The following note by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Some interesting internals in this writeup of the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll by John Harwood. The data on white noncollege women are stunning. As I’ve noted before, serious defection from the GOP among this group would make a severe dent in their coalition.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Dante Chinni and Susan Bronson have a very interesting article up on the NBC News site, going over the final turnout numbers for this year’s primaries. Here’s the basic story:

“Democrats have been turning out in record numbers this year, and midterm history suggests that could have real significance in November.

The following article by Matt Morrison, executive director of Working America, an organizing arm of the AFL-CIO, is cross-posted from the New York Times.

When we asked 4,035 working-class voters in battleground races to name an elected official who was fighting for them, the top response was not a Republican or a Democrat. It was “no one.”

That goes a long way toward explaining why debates among political elites about the strategic direction Democrats must take to win in 2018 and 2020 continue to miss the point. Should Democrats pursue moderate or liberal policies? Should they persuade white working-class voters or mobilize a diverse base? These arguments feel utterly irrelevant to the daily choices of working-class voters.

How do we know? Since Donald Trump’s election, my organization, Working America, a political organizing arm of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., has spoken with 450,000 voters across 17 states. The overwhelming sentiment from these conversations was captured by an African-American voter in central Ohio named Carol (the voters’ last names weren’t provided). Asked to consider the difference in her economic well-being when Democrats are in power versus Republicans, she replied, “Does it even matter?”

Carol, and tens of millions of working people just like her, harbor a deep skepticism that politicians of either party can deliver any kind of meaningful change for them. Our current politics fail to engage working people in a conversation about what matters to them and to draw connections between their lived experience and the reason they should cast a ballot in the first place.

Working-class people share common anxieties about their economic security. Like Carol, they see few solutions from the politicians in either party seeking their vote.

Darren, a white voter in his mid-40s who lives in Philadelphia, said that “we mean nothing” to politicians. “Regular people don’t have money.”

Working-class voters like Darren, a longtime Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump, aren’t ideological; they’re fed up and politically adrift. Persuadable voters like Darren and pessimistic Democrats like Carol are looking for politicians with tangible solutions to help the majority of Americans who have been left out of the country’s growing prosperity.

A voter in Pennsylvania’s 18th District — where Conor Lamb won a special election this year — said, “I care about right here,” as he pointed to his feet on his doorstep. “Tell me what they’re going to do right here.”

Policy prescriptions and white papers don’t overcome this cynicism. The growing number of people living in areas with dwindling newspaper subscriptions or with Sinclair-owned television stations that spend more time on “must run” segments and less time on local issues never even hear the policies in the first place.

For Democrats, simply turning up the volume on political communications through these same channels has not quelled the distrust or broken through. My organization has found that we can get so much more with a different approach: Start where the voters are.

First, our experience running a large-scale, year-round field canvass reveals a somewhat obvious truth. Beginning the conversation by asking, “What matters to you?” instead of telling voters what should matter to them gets a more receptive audience.

Next, when we introduce new information by telling voters about something they don’t know rather than telling them that what they think they know is wrong, you can see the light come on.

Elaine, 70, a white Trump voter in Grove City, Ohio, told us she watches Fox News “in the morning till I go to bed.” Yet when we told her about our push to raise wages and improve working standards, something clicked for her. She shared that her adult children are struggling with low pay and poor benefits.

Like Elaine, two-thirds of Ohio Trump supporters agreed, when we asked them last summer, with a battery of progressive economic policies, including ending employers’ treating workers as independent contractors, so that they’re not saddled with tax and benefit costs, and measures that make it easier to unionize. They had just never heard any politician addressing these issues. The irony is that even where there’s ubiquitous content, people feel less informed. But when swing voters like Elaine can discuss and reason out loud, they can connect powerful stories from their own lives to pragmatic progressive policies — only if they hear about them.

We can’t assume voters like Elaine, Darren and Carol will pull the lever for a progressive in 2018. For this approach to be successful, it must be grounded in more than anecdote and observation. We need evidence that’s produced by clinical research about what changes minds.

