Mark Bayerleins “Are Democrats Losing the Youth Vote?” in the New York Times will undoubtedly evoke despairing sighs among those who would like to see a stronger Democratic Party. Here’s the statistical nut of Bayerlein’s article:

Six years ago, voters aged 18 to 29 favored Barack Obama over his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, by a ratio of two to one and justified Time’s announcement that 2008 was “The Year of the Youth Vote.” Two years previously, in midterm races for the House, the same demographic went for Democrats 60 percent to 38 percent.
In 2012, President Obama’s advantage slipped, but under-30 voters still gave him a 23-point edge, 60 percent to 37 percent. No wonder this year the president appeared two days before the election at Temple University, where he exhorted the crowd, “So I need all of you to go grab your friends, grab your classmates… I need you to vote.”
But it turned out that 2012 was no anomaly. Turnout for young voters this year was around 21 percent, typical for midterms, but the breakdown was disappointing for the left: Exit poll data show that young voters backed House Democrats 54 percent to 43 percent, half the advantage of 2006 and two percentage points lower than in 2010.
The Senate contests were last fought in 2008, a presidential year, and here the plummet was startling. In North Carolina the rate at which young people voted Democratic fell to 54 percent this year from 71 percent in 2008. Virginia saw it slide to 50 percent from 71 percent. In Arkansas and Alaska, a majority of young voters went Republican.

These last figures for North Carolina are particularly concerning, because of the importance of the Research Triangle in statewide voting. The hope has been that NC’s college community would become the driving wheel for steering the state into the purple/blue spectrum.
Unfortunately, most discussions of youth voting trends fail to take much account of class differences, as reflected in the distinction between college youth and young workers. Bayerlein’s numbers also lump them together. For a more nuanced consideration, it would be interesting to compare the turnout rates and party preferences of the two sub-categories, and perhaps factor in marital/parental status.
Young people do share a range of common concerns, regardless of their educational and employment status, which may be reflected in their political party preferences. As Bayerlein notes,

Given recent surveys of youth attitudes, though, we shouldn’t be surprised. Last April, Harvard’s Institute of Politics found a growing gap in party loyalty between younger millennials and older ones. In 2010, 18-to-24-year-olds chose to self-identify as “Democrat” over “Republican” by 15 percentage points, or 38 percent to 23 percent. By 2014, that gap had narrowed to 10 percentage points, 35 to 25, even as older millennials, between 25 and 29 years old, maintained that 15-percentage-point split. What’s more, 18-to-24-year-olds who called themselves “moderate,” not “liberal” or “conservative,” climbed five points, to 31 percent.
A Pew Research Center survey released in March found that while 40 percent of millennials in 2006 considered themselves political independents, now 50 percent of them do. Moreover, 31 percent believe there is not “a great deal of difference in what Republicans and Democrats stand for.”

Such disturbing indicators are disappointing for Democrats, who have spent huge sums trying to educate and motivate young people in recent decades. It’s not just the old saw about youth being ‘the future of our country’ etc. It’s more about the frustration that comes with realizing that, on just about every issue of special concern for young people, Republicans stand in opposition, while Democrats support the reforms youth favor — regarding climate change and environmental protection, minimum wage increase, aid to education, income inequality, same-sex marriage, reproductive rights, affordable housing etc. — the list goes on and on.
But then, why should young people be any more likely than other constituencies and demographic groups to reliably vote their policy interests? White working-class males, for example, get little if any economic benefit from the policies of the Republican candidates they overwhelmingly support.
It appears that Democrats have a “branding” problem that often trumps economic interest and policy preferences. George Lakoff hinted at it in his recent analysis of the 2014 elections: “Democratic strategists have been segmenting the electorate and seeking individual self-interest-based issues in each electoral block. The strategists also keep suggesting a move to the right. This has left no room for the Democrats to have an overriding authentic moral identity that Americans can recognize.”
If Lakoff is right, many voters prefer Republican clarity to a muddled, balkanized Democratic message. Democrats have failed to clearly express their “authentic moral identity,” which would resonate with youth, white workers and other constituencies. To some extent, it’s an unavoidable problem for a “big tent” party, but it’s not necessarily an insoluble one.
The midterm electorate is a different beast from presidential elections. But Obama’s extraordinary ability to inspire hope in young voters 2008 is nonetheless instructive for Democrats in all elections. An enhanced commitment to establishing a clear, unique “moral identity” as the party of hope for young people would likely serve the Democratic party well.

