weeks away from Election Day.
It doesn’t take a political genius to know that comparing your state to a meth lab (or whatever the hell is happening with witchcraft over here) is good politics. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we saw the effects of this story in Sinema’s poll numbers. But before the pollsters come out with their post-meth-lab-comments polling, it’s worth noting that Sinema was actually losing ground before this news broke.
This graphic shows the outputs of two different versions of SwingSeat, THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s Senate forecast. The “full” version is our official forecast as of Monday morning; it uses both polling and non-polling factors to calculate win probabilities for every major party candidate in every Senate race and is updated every day. The just-polls version represents an older version of the model that only looks at polling data (i.e., it doesn’t consider incumbency, presidential approval, etc.).
The message of the graphic is simple: Sinema’s problems didn’t start with the meth-lab comments.
For much of this graphic (before the “70 days until Election Day” mark) Sinema was looking solid. She consistently had high single-digit leads across a range of polls and was facing no major opposition from within her party. McSally, on the other hand, was facing off against Kelli Ward (a Tea Party candidate who likely would have had huge problems in the general election) and Joe Arpaio (who was convicted of criminal contempt but got a pardon from President Trump).
After winning the primary, McSally’s win probability jumped, declined a little bit (partially due to the timing of various polls) and then started to increase again. In our full model, McSally’s chances are about twice what they were on Labor Day.
There are a few possible explanations for why the model (which is primarily driven by the polls) moved in this way.
The easiest explanation for the early movement is that the GOP consolidated behind McSally after her primary win. Some Republicans might have been holding out for Ward or Arpaio, but now are willing to pick McSally over Sinema.
It’s also possible that the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings helped rally Republicans around McSally. But I’d want to see more detailed data before getting firmly behind this explanation. Arizona isn’t North Dakota—it’s a mostly urban state where, despite its overall redness, Democrats have a solid base. So I’d expect some pro-Kavanaugh enthusiasm on the GOP side to be met with some anti-Kavanaugh energy on the left.
The race might also be moving toward where the fundamentals (plus the candidates) suggest it should go.
In my view, the fundamentals in Arizona point somewhat leftward—it’s an open seat in a light red state during a blue year when an unpopular Republican holds the White House. Sinema certainly has liabilities: She once jokingly called herself a Prada socialist, she’s had some associations with the very, very far left and has made other statements that could damage her personally or cut against her now bipartisan brand—so it’s plausible that she’s underperforming the fundamentals and still managing to hold a small lead.
And you don’t have to agree with my fundamentals forecast to get to a similar conclusion. Other models might uses a fundamentals forecast that comes out less Democratic than mine. Or you could argue that state-by-state presidential approval is the most important “fundamental” and that this race will be close because Trump’s has a net -3 approval rating in Arizona. In this view, SInema’s advantages (e.g. her voting record is significantly to the right of most other House Democrats) cancel out with the baggage from her activist past, and Trump’s near-50-percent approval in Arizona puts the candidates on near-equal footing.
Reasonable people could defend any of these explanations (or a combination of them). But no matter how you get there, it seems that McSally’s position has improved significantly. Sinema is still the favorite in this race—both the older, poll-focused version of the model and the newer (more accurate) fundamentals-infused version give her an advantage, but it’s not the sort of overwhelming advantage enjoyed by Deb Fischer in Nebraska or Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota.
But the fact that Arizona is clearly competitive is a big positive for Republicans. Right now, Republicans are forcing Democrats to play whack-a-mole – as of Monday morning, Democrats led in Montana, Nevada, Indiana, West Virginia, Florida, Missouri (though that’s basically a toss-up) and Arizona in our forecast. But leading in each of these states doesn’t translate into being favored to win all of them. In fact, SwingSeat thinks the most likely scenario for Election Day is that the Republican get to 51 seats by scoring an upset in at least one of these races (more on how that works in a later piece). And if Republicans score an upset in any of these races, they’re suddenly much more able to endure an upset in a race where they’re favored (possibly in Tennessee, Texas or North Dakota) or pad their margin for the 2020 election (when the Senate map will be less favorable for the GOP).