An authoritative analysis by the political scientists David Broockman and Josh Kalla comparing nine Working America campaigns with 40 other clinical experiments measuring all major forms of voter communication validated our approach. By engaging in sustained organizing with voters identified via clinical analysis as the best targets, even in communities saturated with campaign communications, we were able to persuade swing voters to vote for Democrats in 2016 in places such as Ohio and to mobilize the party’s base voters in places such as North Carolina.

The recipe is simple: credibility derived from listening, compelling solutions, new information that breaks through and thoughtful analytics. And it works with working-class swing voters and disaffected Democrats equally.

Winning back the confidence of these voters is essential for gaining control of Congress and for building strength in the states ahead of redistricting fights after 2020.

Putting a check on the White House in 2018 won’t fix what’s broken. Radically changing how voters perceive their own agency in relation to politics will. Follow this recipe and progressives can win and govern for a generation.

At CNN Politics, James A. Barnes writes that “Late summer surveys by CNN and other organizations show senior voters tilting decisively towards Democratic congressional candidates. That would dramatically reverse the recent pattern in midterm elections when the elderly provided a major boost to GOP candidates.” Barnes adds,

In CNN surveys conducted in early August and early September, registered voters who are 65 years of age and up preferred Democratic congressional candidates to Republicans by margins of 20 and 16 percentage points, respectively. CNN is not the only news organization to report this kind of GOP deficit among seniors. A late August Washington Post-ABC News survey found that if older voters were casting their ballots today, they would back Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives over Republican candidates by a whopping 22-point margin, 57% to 35%. Similarly, a national poll by Marist College conducted in early September found that among voters 60 years of age and up, they favored Democratic congressional candidates by a 15-point margin.

This is a potentially huge problem for Republicans: In the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections when Republicans regained control of the House and Senate, respectively, GOP candidates were solidly backed by voters 65 and up. When Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, they had a narrow advantage among senior voters.

Barnes notes that “Seniors are customarily more risk-averse than younger voters. Upheaval and uncertainty in government policies can make older voters apprehensive…In many instances, Donald Trump has governed in an opposite manner. And his brash personal style can sometimes come across as reckless. Barnes believes that Trump’s chaotic foreign policy, along with his reckless domestic initiatives and brinksmanship, is a turn-off for many seniors.

And it’s not just GOP-held House seats that are in danger. As Barnes writes,

But it may be in the midterm Senate contests where this trend could have its most profound impact. Democrats have six potentially vulnerable Senate incumbents: Florida’s Bill Nelson, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, Montana’s Jon Tester, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. President Trump carried those last five states by double-digit margins in the 2016 election, and he is a frequent presence in Florida, where he narrowly bested Hillary Clinton and maintains a Palm Beach retreat.

Four of those states, Florida, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia, are among the top ten states with the highest proportion of elderly (65+) residents according to the last decennial census. (Missouri was ranked 16th and Indiana ranked 33rd.)

All of those Democratic incumbents have been elected before, and in Nelson’s case, he’s won three previous Senate races. They are known quantities, and if elderly voters in those states decide to look for a check on Trump, they have a familiar face to cast a ballot for.

“Of course, polls can vary a lot between now and Election Day, and Democrats may not be able to sustain the hefty margins they’re currently receiving from seniors in several polls,” Barnes concludes. “But to win back the House and the Senate, they probably don’t need to. As the 2006 election showed, even a narrow margin of victory among elderly voters can help facilitate a Democratic takeover of Congress.”

Brian Stryker, a partner of Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, has an e-blast memo on “Campaigns: More Messaging about Skills Training,” which makes a compelling case for “skills training-that has been effective in persuading historical Democratic voters to return to the fold.” As Stryker, who specializes in advanced statistical analysis, turnout modeling, and non-traditional survey methods such as cellphone and Internet research, writes,

Not only has talking about skills training helped win us special elections across blue-collar America in the last year and change, it’s also consistently one of the best-polling reasons to support Democratic candidates across the Midwest/Great Lakes region of the country that swung so hard against us in 2016.