At U.S. News Lindsey Cook reports on midterm voter turnout declines and increases between 2010 and 2014. Here are some figures for U.S. Senate and Governorship battleground states turnout differences between 2010 and 2014, based on data from the United States Election Project :

AK +2.4
AR +3.3
CO +0.7
FL +0.9
GA -6.5
IA -0.1
KY -0.1
KS +0.2
LA +3.9
MA -5.5
ME +3.4
MD -1.2
MI -2.5
NC +0.9
NH +2.7
PA -6.3
SD -12.5
TX -4.1
VA -2.4
WI +4.5

Dems won in LA (w/ run-off), MI, NH, PA and VA (not yet certified, but pretty solid), and had a split decision in CO where we re-elected Gov Hickenlooper, but lost Udall’s Senate seat. But its a mixed bag in terms of voter turnout, with modest increases from 2010-14 in three of the states we won (CO, LA and NH), and turnout declines in the rest. It seems safe to guestimate that Dem GOTV was better than average in those three states. Elsewhere it was inadequate to offset voter discontent and/or Republican GOTV.
We can credit the campaigns and state Democratic parties in those three states with heroic turnout work. And it may be that Dems had good GOTV in some of the other states, but were just swamped by voters who favored Republicans. What is clear now, however, is that the value of high-tech GOTV operations ascribed to the Democratic Party was overhyped — and there’s no substitute for strong candidates and campaigns and a favorable economy.

Poll analysts are still chewing on data from the election, particularly CNN’s exit polls. Here’s some statistical nuggets from the results in NC and GA which offer some clues:
In GA, where David Perdue beat Michelle Nunn by 8 points, 31 percent of the electorate earned over $100,000. Nunn received 51 percent from those earning less than $100K (Perdue 47 percent), while Perdue won 62 percent of those earning over $100K (Nunn 35 percent). Nunn did better among those earning less than $50K (who were 34 percent of the electorate), 56-42 percent. But among the 66 percent of the electorate who earned more than $50K, Perdue lead 57-41 percent. Of those earning $50-100K, Perdue won their votes by 52-46. percent.
Also in GA, Nunn received only 19 percent of the vote from white males, who were 34 percent of the electorate. She got 27 percent of the vote from white females, who were 30 percent of the GA electorate. African Americans were 29 percent of the GA electorate, Latinos 4 percent (African Americans were 30.5 percent of GA’s population in 2010 Census). Nunn won 92 percent of the African American vote.
In NC, where Republican Thom Tillis edged out Kay Hagan by 2 percent, 24 percent of the electorate earned more than $100K. Hagan won the 76 percent who earned who earned less than $100K by 51-44, but Tillis won the over $100Ks by 59-39.
Tillis won 69 percent of the white male vote (36 percent of the NC electorate) and 56 percent of white women, who were 38 percent of yesterdays NC voters. African Americans were 21 percent of the NC turnout (21.5 percent of NC’s population in 2010), while Latinos were 3 percent. Hagan received 96 percent of NC’s African American vote.
Two of the most obvious conclusions that leap out from this data are: (1.) The Republicans did an excellent job of turning out their constituencies in both states, and (2.) Georgia is a long way from becoming a purple state. More later…

