With all the attention being placed on the battle for the House in 2022, realistic analysis of the battle for the Senate has been lacking, so I tried to provide some at New York:
Political handicappers looking to the 2022 midterms have focused on House races because the very predictable pattern of midterm House losses by the president’s party makes continuation of a Democratic House a real long shot (and probably a prohibitive long shot unless Joe Biden’s job-approval rating shows significant improvement soon). The loss of either chamber, of course, means the governing trifecta that has made enactment of part of Biden’s legislative agenda possible will be gone, probably for a good while (at least until 2026, by my reckoning). But there is some independent value in continued Democratic control of the Senate thanks to that chamber’s role in confirming Biden’s executive branch and judicial nominees along with the ability to control committee and floor action in a way that gives Democrats significant leverage and opportunities for conveying their message.
Because only one-third of the Senate is up for reelection every two years, there is not the sort of predictable relationship between Senate outcomes and the general political climate. In other words, a bad year for either party in presidential, House, or gubernatorial contests doesn’t mean a bad year in Senate races if the landscape is positive. We saw that most recently in 2018, when Republicans lost 41 net House seats and seven net governorships yet picked up two net Senate seats because the landscape (with 26 Democratic Senate seats and only nine Republican Senate seats at stake) was very positive for the GOP.
The Senate landscape is modestly positive in 2022 for Democrats, who have to defend only 14 seats as compared with 20 seats for Republicans. Moreover, as Amy Walter points out, none of the 14 Democratic seats are in a state carried by Donald Trump in 2020. Meanwhile, Republicans are defending two seats in states carried by Biden in 2020, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But at the same time, Democrats are defending three Senate seats (in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada) in states Biden carried very narrowly (he won by 0.30 percent in Arizona, 0.24 percent in Georgia, and a relatively luxurious 2.39 percent in Nevada). Republicans in the two nominally blue states whose Senate seats they control don’t have much ground to make up, either (Biden won Pennsylvania by 1.17 percent and Wisconsin by 0.63 percent). They also control an open seat in North Carolina, a state Trump won by only 1.3 percent.
To give you an idea of how much “swing” Republicans might rationally expect in a midterm, consider that Republicans won the national House popular vote by 1.1 percent in 2016 and Democrats won it by 8.6 percent in 2018. That’s a lot of movement against the party controlling the White House. Anything remotely like that in 2022 — again, controlling for state aberrations despite the trend toward straight-ticket voting in recent years — and Republicans could pretty easily sweep the six contests mentioned above, all rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report, and take control of the Senate by a 53-to-47 margin, assuming neither party breaks serve by winning in a less competitive state.
What may give Democrats better Senate odds is the current nature of Republican intrastate and intraparty dynamics. There are potentially fractious GOP Senate primaries in Arizona, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania that could produce nominees with real weaknesses. Moreover, in these states and others (notably Ohio, a “red” state that recently reelected a progressive Democratic senator), Trump’s insistence on turning GOP primaries into referenda on loyalty to his ludicrous 2020 election claims could interfere with the expected pro-Republican midterm trend.
Potential Trump-generated problems affecting Senate races aren’t limited to his involvement in just those races. Georgia is a classic example. Freshman Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, who along with Jon Ossoff won by an eyelash in 2021’s unique dual general-election Senate runoff in what has become the ultimate battleground state, ought to be a sitting duck in 2022 with even a minimal midterm swing. But Trump enormously complicated Georgia politics by pushing the man Ossoff beat a year ago, David Perdue, into a primary challenge to the incumbent governor, Brian Kemp, as part of a purge effort aimed at those who didn’t support the 45th president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The Perdue-Kemp primary is sure to be an extremely expensive and divisive affair. It could weaken the ultimate winner in a general election against Stacey Abrams and might spill over into the Senate race, where Republican front-runner and Trump favorite Herschel Walker hasn’t shaken questions about his background and temperament (or rid himself of primary opposition).
Divisive Republican gubernatorial primaries seem likely in Arizona and Pennsylvania, as well, and could extend to Wisconsin, where incumbent GOP Senator Ron Johnson is struggling with low favorability numbers.
Republicans should be considered the slight favorites to flip the Senate (and much stronger favorites to flip the House) in 2022, assuming Biden’s popularity doesn’t seriously improve by November. But Mitch McConnell should not be making big plans for 2023. His party’s lord and master, Trump, could screw things up yet, and you never know entirely what will happen in a wide array of competitive Senate races.