This is not to suggest Democrats stop talking about the value of classroom/college education and the need to get costs/debt down – they still have message value with many voters. It’s more to suggest highlighting alternatives in our messaging and realizing post-recession, many voters view non-college paths as a viable and successful alternative. We do well to hit on this issue that speaks strongly to voters who can’t, don’t want to, don’t want the debt, or for other reasons don’t see themselves sitting in college classrooms for four years.

Stryker makes som specific messaging points regarding skills training, including:

• Make this more about children, not adults. Campaigns too often conceptualize skills training solely as a job re-training message, when in fact voters react more positively to it when framed as a program for young people in high school or just after it. Voters talk in focus groups about the lack of shop classes or other work-oriented classes in high school any more. Many also raise the example of a child they know who they feel won’t succeed in college but could work hard and earn a living with their hands if given the chance. They also talk about how many high paying jobs are out there in the real world and how they are in demand if young people will just go get the skills needed to succeed.
• Think of skills training as a cultural touchstone, not just an economic one. Skills training speaks to people on a pocketbook level, for sure. But there’s a deeper cultural resonance among people who value hard work and don’t think hard work includes sitting at a desk. To many voters, it speaks to the honor of putting in a day’s work as a plumber, crane operator, mechanic, or working in advanced manufacturing. Respect for that type of work isn’t something blue-collar voters are hearing from all corners of the Democratic party, at least not as much as they need to be.
• Frame it in terms of a path for children who college isn’t right for. When presented with this concept in an ad or on paper in a focus groups, non-college voters talk about the “college for all mentality” that doesn’t speak to them or their reality. As a party, we should more explicitly talk about providing alternatives for kids besides just a four-year degree.
  • • Acknowledge that college isn’t for everyone. We hear a lot of “college isn’t for everyone” in focus groups from people who did and didn’t go to college. Voters don’t think of that as something to look down on someone for-there’s value to them in skilled trades and hard work-but they that elites look down on people who aren’t willing or able to go to college. Democrats would do well to talk about the inherent value of these paths that we should be providing for kids if college isn’t going to work for them.

Stryker adds that the message polls particularly well “with white blue-collar voters across the Midwest and Great Lakes states” as well as with white Obama-Trump and Rust Belt voters. But it also resonates with voters of color, college-educated whites and swing voters across the nation. He notes that it also “shifts the jobs debate from businesses (tax cuts and red tape/excessive regulation) to workers (raises, better jobs, training), which is more favorable terrain for Democrats. So we shouldn’t just silo this into an education message, it should also be about economic opportunity for kids.

In addition, skills training messaging also helps to educate the public about the important role of trade union training facilities and apprenticeship programs, and that “unions provide people a great path to the middle class. The more voters get that, the more they support the right to organize and a whole host of union priorities.”

Nearly all Democratic candidates can benefit from incorporating thoughtful skills training advocacy and proposals into their messaging — and it’s a message that strengthens the Democratic ‘brand’ as the political party that serves the prioroties of working people.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Politico is out with a new poll of Ohio voters which underscores just how contested the Rustbelt has become in the Trump era. Far from being lost to the Democrats in the wake of the Trump election, Democrats are coming roaring back, riding a wave of discontent with the Orange One and his party.

In the new poll, Democrats lead the Congressional ballot by 7 points in the state, Democratic Senatorial incumbent Sherrod Brown is crushing challenger Jim Renacci and Democrat Richard Cordray is running about even with Mike DeWine in the governor’s race

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

That Was Then. This Is Now.

Excellent article by Dante Chinni and Sally Bronston at NBC News running through how big the swings have been this election cycle–and pretty much all in the Democrats’ favor. Nice graphics!

“The 2018 midterm terrain looks a lot different now than it did at the start of the campaigns. Races that many expected to be close, aren’t. Candidates that were assumed to be safe now find themselves in fights. And the Democrats have been the biggest beneficiaries of the changes.

