There’s a “nerd fight” underway about how the end-game of the midterm election campaign is likely to unfold, and I tried to sort it all out at New York:
Six weeks from the midterm elections (and a lot less than that from early voting, which is already underway in several states), experts and the politicians who rely on them remain divided on the basic nature of the contest. In one corner are the “wave” people who believe the national dynamics of a backlash to Donald Trump’s conduct and policies matters most, and in the other are “all politics is local” people who believe that individual contests are distinctive enough to matter most.
These are exaggerations, of course; both sides recognize contrary kernels of truth. Wave advocates know that particularly good or bad candidates and campaigns can make the difference between victory or defeat, and “local” advocates know that national trends create the parameters within which individual contests play out. But the gulf remains, as G. Elliot Morris explains in a critique of expert election handicappers:
“As of publication, the three big election handicappers have the race for U.S. House as a pure toss-up and the Senate leaning Republican. The Cook Political Report currently has 206 seats at least leaning Democratic, 208 at least leaning Republican, and 21 toss-ups. Inside Elections has 200 Democratic, 202 Republican, and 33 toss-ups. Sabato’s Crystal Ball has 210 Democratic, 203 Republican, and 22 toss-ups.
“Read literally, that implies Democrats need to win the lion’s share of seats rated ‘toss-up’ to carry the House: 12 of Cook’s 21, 18 of Inside Elections’ 33, 8 of Sabato’s 22.
“This is despite Democrats being up by seven points in the House generic ballot among likely voters, and posting even larger overperformance in district polls and special elections. Our model at FiftyPlusOne has Democrats at a median of 238 House seats and a 98% chance of the majority.”
Nate Silver, who, like Morris, maintains a poll-based election-forecast model (his is called FLIPR), agrees (even though he and Morris have had heated disagreements on many topics in the past):
“The expert ratings assume a political environment that’s 5 to 6 points more Republican than the one FLIPR expects. Instead of a roughly D +8 map, they’re at more like a D +2 or D +3. In that type of political environment, Democrats would have little chance to win in red states like Iowa and Texas; the Senate would almost certainly stay in Republican hands. In fact, Democrats wouldn’t even be favored to win the House in this environment; it would project as more of a toss-up.
“We think the experts are simply wrong about this. To assume a merely D +2 or D +3 national environment is inconsistent with literally every piece of evidence that we can think of, including Trump’s previous midterm in 2018, when Democrats won the popular vote for the U.S. House by 8.6 points, right in line with what FLIPR expects this year.”
Both Morris and Silver attribute this disparity to a systemic pro–White House bias exhibited by the so-called experts. Here’s how Morris explains it:
“Here is Cook’s House record across the 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2022 midterms, using each seat’s rating as of 45 days before the election and recoding every label as favoring the ‘in-party’ (the president’s party) or the ‘out-party’:
“• Safe in-party: the in-party won 100% of 311 seats.
“• Likely in-party: 88% of 69.
“• Lean in-party: 78% of 86.
“• Toss-up: the in-party won 33% of 131. The out-party won 67%.
“• Lean out-party: the in-party won 5% of 37. The out-party won 95%.
“• Likely out-party: 0% of 73.
“• Safe out-party: 0% of 395.
“And I don’t mean to pick on Cook; other raters have the same bias.”
But “White House bias” does not really capture the difference in perspective between the experts and the polls-based number crunchers. The experts have a built-in micro-perspective, looking at individual contests carefully and reviewing ratings periodically to identify trends. Cook’s wizards typically conduct personal interviews with any candidate willing to talk with them and take close looks at campaign financing, endorsements, and other non-polling data. They also are sometimes given access to internal campaign polling numbers. So while they are certainly aware of national context factors like midterms backlash against the White House and the president’s job-approval numbers, they tend to view individual campaigns as unique.
It’s possible that the results will fall somewhere between the big Democratic wave that Silver and Morris currently anticipate, and the closer, more complex contests the experts currently reflect. And all this could change. Traditionally, one of the signs of a major oncoming wave election is that the experts start moving their ratings in one direction or the other down the stretch. But right this minute, Republicans looking at expert race ratings probably feel a lot better about their prospects than if they look at election models or prediction markets (which tend to track the polls and even the vibe more than micro-developments within campaigns and contests). Indeed, Matt Yglesias argues that prediction markets may provide a “reality check” to both kinds of professional election raters or forecasters:
“When you’re betting, you want to be correct. The gamblers may be wrong (indeed, obviously a bunch of them are going to be wrong) but they’re at least on average genuinely trying to be correct. And not only could a truth engine be useful, but (per the point about the business press) to the extent that world affairs becomes an investable proposition, that creates a market for accurate information.”
At present, both the poll-based number crunchers and the gamblers agree that a large Democratic wave has recently been gaining strength. The race-rating experts are much more cautious about this and every other wave. Somebody is likely to be wrong, and maybe they’ll adjust to their errors in the next election cycle. But for now, it’s tempting to believe whoever tells you what you want to hear.
