As a transplant living in California, I’m pretty familiar with the electoral system here. And the things I’ve been hearing Republicans say on the subject are outrageous, as I explained at New York.

Some Republicans were so busy on the evening of November 6 spinning a poor midterm showing into a vindication of their party and president that they apparently missed the fact that the election wasn’t quite over. And later on, they professed mystification at the final results. I say “professed” because it’s hard to believe Speaker Paul Ryan is as stupid as he sounds here:

“The California election system ‘just defies logic to me,’ Ryan said during a Washington Post event.

“‘We were only down 26 seats the night of the election and three weeks later, we lost basically every California race….’

“’In Wisconsin, we knew the next day. Scott Walker, my friend, I was sad to see him lose, but we accepted the results on Wednesday,’ Ryan said. In California, ‘their system is bizarre; I still don’t completely understand it. There are a lot of races there we should have won.’”

The slow count from California should not have come as a surprise: It happened in the June 5 primary as well, and in the 2016 primary and general election. And it was in part the product of a 2015 change in state election laws allowing ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within three days to count. Since the share of Californians voting by mail has been going up regularly in recent elections, we’re talking about a lot of votes. Since mail ballots have to go through signature verification (just like in-person ballots go through at polling places), it takes a while to count them. There’s nothing new or nefarious about either of these practices. Voting by mail (or as the practice’s proponents prefer to call it, “voting from home”) is now quasi-universal in three states: Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. And much longer than California, Washington has for years allowed ballots postmarked by Election Day to count, leading to slow counts in that state as well. A Washington election official had an interesting reaction when asked back in 2012 about the consequences of a slow count:

“‘News reporters are the only people who complain about the vote-counting delay,’ said [Katie] Blinn, adding that Washington’s system is relatively inexpensive, accurate and encourages turnout.”

Apparently Speakers of the House also complain now.

While a spokesman for Ryan hastened to say he didn’t intend to claim a election fraud, his complaints echoed those of a California member of the Republican National Committee, Shawn Steel, who suggested just that in an op-ed for the Washington Times.

Citing Republican congressional candidate Young Kim’s 14-point lead at one point on the evening of November 6, Steel asks:

“How does a 14-point Republican lead disappear? Merciless and unsparing, California Democrats have systematically undermined California’s already-weak voter protection laws to guarantee permanent one-party rule.”

To those unfamiliar with GOP rhetoric, I should explain that “voter protection laws” means laws making it as hard as possible to vote. Consider Steel’s interpretation of the rule allowing ballots postmarked by Election Day:

“In California, voting doesn’t stop on Election Day. Absentee ballots need only be postmarked by Election Day, with ballots counted that arrive up to three days late. If ballots are sent to the wrong county, the ballot is valid for an additional four days….That means you literally have seven days after an election where a county could still be receiving legitimate ballots.”

Again, that’s been the practice in Washington for years, without complaint (other than from reporters). And when you think about it, why should we respect ballots cast on Election Day more than those filled out on or before Election Day that are duly placed in the mail, at their own expense? Should such voters have to guess how long it will take the postal service to deliver their ballots? This complaint only makes sense to someone who wants to make voting inconvenient, and hence rarer. Steel goes on to suggest that voting by mail is itself nefarious:

“In just four years, the number of absentee ballots distributed in California has increased by 44 percent. ‘Nearly 13 million voters have received a ballot in the mail, compared to just 9 million in the last gubernatorial election in 2014,’ notes Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc.”

First of all, these aren’t “absentee ballots.” As is the case in a growing number of states, voting by mail is considered normal, not something you have to construct an excuse to do. And of course the number is rising: In California you can register as a “voter by mail” and you will receive mail ballots automatically so long as you keep voting. Steel points to an experiment that allowed a handful of counties this year to mail ballots to all registered voters as though that somehow encourages fraud. Again, that is the universal practice in voting-by-mail states; what’s the beef? You can vote by mail, vote in person, or not vote at all. Nothing has changed.

Here’s another bogus complaint from Steel, about what he calls, without a shred of evidence, “motor voter fraud:”

“Every person in California that interacts with the Department of Motor Vehicles is automatically registered to vote. This has predictably led to tens of thousands cases of voter registration problems. The state’s Motor Voter program has come under fire for double registering as many as 77,000 people and registering as many as 1,500 ineligible voters. The state’s bipartisan oversight agency expressed concerns about ‘serious problems with ensuring that the New Motor Voter Program works as intended and promised.'”