What is the best option for Democratic strategy regarding the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, now that his accuser has passed an F.B.I.-administered lie detector test? Elana Schor reports that Sen. Jeff Flake, a member of the closely divided Judiciary Committee, “flashed a yellow light Sunday night on Brett Kavanaugh’s high court bid, telling POLITICO that he won’t support advancing the nomination this week if fellow senators don’t do more to hear out a woman accusing the nominee of sexual assault more than three decades ago.” Sen. Bob Corker also supports a delay in the confirmation process. The Washington Post conservative columnist Max Boot writes, “If Republicans try to muscle Kavanaugh’s nomination through now, without any further investigation, they will be guilty of gross deflection of their duty to “advise and consent.” Given their narrow 51-49 majority, it takes only a few Republicans of conscience — paging Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowksi (Alaska), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.) — to force the majority to do the right thing. Which is to have the FBI investigate the incident, and, if as appears likely, the accusation is found to be credible, to call both Kavanaugh and Ford to testify under oath.” Democrats do need to kep the heat on, and strongly express their opposition to a quick confirmation, especially in light of the latest allegations.

Let’s have an amen for Frank Bruni’s New York Times column, “Democrats’ Top-Secret Formula for Victory: Stop obsessing over ideology. It’s about personality.” The central point of the article is well-encapsulated in the title. After all of the theories about developing a winning formula for political campaigns have been exhausted, there is no substitute for an exciting candidate. Nothing all that new here, but Bruni does provide some well-stated insights, including “…Over and over, as we rapt observers yearn for a pattern and persuade ourselves that we’ve found one only to have it vanish before our eyes…That’s because we’re staring at the wrong thing. Intent on some ideological takeaway, we miss the human moral. This year’s victorious candidates, like so many winners before them, aren’t prevailing simply or even mainly because of the labels they’re wearing or the precise points on the political spectrum to which they can be affixed.” Bruni says of good candidates, “They’re powered by their personalities, their organizations or both. They communicate effectively. They have backgrounds that make sense to voters or temperaments that feel right to them. And they’ve devised ways to reach voters that their rivals haven’t…It’s candidates’ ability to connect and make the case.” But being a good candidate is not just about endowed personal charisma; it’s also about discipline, working hard to be an effective communicator and running a smart campaign. It’s not a 100 percent foolprooof notion — charismatic candidates sometimes get beat by dullards, as Bruni notes. All other factors being equal, however, a candidate who has a really good personality is  usually a better bet than a yawner.

Bruni cites a couple of examples to help make his point: “Did Andrew Gillum, the Democratic contender for governor in Florida, win his primary because he was the most progressive of the four main candidates? That’s a less likely explanation than two others. First, his rivals, fixated on each other, competed for and split the same territory, enabling Gillum to gobble up different ground. Second, he was an impassioned, magnetic competitor with an inspiring biography, a talent for telling it and an innovative approach.” After the horrific shootings at Parkland, FL, Gillum  communicated a sense of compassion for the victims and their families with authentic warmth and sincerity that has become all too rare among current politicians. Bruni also cites Ohio’s Sen. Sherrod Brown as an example of a progressive who also communicates an aura of integrity and dedication with “rumpled authenticity” and Beto O’Rourke, who effectively leverages his personal likeability with an even more impressive work ethic in his Texas campaign for U.S. Senate.

Noam Scheiber and Astead W. Herndon have an outstanding New York Times report on Democratic midterm prospects in a key state, entitled “In Michigan, Female Candidates Target a Key Trump Bloc: Union Voters.” An excerpt: “…Michigan Democrats, like the party’s nominee for governor, Gretchen Whitmer, are determined to recapture union voters in 2018, and in so doing show national Democrats how to retake the state’s critical electoral votes in 2020. For unions, the fall election provides a test of political strength after years of decline, and of the power of economic issues to drive their members’ votes…Michigan Democrats are now on the offensive on the economy, proposing hundreds of millions in spending on infrastructure: “Fix the damn roads!” thunders Ms. Whitmer. They rail against new taxes on pensions and vow to stand up to scofflaw corporations. They insist, à la Mr. Trump, that the state can once again produce good blue-collar jobs.”