Election watchers looking to prep for Tuesday night may want to check out National Journal’s “Hotline’s 2014 Election Night Cheat Sheet: Key races, poll closing times, counties to watch, and–just in case–recount procedures in nearly two dozen states with Senate and/or governors’ races.”
Sam Wang suggests watching returns in KY and NH, where polls close early on Tuesday, for clues about which party will have a U.S. majority. Although McConnell in KY and Shaheen in NH are slightly favored in most of the polls, “If either party outperforms polls in these states, that might indicate a broader trend nationwide.”
Key closing opinion polls are trending red, and that’s a bad sign for Dems. While pundits have made much of the midterm jinx in combination with low presidential approval ratings, there is one historical reality pundits have neglected: The last time Republicans took two or more U.S. senate seats from Democrats was in 1980 — over a third of a century ago.
Wang has another post up, on “Late Breaks and Polling Biases,” which notes that “several polls today have pushed the Meta-Margin almost almost as far as it’s been toward Republicans this campaign season.” However, the last minute polling bias for midterms surveys is five times larger than it is for presidential election years. Thus, Wang cautions “Candidates could still win if they trailed by a margin of less than 3 percentage points in the week before the election…There are six Senate races whose medians are within two percentage points. Republicans could win all six – and Democrats could win all six. Based on past midterm polling, both of these outcomes are within the range of possibility.”
John Harwood’s New York Times article “In a Partisan Atmosphere, It Can Even Be Hard to Find Numbers That Agree” is about the seeming irrelevance of a different set of numbers in the midterm election outcome calculations: “Consider the economy. The unemployment rate has declined to 5.9 percent from 7.9 percent in January 2013. The Dow Jones industrial average has risen more than 25 percent in the same period. In the third quarter of this year, the overall economy grew at a healthy 3.5 percent rate, completing the strongest six-month period of growth in more than a decade.” Yet the President still has low approval ratings. Harwood speculates that growing inequality may be a leading factor: “Benefits flow disproportionately to a high-earning minority, while average families struggle.” But that pretty much describes the central principle of Republican economic policy.
NYT’s Jonathan Martin has a couple of useful charts depicting five plausible paths to senate control for for each party.
With so many close races being decided on Tuesday, Dems are very concerned about voter intimidation and other shenanigans. At The Hill Alexandra Jaffe writes about the legal preparations of both parties for monitoring midterm voting.
Could electronic voting be on the way out?
Humility was never their strong card. But GOP swagger about winning the Senate is reportedly over the top. Norm Ornstein argues, however, that “A Republican Senate Victory Could Splinter the Party.”

From Nate Cohn’s “Early Voting Numbers Look Good for Democrats” at The NYT Upshot:

Democratic efforts to turn out the young and nonwhite voters who sat out the 2010 midterm elections appear to be paying off in several Senate battleground states.
More than 20 percent of the nearly three million votes already tabulated in Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa have come from people who did not vote in the last midterm election, according to an analysis of early-voting data by The Upshot.
These voters who did not participate in 2010 are far more diverse and Democratic than the voters from four years ago. On average across these states, 39 percent are registered Democrats and 30 percent are registered Republicans. By comparison, registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats in these states by an average of 1 percentage point in 2010.
The turnout among black voters is particularly encouraging for Democrats, who need strong black turnout to compete in racially polarized states like Georgia and North Carolina. In those two states, black voters so far represent 30 percent of the voters who did not participate in 2010. By comparison, 24 percent of all those who voted in those states in 2010 were black.

All of that said, The Upshot’s turnout model still gives the Republicans a solid edge in the battle for a Senate majority, owing to their historically superior midterm turnout patterns. Nonetheless, adds Cohn, “…the figures are still good news for Democrats. The early-voting surge gives them a chance to pull off upsets in crucial states, particularly if they continue coaxing new voters to the polls in the final week of the campaign.” Read Cohn’s entire post for more data analysis.

Greg Sargent has a “hopeful but realistic” interview with Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, at the Plum Line.
The Upshot’s Nate Cohn reveals “Why Polls Tend to Undercount Democrats,” cites “extensive research, suggesting that many of today’s polls struggle to reach Democratic-leaning groups.”
Jamelle Bouie reports at Slate.com on “The Most Brazen Attempt at Voter Suppression Yet”: “According to a six-month-long investigation conducted by Greg Palast for Al Jazeera, “voting officials in 27 states, almost all of them Republicans, have launched what is threatening to become a massive purge of black, Hispanic, and Asian-American voters. Already, tens of thousands have been removed from voter rolls in battleground states, and the numbers are set to climb.”
Jeremy W. Peters reports in The New York Times that “Democrats have said they need to raise the share of the electorate that is African-American to 21 percent, from 19 percent in the last midterm election in 2010, to prevail over Republicans, who control both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion.”
At HuffPo Pollster Ariel Edwards-Levy and Mark Blumenthal discuss the game-changing potential of “late shifts” in voting, particularly among undecided voters.
Andrew Kohut’s “Registered voters, likely voters, turnout rates: What does it all mean to 2014 election forecasts?” at Pew Research Center provides a useful primer for the midterm elections.
At The Fix Aaron Blake explains why Latino voters are not turning away from the Obama Administration as a result of its immigration policies.
Robocalls, candidate visits to voters homes are down from 2010 midterm elections, according to new Pew Research survey.
Democratic candidate for Governor of Florida Charlie Crist has opened up a huge lead with independents — 18 points — in new Quinnipiac poll.