This is called “automatic voter registration” and 15 states (plus the District of Columbia) have similar systems. California’s just went into effect this last April, and those 1,500 ineligible voters (who were duly purged from the rolls) were out of the 1.4 million enrolled by September, when the errors were discovered and cured.

One more bogus complaint that you can hear other Republicans make involves something Steel confusedly calls “conditional voting”:

“California has effectively adopted same-day voter registration with the introduction of ‘conditional voting.’ This election cycle, voters who missed the 15-day voter registration deadline could request to cast a conditional ballot.”

Same-day voter registration is in effect in 17 states (plus D.C.). And “provisional ballots” have been in effect nationwide since the passage of the 2002 Help America Vote Act. It’s actually a means for ensuring against voter fraud, since provisional votes are not counted until their validity can be established. Yes, provisional ballots slow down vote counts, but the alternative — giving voters the benefit of the doubt and counting them all — isn’t likely going to be endorsed by Republicans….

This brouhaha might not matter if it did not feed the same myths of voter fraud that led Donald Trump to claim without a hint of evidence after the 2016 elections that “millions” of illegal votes had been cast for Hillary Clinton in California, robbing him of a popular-vote plurality nationally. Going into 2020, this sort of loose talk needs to be debunked wherever possible, unless we want to risk the possibility of a GOP election defeat that is not simply questioned but denied.

Democrats had a lot going for them in their midterm quest for a House of Representatives majority, including: historical midterm election patterns; the public’s desire to check President Trump and GOP domination of all branches of government; the Republican failure to offer a credible health care reform package; their multi-billion dollar tax give-away to the wealthy; unease about Trump’s reckless trade policy; a bumper crop of really good Democratic candidates and competent campaigns; and additional millions of fed-up women voters.

But for many Democrats who won close races, a leading factor in their success would have to include the generosity of former New York Mayor/publishing tycoon Michael Bloomberg. As Stephanie Saul and Rachel Shorey explain in their NYT article, “How Michael Bloomberg Used His Money to Aid Democratic Victories in the House“:

Big donors like the Adelsons, the Uihleins, the Koch brothers on the Republican side and Tom Steyer and George Soros on the Democratic side have become integral and influential players in every election cycle. But in this year’s midterm elections, Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, emerged as a powerful and effective force, as well as the biggest outside spender promoting Democratic House candidates, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Records filed so far show that organizations controlled and funded by Mr. Bloomberg spent more than $41 million on 24 House races, much of it on eye-catching ads rolled out on social media and broadcast on television in the crucial final days of the campaign.

And while it’s impossible to conclude that any one factor tipped the balance in a race, Mr. Bloomberg appears to have reaped the benefits of his millions in giving. Democrats won 21 of the 24 races he sought to influence. Of those, 12 had been considered either tossups or in Republican districts.

“The mission was to flip the House. Success or failure would be defined by that,” said Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Mr. Bloomberg.

…When the final reports are filed next month, Mr. Bloomberg’s organization says they will show that the former mayor and his organizations spent $44 million on television ads and another $12 million on digital advertising in support of House candidates. Overall spending by Mr. Bloomberg and his organizations in the 2018 elections topped $112 million, an amount that also includes donations to help Senate candidates and progressive organizations…That puts him on the same level as Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, longtime Republican megadonors who had given $112 million to Republican Super PACs as of Oct. 17.

No doubt some of the 40 Democratic pick-ups and incumbents who won narrow victories would have won without contributions from Bloomberg and other wealthy donors.  However, note Saul and Shorey, “Assessing the election outcome, Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, cited Mr. Bloomberg’s spending as a significant factor. “Michael Bloomberg’s money went a long way. He defeated a lot of people by writing those $5 million checks,” Mr. McCarthy told CNBC. Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball sees a more moderate Bloomberg effect, adding that “Mr. Bloomberg and his late money may have made a difference in a few of the surprising results that helped pad the size of the Democratic majority.”