Scheiber and Herndon continue, “In 2016 I think I had two people working with me on politics,” said Lisa Canada, the political and legislative director for the state carpenters union, referring to paid staffers. “We have 20 this year.”…All four Democratic nominees for statewide office are women, as are three of the party’s five nominees in competitive congressional races, and they are showing a knack for trying to increase the return on the labor investment in their races. Many of the candidates lighten their populist overtures with an empathy that often evades Mr. Trump — and, some Democrats say, evaded Mrs. Clinton, too…She has discussed spending billions on infrastructure and pointedly contrasts her proposals — which draw inspiration from the epic Mackinac suspension bridge — with the president’s. “At a time when some people want to build walls,” she says in her Grand Rapids lilt, “we in Michigan are going to get back to building bridges.”…Recent public polls have shown Ms. Whitmer with double-digit leads over her Republican opponent, Attorney General Bill Schuette. She also led Mr. Schuette by 22 points among union households in an early September pollcommissioned by the Detroit News…“I think she’s resonated because she’s invited labor to the table,” said Jon Brown, a construction worker and member of a local laborer’s union, citing Ms. Whitmer’s infrastructure plan.”

Margot Sanger-Katz explains why the “No. 1 Aim of Democratic Campaign Ads: Protect Pre-existing Conditions” at The Upshot: “This cycle, even Democrats running in red states are unapologetically putting health care at the center of their campaign messages. There’s a reason: Republican efforts to overhaul the health care system last year were deeply unpopular…A lawsuit brought by several states imperils the health law’s protections for people with pre-existing health conditions, the law’s most popular provision. Recent polls show growing numbers of Americans rank health care as a top issue, and coverage for pre-existing conditions as an important policy…A recent analysis from the Wesleyan Media Project showed that health care was the most common subject of televised campaign advertisements by Democrats in both the House and the Senate…(Obamacare figures in only 1 percent of Republican ads, according to the Wesleyan count.)”

Sanger-Katz presents and analyzes 7 Democratic midterm video ads that effectively target the GOP’s war on protection for pre-existing conditions, including this one:

New York Times columnist David Leonhardt cuts through the fog of simplistic slogans and generalizations and makes it plain: “For the most part, though, the Democratic agenda remains decidedly center-left: Raise taxes on the rich, and use the money to help the middle class and poor. Protect civil rights. Expand educational access. Regulate Wall Street, and fight climate change. Expand health insurance using the current system. And compromise with Republicans when necessary…The radical agenda is the Republican agenda: Make climate change worse, unlike almost every other conservative party in the world. Aggravate inequality. Sabotage health-insurance markets. Run up the deficit. Steal a Supreme Court seat. Keep dark-skinned citizens from voting. Protect Trump’s lawlessness…If you consider yourself a moderate — whether you lean slightly right or slightly left — your choice in this year’s midterms is clear…And if you consider yourself a leftist, I understand you are probably frustrated that the Democrats won’t go further. But look at the big picture. The Democratic Party may not have moved nearly as much as you would like, but the party has moved. It has adjusted its agenda in response to soaring inequality and stagnant living standards…The one mistake no voter should make is pretending that the two parties are just different versions of the same thing.”

Here’s a chart spotlighting four different midterm election forecasts by political scientists, presented by James E. Campbell, author of Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America, at Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

It’s not just about the House and the Senate. The outcomes of the various governors’ and state legislative races will be absolutely crucial for our politics going. Here’s an analysis of where we are on these races with one of my favorite analysts, Henry Olsen:

“Most discussions of the midterms focus on federal races for the House and the Senate. But nearly all states hold legislative elections this year, too, and 37 states will elect governors this fall. If the negative trends apparent at the federal level hit Republicans here, too, the repercussions could be felt in the party for years.

One might think that state and federal races would have different outcomes. After all, presidents and Congress have little to do with the issues that normally dominate state-level campaigns. Nevertheless, outcomes at each level tend to run in similar directions and with roughly equivalent dimensions.