From “Early voter turnout explodes in New Orleans; could be good sign for Mary Landrieu” by Robert McClendon at The Times-Pacayune:

New Orleanians have been voting early in droves, according to the Orleans Parish registrar of voters.
About 17,430 city residents have cast ballots during early voting, which ends today, said Sandra Wilson, registrar of voters. That’s nearly twice as many early voters as the last midterm election in November 2010, when 9,031 voted early in person, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s figures.
…The big early voting turnout this year may be a good sign for Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu as she fights to keep her Senate seat. African-Americans, who vote overwhelmingly Democrat, have much higher early voting rates than whites, and maximizing voter turnout in New Orleans is seen by many as key to Landrieu’s electoral hopes.
..Wilson said that there has been steady increases in early voter turnout since Hurricane Katrina, but this year’s jump is unprecedented. “It has been amazing,” Wilson said. “It seems like early voting is really taking on.”

“Wilson said that some of the rise in early voting can be attributed to the addition of a new early polling-place,” reports McClendon. “She also said hundreds of “Vote Early” signs that have sprung up in neutral grounds across the city have helped.”
The hope is that those are indicators that New Orleans Democrats have got their act together and intend to hold this seat for Mary Landrieu and the Democrats.

One of the great hobbies of political junkies everywhere is the search for the magic indicator, the polling statistic that predicts more accurately than any other who is going to win. At CNN Politics, Peter Hamby reports on one such number:

The number making Mike Podhorzer anxious these days is 15…That’s the lead Democrats have over Republicans among working class voters in the final days of the 2014 midterm elections, according to his polling at the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation. That might seem good for Democrats, but in modern times, the party always wins voters making $50,000 or less….For Podhorzer, the AFL-CIO’s political director and one of the Democratic party’s top thinkers on voter turnout, it’s the spread that matters.

Quibble if you will that defining working-class voters as those earning under $50K is a tad simplistic. It doesn’t factor in race, for example. But “the under $50Ks” is a good as any demographic to eyeball as campaigns progress, if you know where to draw the line. Hamby points out that Dems won in 2012 with a 22 percent spread with the less than $50Ks, vs. the 11 percent spread they had in 2010 when they lost bad. He continues:

The 55-40 lead Democrats are clinging to among people making under $50,000 is wider than the 50-39 lead they had earlier this summer, making this year’s outcome harder to predict. Podhorzer said it does explain why Democrats are still in the hunt heading into next Tuesday, suggesting that next week’s election won’t resemble the GOP tidal wave of 2010.

The idea is to look for the spread in individual election polls. Magic number notwithstanding, Hamby adds,

Podhorzer, an engineer of the progressive movement’s superior voter turnout machinery, said the battle on election day will be about get-out-the-vote mechanics.
He framed the contest as a test of the GOP’s “wholesale GOTV” — paid media and base enthusiasm in a good Republican year — versus the “retail GOTV” of the Democratic coalition that relies on the party’s technological advantages and focuses on person-to-person contact…
…”The Democrats’ retail GOTV has gotten much, much stronger than in 2010, when the base was even more disillusioned,” he said. “Democrats will do a better job on retail GOTV, and have more of the personal networks on the ground to pull people out. It’s going to be interesting to see how effective that can be.”

The 15 point spread with the under $50Ks is a good polling indicator for how things are going in individual races and it can be helpful in telling campaigns where to put their resources. But to win, Dems will have to set a new midterm standard in retail GOTV, while keeping in competitive in ads, debates, speeches and the other elements of wholesale GOTV.