And Bloomberg’s investments were smart and strategically-sound, as Storey and Saul explain. His strategy “involved spending on digital advertising beginning in September and spending “big” and “late” on television advertising. Records show that more than $30 million of Mr. Bloomberg’s spending on House races came after Oct. 22…They identified districts previously ignored by national Democrats where there were opportunities to stretch the Democratic map.”

In terms of digital and TV ad strategy, “Digital ads are cheaper and carry metrics showing how many people clicked, how long they watched and how many people shared. Using those metrics, Mr. Bloomberg’s operation was able to identify successful digital ads that they could move to television.” Saul and Storey provide a number of specific examples, including:

Health care and taxes were major themes of the Bloomberg ads. In Illinois’s 14th Congressional District, a suburban Chicago area, one Bloomberg-funded ad emphasized the Democratic challenger Lauren Underwood’s record as a registered nurse who would fight for health care.

A separate ad attacked the four-term incumbent, Randy Hultgren, for his vote in favor of the bill limiting deductions for state and local taxes, which the ad claimed would lead to “higher taxes for many Chicagoland families.”

…In Houston, a media market saturated with political advertising, one ad stood out for its quirkiness. It featured a cartoonlike depiction of the Republican incumbent, Representative John Culberson, riding a spaceship.

Mr. Culberson had pushed millions of dollars in funding for a NASA mission to find signs of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa.

“John Culberson: Out of this World,” the ad trumpeted.

“It was definitely the most-talked-about ad in the Houston area,” said Tony Essalih, a former aide to Mr. Culberson and now a principal with Cornerstone Government Affairs, a lobbying firm. “In terms of driving up his negatives, I think it had an impact.”

It’s impossible to pinpoint the overall effectiveness of Bloomberg’s contributions with any precision. But it’s clear his support had a significant impact in a number of races. It looks like Democrats owe him a debt of gratitude. Meanwhile, Bloomberg is behaving like a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and he has an upcoming speaking engagement in Iowa. If he runs, former Republican Bloomberg will likely be cast as a centrist, business-friendly Democrat, even though he is now the NRA’s top boogeyman.

Bloomberg will undoubtedly make some Democrats nervous, especially those who could use his support, but don’t want to get locked into an endorsement trajectory. Bloomberg may end up more a king-maker than a King. But either way, his influence in Democratic Party politics is on the upswing — and so far, for progressives, as well as moderates, that’s been a good thing.

In looking at various analyses of where Republicans lost votes in the 2018 midterm elections, a pattern started to suggest itself, and I wrote about it at New York:

Most 2018 midterm postmortems have identified the same groups of voters as Republican weak spots. Chief among them are college-educated suburban voters, especially women, and millennials, who all stand out because they are swing voters likely to expand their share of the electorate, and because they really, really don’t seem to like the kind of GOP Donald Trump is building.

You know what else they tend to have in common? Progressive views on culture-war issues, which often offset comparatively more conservative views on economic policy, fiscal policy, and the size of the government. There are three notable state-level role models for Republican politics that caters to this combination of voter preferences, as RealClearPolitics’ Adele Malpass notes:

“The oxymoron of the 2018 elections is that three deep-blue states elected Democratic U.S. senators by wide margins while also electing Republican governors. In the so- called ‘People’s Republic of Vermont,’ voters overwhelmingly re-elected both progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican Gov. Phil Scott. It was the same story in reliably liberal Massachusetts where voters bestowed second terms on Elizabeth Warren and Charlie Baker. Ditto in Maryland for Ben Cardin and Larry Hogan. So how did Republican governors win in states where Hillary Clinton had some of her largest margins of victory in 2016?

“The campaign playbook was the same in all three states: stick to local issues while being socially liberal and fiscally conservative.”

But there’s a real problem with taking that approach at the national level. The sine qua non of “social liberalism” is being pro-choice on abortion policy. And in national GOP politics, that’s a position that has all but been read out of existence.

Yes, there remain two pro-choice Republicans in the Senate: Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. But Collins’s pro-choice street cred was severely damaged by her support for Brett Kavanaugh, and Murkowski’s relationship with her own party back home was strained by her “no” vote on that confirmation. And the anti-abortion movement believes the 2018 midterms significantly increased its power in the Senate and in the party, as the New York Times observed:

“Social conservatives said on Wednesday they were elated by the victories in the Senate and in the governors’ races, which they believe provide openings to push their agenda in the judiciary and the states even if a Democratic-led House ties up legislative priorities of President Trump and Washington Republicans.