Take the GOP “wave” election of 2010. Republicans not only picked up a massive 63 House and six Senate seats; they also gained six governorships and 680 state legislative seats. Democrats celebrated similar numbers four years earlier. In 2006, a Democratic landslide saw that party gain 31 House seats, six Senate seats, six governorships, and over 300 state legislative seats. Individual races might diverge from the national trend, but a wave will sweep all before it, no matter what level the race is at.

This bodes ill for Republicans running for governor this year. In part because many of the Republicans who won in 2010 are now term-limited out of office, Republicans must defend 11 governor’s chairs without the benefit of a previously elected incumbent. RealClearPolitics rates three of those seats as leaning to the Democrats with another six rated as toss-ups, including the large states of Florida, Georgia, and Ohio. GOP incumbents are also running in seven other states that by polling or by prior voting behavior raise caution flags. RealClear rates one of them, Illinois’ Bruce Rauner, as a likely loser, while incumbents in Wisconsin (Scott Walker) and Arizona (Doug Ducey) are considered toss-ups. Should Republicans lose the four races they trail in and only split the toss-ups, that would mean a net loss of eight governorships, the largest any party has lost in one election since the GOP picked up 11 in the historic 1994 wave.

Hundreds of state legislative seats are also in play. There’s lots of debate over when a seat should be considered vulnerable, but in the current environment most observers would probably agree that any Republican-held seat carried by either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump with less than 50 percent of the vote qualifies for that distinction. A staggering 477 GOP-held statehouse seats fit these criteria. Another 202 Republican-held state Senate seats also fit the bill, though not all will be up for election because many states stagger senatorial terms. Losses of that magnitude would easily be the largest Republican losses in decades.”

Wave on, Big Blue, wave on!

In his syndicated column, “Brett Kavanaugh — and Susan Collins — better watch these seeds of a grass-roots revolt,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. reports on the uphill struggle citizens groups to persuade Sen. Susan Collins to vote against Trump’s GOP nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Most political observers believe Collins will cave to McConnell and the GOP and vote for Kavanaugh — even though it is clear that Kavanaugh is highly likely to support gutting Roe v. Wade and affirmative action, exempt the President from any accountability arising out of the Mueller investigation, weaken worker rights and “roll back environmental regulations and the Affordable Care Act.” Voting for Kavanaugh would also require Collins to ignore clear evidence that he lied under oath during the hearings. Dionne adds that “More broadly, there is a belief that the would-be justice is primarily a partisan and an ideologue. “He’s a political animal to the core — and I say that as a political animal,” said [activist Ben] Gaines, who worked for many Democrats around the country.”

Paul Waldman explains at The Plum Line why “a Supreme Court with Kavanaugh on it could create a free-for-all when it comes to the influence of money in politics, a new era in which corruption is absolutely rampant — and completely legal…To understand why, we have to look at not just what Kavanaugh believes, but at where the court has been heading in recent years. With the court about to be dominated by a quintet of highly ideological conservatives, conservative ideas about campaign finance and about corruption could come together in a way that presents a profound threat to the integrity of the American system of government…Once Kavanaugh joins the other conservatives on the Supreme Court, we could see almost all campaign finance laws disappear. Then Republicans will declare that we’ve solved the problem of corruption in politics, because almost nothing will be against the law.”

Daniel Strauss’s Politico article, “Obama jumps into Dem fight to reclaim Ohio: Richard Cordray’s campaign for governor has become a rallying point for Democrats focused on rebuilding the party” provides insights into Democratic midterm strategy in Rust Belt. As Strauss writes, “The campaign has become a focus for national Democrats intent on rebuilding their party: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a Cordray mentor, has stumped for him, as has Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), another potential 2020 presidential candidate. Former Vice President Joe Biden will also return to Ohio to boost Cordray soon, though the specifics of his next visit have not yet come together. They are hoping to undo years of reversals for the state Democrats, who have been locked out of every statewide constitutional office since 2010 and had no leverage on the last redistricting process, allowing Republicans to cement majorities in the state legislature.” In addition to the role President Obama, Strauss explores in detil the complex political dynamics of this key governor’s race.