10,000 Voters in PA just had their polls moved. And they don’t know.
The Republican Board of Elections in Lackawanna County just changed voting locations for 21 precincts.
And the voters don’t know.
10 to 15,000 PA voters could show up at their regular polls, find them closed, and not know where to vote.
It’s Friday before election day and postcards announcing the change won’t be in the mail until tonight. What if they don’t arrive? Or don’t get read? One smallish ad is running on Saturday in one local paper. What if no one notices?
The Democrats are organizing a volunteer effort for people to stand at the old polls and give directions to the new. But the polls are open in PA from 7am to 8pm. It’s 21 precincts. They need a lot of people.
But this is easy, significant GOTV for people who were uncomfortable with traditional doorbell ringing or phone calling. All you have to do is stand there and give directions.
Scranton PA is only 90 minutes from NYC.
To help, e-mail AlanEGross@aol.com or Calyndha@aol.com. Put “POLL GOTV” in the subject line.
What meaning, if any, can be ascribed to Novak’s (i.e., Rovian) claim today (see excerpt) that Zogby is now essentially calling the race for Bush based on the latter’s current read of the polls?
WASHINGTON — Pollster John Zogby surprised the political world back in April with a long-range prediction that John Kerry would defeat George W. Bush for president. On Monday this week, Zogby told me, he changed his mind. He now thinks the president is more likely to be re-elected because he has reinforced support from his base, including married white women.
That conclusion would be a surprise for frantically nervous Republicans and cautiously upbeat Democrats entering the campaign’s final days. In fact, nobody, including Zogby and all the other polltakers, can be sure who will win this election. Yet, it is clear that President Bush’s strategists have succeeded in solidifying his base to a degree that makes it much harder to defeat him next Tuesday.
Thanks, Ruy, for this and Memory Lane.
It does much to lighten the burden of an oppressed and lifelong Dem.
I personally don’t believe the LA Times poll on Florida, nor do I believe the alleged 9-point lead for Kerry from the suppressed CBS survey (a 4-point lead for Kerry seems reasonable, though a bit high on the Kerry side.) Both results seem implausible (though of course either could be right.), so why not release all the polls? We politically knowledgeable folks can sift through them and root out the clearly wrong-looking ones. Unfortunately, the media doesn’t always do the same (Exhibit A: Gallup.)
Incidentally, I read that Kerry’s lead among likely voters in the LAT’s Ohio poll was 6 points, larger than the RV margin. In fact, that also seems too large to be believed.
I’m starting to think the polls are even more UNreliable than I first thought… Great piece in the WP today… Refusals, caller ID, etc. are making it incredibly difficult to actually reach a random sample of Americans…According to the story, “less than one in five calls produces a completed interview — raising doubts whether such polls accurately reflect the views of the public or merely report the opinions of stay-at-home Americans who are too bored, too infirm or too lonely to hang up…”
If Gallop has Kerry leading in PA by 2 and in Iowa by 1, then he must really be up by 5 or 6, judging by their previous accuracy.
Kerry in a Landslide!
Transparency International publishes a Corruption Perception Index for countries. It may be worthwhile to publish something similar for state election processes. Consider: very few people are fretting at the moment about transparency or reliability of voting in Utah or Maine. The idea of 60,000 absentee ballots vanishing is almost inconceivable. In Florida or Ohio, on the other hand, the lack of transparency and likelihood of hanky-panky is practically a given. In worst-case situations, like voting in the Soviet Union, the certainty of the vote rises to 100% and the trustworthiness of the vote as a measure of actual voter desires approaches zero.
Is there a statistical methodology that can be applied in addition to standard polls that would anticipate for fraud? Or at least, like in moral hazard questions, quantify the susceptibility of particular voting arrangements to abuse?
absentee ballot link= http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6346293/
Have you heard anything more about the supposed CBS/NY Times Florida poll (discussed on both MyDD and Atrios on Wednesday) that had Kerry up by 8 or 9 and was returned for further investigation due to the “implausibility” of this scenario. (A further version of this rumor was that the new, adjusted results still had Kerry up 4 … but there’s been nothing yet released.)
What are the internals on that Florida poll? Strange that a CBS poll showing Kerry up 9 in Florida is suppressed while a Gallup and LA Times poll showing Bush up 9 is published. Both are equally wrong – Florida is ties and turnout will determine the winner.