“’We are so much stronger than we were before,’ said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group that led an extensive turnout operation this year in states like North Dakota, Indiana and Missouri, where incumbent Democratic senators were defeated by anti-abortion Republicans. ‘We win when we go back to our roots,’ she added.”

With the Trump administration regarding its hard-core stance on abortion as central to its relationship with white evangelical “base” voters (a relationship policed by Vice-President Pence), the odds of the GOP giving a new breed of suburban political warriors space to maneuver on this issue are virtually nil. The next election, moreover, will be framed in no small part around the ability of Donald Trump to secure a second term in which to consummate a conservative judicial counterrevolution whose most immediate and important goal is the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Polarization over abortion means that Democrats have all but lost their “pro-life” wing as well. But there are significantly more rank-and-file pro-choice Republicans than there are pro-life Democrats. And as Sarah Jones pointed out recently, Democrats don’t really need strongly anti-abortion voters to forge a majority. Republicans do need pro-choice voters, now and in the future, and at the worst possible time, their ability to accommodate that point of view is vanishing in the fires of the culture wars.

In their article, “The Suburbs Are Changing. But Not in All the Ways Liberals Hope” in The Upshot, Emily Badger, Quoctrung Bui and Josh Katz provide some insights into the force driving political preferences of the suburban voters who were so influential in the midterm elections. In this excerpt, they spotlight a demographic trend that is helping to reverse the damage done by the GOP’s gerrymandering project: “Many of the districts that flipped Democratic this year, particularly in Sun Belt suburbs of Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Orange County, have grown much more racially and economically diverse, defying conventional portraits of suburbia…“The imagination of the suburbs is stuck in a model that emerged in Orange County in the 1960s: Goldwater-Reagan voters, white-collar, conservative activists,” said Matthew Lassiter, a University of Michigan historian who has also studied suburban voters…The demographic change that Democrats hope will advantage them nationally — as long as Republicans continue to seem uninterested in courting minorities — is already well underway in these places.”

Writing at nbcnews.com, Donna Ladd, editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press, sees a ray of hope for Democrats in Mike Espy’s loss in the U.S. Senate rce in Mississippi: “Exit polls for the general election on November 6 showed the usual for our state — people under age 45 supported Democrat Mike Espy while people over 45 voted Republican…But this time, the volume of dissent to the status quo in Mississippi is louder than it’s ever been — including among many white natives — and that is going to make Republicans’ use of racist political strategies much harder in upcoming elections. Espy may have lost the race but, like successful battles first to end slavery and then Jim Crow in this region, his ideas may still win the war.”

WaPo syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. notes that “Espy, the first African American congressman from Mississippi since Reconstruction, ran better than past Democratic candidates not only by producing an impressive turnout in predominantly black counties but also by cutting into Republican margins in more urbanized and suburban parts of the state. Hyde-Smith partly offset these gains with overwhelming margins in the white, rural counties that dominate politics in the Magnolia State…What’s striking is that the weakness of a Trumpified GOP among better-educated, suburban voters was on display in Mississippi, which no one expects to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate anytime soon…These middle-class and upscale voters produced a large new bloc of Democrats in the House of Representatives. Many of the newcomers came from traditionally blue states, but metropolitan districts in the red states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah and Georgia also fell their way. These victories helped account for the Democrats’ astonishing popular-vote margin of s ome 9 million in House contests , and they triumphed in districts that were once hospitable to a moderate brand of Republicanism that has been crushed in the Trump era. You could say that moderate and progressive Republicans now live inside the Democratic Party.”

Meanwhile, a big Democratic win in Oklahoma opens up the possibilities in the southwest:

At The Daily 202, James Hohman observes, “The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wading into primaries in swing districts caused months of angry grumbling from the left, including a public rebuke from Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and an onslaught of negative coverage from left-leaning outlets like The Intercept. But the leaders of the party committee cared more about winning the House majority than ruffling feathers, and it’s becoming clearer as the dust settles that their strategy succeeded.” Hohman notes that DCCC intervention, which included finding win-win strategies and ‘sweeteners’ for candidates to run in other races paid of in at least two California distrcts, one in Sacramenta, the other the the Central Valley. Credit the DCCC with smart navigation of CA ‘jungle primaries’ to benefit the party.