“In 2016, four percent of registered voters did not vote because of “registration problems,” according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. Another three percent pointed to “transportation problems,” and two percent cited “inconvenient hours or polling places.”…Research has shown that one factor consistently linked with higher vote turnout is the ability to fix a registration issue at the time of voting. One of these registration problems is tied to an upsurge in voter purging. Across the country, the rate at which people are being purged from the voting rolls has increased substantially compared to a decade ago, according to a report from the Brennan Center published this summer. The analysis found about four million more people were purged between 2014 and 2016 than in the equivalent period between 2006 and 2008.”  — From Asma Khalid’s “Election Laws May Discourage Some From Voting, Even If They Are Allowed” at npr.og.

Paul Rosenzweig’s”Securing the Vote: A Report From the National Academies of Sciences” calls attention to an “elegant study of election security…without partisan bluster,” and cites three of it’s recommendations, including “Elections should be conducted with human-readable paper ballots.” Also, “States should mandate a specific type of audit known as a “risk-limiting” audit prior to the certification of election results. Additionally, “Internet voting should not be used at the present time, and it should not be used in the future until and unless very robust guarantees of secrecy, security, and verifiability are developed and in place.

At The New York Times, Julian E. Barnes and Nicholas Fandos discuss legislative proposals to deter foreign interference in U.S. elections, and note “Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who is vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said to truly deter Russia, the United States must make clear that election interference will have “painful consequences…Senators Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, have written a bill, the Deter Act, to impose mandatory sanctions on anyone who attacks the American election…While the executive order would primarily target the people and entities that attack the election system, lawmakers said, the Senate legislation would have wider economic sanctions targeting financial institutions, oligarchs and others.”

Fando and Barnes add that “Another bipartisan group of senators — led by Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and Mr. Graham — have pushed for an even more aggressive sanctions package designed to impose devastating sanctions across the Russian economy pre-emptively. But it is less likely to receive serious consideration by Republican leaders in the Senate or the House…The fate of either measure ultimately rests with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. He has not promised action but previously said it might be possible to vote on consensus legislation in October. Mr. McConnell assigned two committees to study sanctions and develop a single proposal for consideration. One of those, the Senate Banking Committee, convened a panel of experts on Wednesday to evaluate Mr. Trump’s executive action and the potential effect of targeting sectors of the Russian economy through new sanctions authorities.”

Jennifer Agiesta of CNN Politics reports that “Democrats maintain a wide lead over Republicans in the race for control of the House of Representatives, a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS finds, including a 10-point lead among those most likely to turn out this November…In a generic ballot test, 52% of likely voters back the Democratic candidate for House of Representatives in their district while 42% back the Republican. Among all registered voters, Democrats hold a 12-point margin over the GOP, suggesting preferences have not shifted much since an August CNN Poll, which did not include an assessment of likely voters…And more Americans say the country would be better off (40%) than worse off (28%) should Democrats take control of Congress in this November’s elections. That’s a wider margin that felt the nation would be better off should Republicans take control back in 2010. Only about a quarter now (27%) say it doesn’t make a difference, fewer than felt that way in 2014 or 2010, suggesting voters see this year’s contest as more consequential.”

An addendum to our staff post yesterday surveying political analyst views on Democratic prospects for winning a Senate majority in the midterms comes from Nate Silver, who writes at FiveThirtyEight that “Republicans Are Favorites In The Senate, But Democrats Have Two Paths To An Upset.” Silver notes that the FiveThirtyEight “model has Democrats as reasonably clear underdogs to take control of the Senate. Even though it’s more optimistic than the consensus about Democrats’ chances in several individual races — and even though the model is generated by the same program that gives Democrats around a 5 in 6 chance of winning the House — it nevertheless says Republicans have somewhere between a 2 in 3 and 7 in 10 chance to hold the Senate, depending on which version of our model you look at…In essence, writes Silver, “there are two ways by which Democrats might win the Senate: a macro path and a micro path.” Read Silver’s article for the detailed exploration of both paths.