September 17: Midterm Implications of Big Recall Win Are Mixed
Pouring over the details of the gubernatorial recall election in California, some significant patterns emerged, as I noted at New York:
The overwhelming defeat of the effort to recall California governor Gavin Newsom was a big victory for a Democratic Party that has had its troubles lately. With the margin of victory for the “no on recall” campaign roughly doubling the already-robust advantage shown in pre-election polls, the earlier scare that the recall threw into the ranks of the Golden State’s dominant party dissipated entirely. With about three-fourths of the expected vote now counted, “no” leads “yes” by a 63.8 to 36.2 margin (which could get even larger if the usual pattern of last-cast mail ballots leaning Democratic manifests itself once again).
The “no” vote was remarkably close to Joe Biden’s performance in California in 2020 (he won 63.5 percent). Given the extreme partisan polarization that underlay the recall vote (exit polls showed 89 percent of self-identified Republicans voting “yes” and 94 percent of self-identified Democrats voting “no”), that means the partisan patterns of the presidential race were reduplicated to a remarkable extent in a non-presidential special election, where Democrats often experience a “falloff,” particularly when they control the White House (and in this case, the governorship). That’s great news for California Democrats, and not a bad sign for Democrats nationally, who are bracing for the midterm losses the “White House Party” typically suffers.
But in assessing the implications of the results, it’s important to look back at what happened down ballot in California in 2020, while looking ahead to the most critical 2022 battleground, the fight for control of the House. Of the 13 net House seats Republicans gained in 2020,
four were in deep-blue California. There is no likely path for Democrats to hang onto House control in 2022 without flipping some or all of those lost seats in one of their strongest states.
Precisely because of the reduplication of the 2020 patterns, there’s really nothing about the recall returns that suggests Democrats are sure to claw back some House seats in California. Two of the four seats Republicans flipped in 2020 (with Asian-American women Young Kim and Michelle Steele as candidates) were centered in Orange County. While “no” won in Orange, the recall race there was closer than the Biden-Trump contest of 2020. A third battleground seat was the one Republican David Valadao won in a very competitive section of the San Joaquin Valley. The recall improved on Trump’s 2020 performance in every county in his district (e.g., Trump won 55 percent in Kings County, but “yes” on recalling Newsom won 63 percent). These results could reflect an intensifying alienation of this heavily agricultural area from Sacramento’s environmental and water-supply policies. Or it could reflect a drop-off in Latino turnout that could spell disaster for Democrats in close 2022 races. Either way the recall numbers should give pause to Democratic optimism about midterm House races.
One study of 2020 returns in California showed Latino turnout trailing non-Latino turnout by about 10 percent. One mail-ballot tracker for the recall showed the turnout gap between Latinos and non-Latino white voters swelling to 20 percent. Youth turnout for the recall was also terrible, exit polls suggest. Yes, these are constituencies that are difficult to mobilize in special elections. But that’s also true of midterm elections, which is a problem Democrats in California and elsewhere need to solve.
The bottom line is that Newsom won the Democratic and Democratic-leaning elements of the California electorate by strongly encouraging partisan polarization via his lavishly funded campaign. This was the obvious smart strategy in this heavily Democratic state. It’s less clear the same strategy will work wonders downballot for Democrats in 2022, which they probably will not have a big financial advantage and shifts in public opinion away from the presidential winner may have settled in, as they did for the last three presidents. Even if Democrats hang onto their monopoly of statewide offices and their super-majorities in the state legislature, any failure to make progress in House races could contribute to the much-dreaded moment when Californian Nancy Pelosi hands over her gavel to Californian Kevin McCarthy, and the Democratic trifecta that gives Biden a chance to implement his agenda comes to an end.
Demtom,
In answer to your second question, I saw a report a couple of months ago that no incumbent president in the past 80 years (since polling really began) has ever won re-election when the challenger was ahead in the polls at ANY POINT DURING THE CALENDAR YEAR. As we know, Kerry has been ahead in the polls for about half this year.
That same report said no incumbent had ever gone onto re-election when they were not at least 16 points ahead in the polls after their convention. As we know, Bush was up by an average of 4 points after the GOP hatefest.
All in all, not good indicators for the incumbent.
The EMD explanations on polling and its limitations are helpful. But they are far less reassuring that I’d like when virtually all the national polling trends show Bush gaining, not losing…and when many of the key battleground polls show similar trends. I’d sure sleep easier if the trend was reversed, even if Kerry were mathematically behind–but gaining. T.J.
The one thing that seems so clear from all the polls over the last couple weeks is this:
The tide is with us and it is strong.
Demtom:
My view is that what we are seeing is the outcome of seeing Bush during the first debate. Remember prior to that- almost all other exposure to Bush was in an unchallenged situation except the Meet the Press interview where his numbers also fell. This is the realization of really bad news (Iraq, the flu, etc) that demonstrates a common narrative, that this President means well , but is incompetent (kerry’s line that you can be resolute and wrong is perfect). I forget where but there is an excellent post on one of the blogs about how Bush is actually just Carter revisited on the Republican party.
demtom wrote: “has any incumbent president trailed his challenger in ANY poll this close to an election and still managed to win?”
Well there’s Truman, of course. But I don’t think it’s happened since then.
I don’t think we’ve had an election comparable to this one in quite a while, so historical analogies don’t hold much water for me. (I keep hoping for the 1980 analogy to come through, but that may just be wishful thinking.)
I so sick of seeing national polls. With less than two weeks left, I think its time we start focusing solely on the states that matter.
Two things:
1) Does it strike anyone else that most recent polls not only show Bush with approvals that are dangerously low, but that are in most cases his bottom point — e.g., the Time poll had him at 49%, not nearly as good-for-Kerry as the 44-47’s floating around elsewhere, but it’s still the lowest of recent vintage in a poll that had always scored high for him. For many of us, it’s been a source of consternation that, despite accumulating bad news (and public awareness of said news), Bush’s job approval had always remained respectable — at least, compared to his dad and Jimmy Carter. But maybe what we’d been seeing was only a stubborn hanging-on of the post 9/11 haze: that a certain percentage still reflexively gave “approval to the executive in time of war” but nonetheless didn’t really like Bush all that much, and now, with re-election very much in the balance, these voters are expressing their true (lower) opinions for the first time.
2) I’ve asked a variation of this question in the past and never got an acceptable answer. We can all talk about who’s up who’s down, 50% rules, undecided to the challenger, likely voters — but, has any incumbent president trailed his challenger in ANY poll this close to an election and still managed to win?