So how close is the battle for Senate control at this political moment? Princeton Election Consortium’s Sam Wang sees seven Senate races within 3 percentage points — a hell of a lot better for Dems than was supposed to be the case.
“Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd asked Schumer why voters should care about the prospect of the Democrats losing their current Senate majority…”You asked one reason: Supreme Court. The money that’s cascading into our system,” Schumer said in a reference to the 2010 Citizens United decision that legalized Super PACs. “If the Supreme Court continues to be the way it is and there’s a vacancy and they buttress that, we will be subject to these few people just dominating the elections for decades to come. The Supreme Court on voting rights makes a huge difference. The Supreme Court on women’s issues makes a huge difference.” — from Zach Carter’s HuffPo post “Chuck Schumer: Supreme Court Will Thwart Democrats For Decades If We Lose Midterms”
“Will last minute strength be enough for Dems?” Stephen Collinson ruminates on the prospects for Dems holding their senate majority at CNN Politics.
At The New Republic John B. Judis illuminates the strategy of pro-Democratic ‘Battleground Texas’: “Texas has already become a majority-minority state like California. According to 2013 census figures, only 44 percent of Texans are “Anglos,” or whites; 38.4 percent are Hispanic; 12.4 percent African-American; and the remainder Asian-American and native American. By 2020, Hispanics are projected by the Texas State Data Center to account for 40.5 percent of Texans and African-Americans for 11.3 percent compared to 41.1 percent of Anglos. Texas’s minorities generally favor Democrats over Republicans, but they don’t vote in as great a proportion as Anglos who have favored Republicans by similar percentages. Battleground’s strategy assumes that if it and other organizations like the Texas Organizing Project can get many more minorities, and particularly Hispanics, to the polls, then, as minorities increasingly come to outnumber Anglos, Democrats can take back the state.”
As the political parties kick their GOTV operations into high gear, NYT’s Ashley Parker and Jonathan Weisman discuss “For Midterms, Betting on Feet and Good Apps.”
Here’s a turnout clue from Thad Kousser’s L.A. Times op-ed, “Want to Increase Voter Turnout: Here’s How”: “…Targeting different types of often-ignored voters could also pay off for campaigns. Ethnic minorities, especially Latinos, Asian Americans and Middle Eastern Americans who do not speak English at home, often do not get the full attention of campaigns. But in their path-breaking book, “Mobilizing Inclusion,” Lisa Garcia Bedolla and Melissa R. Michelson used randomized experiments to show that well-designed outreach efforts to this group can lead to massive increases in voter turnout. And a group of Yale researchers found that formerly incarcerated felons, who are often ignored by campaigns even after their franchise rights have been restored, could also be effectively mobilized.”
This short-sighted article fails to consider that every vote cast for a Republican advances their efforts to win majority control, dominate congressional and senate committees and crush all environmental regulation. Some environmental groups sincerely want to reward those few Republicans who occasionally support environmental reform. Others are targeting gullible Greens in hopes of neutralizing informed environmental voters as much as possible.
Kennedy Elliot and Scott Clement of The Washington Post have a gizmo for “Measuring the midterm turnout gap,” which provides a helpful visual depicting the midterm shortfall when combining up to three different demographic variables of your choice.
Could we have a little more generosity toward Democratic candidates from outgoing Democratic Sens. Baucus, Harkin and Tim Johnson, whose campaign coffers are reportedly flush?

The indisputable winner of the “Pundit Whopper of the Week” Award has to be David Brooks, who writes in his Friday New York Times column that “The fact that the federal government has not passed major infrastructure legislation is mind-boggling, considering how much support there is from both parties.”
Yes, that’s right. He actually went there.
It did not go unnoticed by his colleague Paul Krugman, who responded in his “Conscience of a Liberal” blog:

Well, the Obama administration would love to spend more on infrastructure; the problem is that a major spending bill has no chance of passing the House. And that’s not a problem of “both parties” — it’s the GOP blocking it. Exactly how many Republicans would be willing to engage in deficit spending to expand bus networks? (Remember, these are the people who consider making rental bicycles available an example of “totalitarian” rule.)

To be fair, the rest of Brooks’s column is not so bad, almost reminiscent of Republicans of yesteryear, back in the day when they actually negotiated in good faith.
Nonetheless P.M. Carpenter piles on in his commentary,

In fact it’s such a stunningly counterfactual claim, I just now violated my day’s Brooks-abstinence and checked his column to see if it was taken out of context by Krugman. It was, in a way. Here’s how Brooks led into his befuddlement over the federal government’s infrastructure inaction: “If you get outside the partisan boxes, there’s a completely obvious agenda to create more middle-class, satisfying jobs.” If you get outside the partisan boxes….
In other words, if one altogether ignores the ruthless, relentless, existing Republican partisanship that is obstructing infrastructure projects, then one’s mind is boggled at the lack of such projects which otherwise enjoy tremendous bipartisan support!
In precisely what sort of Maxwell Smart Cone of Silence walled off from reality does David Brooks write?

Me, I would just ask Brooks to identify GOP supporters of serious infrastructure upgrades, beyond pork projects in their districts only.