Elaine Kamarck shares some of the reasons why “Why Nancy Pelosi Deserves to Be Speaker” in her New York Times op-ed,  including “Even her detractors say that she’s best at one of the most critical, if not most critical, roles of speaker, which is to court votes and count votes. Counting is a lot more complicated than conducting a survey. It involves understanding the political challenges of each and every member of Congress and then devising a legislative package that can pass. Sometimes this entails compromise; sometimes this entails structuring the vote so that a member can cast a vote against an amendment and sometimes this entails allowing a member to vote against their party — if it already has the votes to prevail…in 2005, she played a central role in the battle against privatizing Social Security. For the Affordable Care Act, she united both the left and right wings of her caucus. Later, as minority leader, she managed to keep the caucus together enough to prevent the Republican Congress from chipping away at Obamacare…To court votes, an effective legislative leader cannot stick to an overtly ideological line. If she were rigid, she wouldn’t be able to hold together a caucus that consists of conservative “blue dogs” and “democratic socialists.”..Ms. Pelosi and her leadership partner Steny Hoyer of Maryland were a very big part of the reason that the party gained at least 39 seats. Mr. Hoyer recruited and campaigned with candidates from the purple or red districts where Ms. Pelosi was viewed as too liberal. She helped raise the millions to make it all happen. They both imposed a stern message of discipline on their candidates, downplaying talk of impeachment and focusing Democrats on pocketbook issues like health care.”

Good points all, but Matthew Yglesias makes a case at Vox that “Nancy Pelosi is going to be speaker again. What Democrats need now is a TV talking head.” Pelosi is a great organizer but, Dems would do well to spotlight some younger members, if only for the sake of greater age diversity. As Yglesias explains, “Pelosi’s closest allies have never maintained that her great strength in politics is as a stump speaker or a high-energy television presence. Pelosi’s critics are a grab bag of conservative members, restive progressives, and newly elected members from swing districts — all of whom are united more by a lack of seniority in Congress than by a distinct ideological perspective. They don’t really have a coherent critique of her leadership or a different direction in mind; they just don’t want her to be a national lightning rod when a more effective messenger could represent them…Pelosi’s discursive style of speaking does not lend itself to sound bites. There are no viral Pelosi clips, no iconic Pelosi speeches, and no vast cheering crowds at Pelosi rallies. The speaker doesn’t necessarily need to be a high-wattage, charismatic public communicator. But — especially if she isn’t going to be those things — someone else has to step up.” Pelosi is not going to give up the most high-profile media opportunities that come to her as speaker. But she could designate several of the younger members to make announcements and do interviews on  occasions, which would also help convey an image of greater Democratic unity, just as Dems alow younger members to respond to the State of the Union speech.

Paul Waldman examines the difference between a political ‘centrist’ and a ‘moderate’ at The Plum Line. “A moderate may agree with liberals at some times and with conservatives at others,” says Waldman, while “a centrist is more committed to the fantasy that our problems have easy solutions if we’ll just put aside our party labels and get together to “solve problems.” But the idea that there are non-ideological solutions to our problems, solutions everyone will embrace if only they can throw off their team colors, is just wrong. Not in every case, but in most of them. When we decide how our economy should work or how our health-care system should be set up or whether we should pollute the air and water, we have to make not just practical judgments but value judgments too…And there’s a reason why liberals like me find centrists far more exasperating than conservatives do. Not only does the centrist position usually seem to be four parts conservatism to one part liberalism (look at the No Labels policy agenda if you doubt), but centrists take Republicans at their word when they’re plainly operating in bad faith.”

It’s a little early, but Nathaniel Rakich explains why “The Senate Will Be Competitive Again In 2020, But Republicans Are Favored” at FiveThirtyEight. “There will be at least 34 seats up for election in 2020, 22 of which are currently held by Republicans and 12 of which are currently held by Democrats — a stark contrast to the 2018 cycle, when Democrats were on the hot seat. That said, to make the kind of gains they need, Democrats will have to overcome the partisan lean of some fairly red states, plus successfully defend two seats of their own in Republican territory…My educated guess this far out is that Democrats’ best path to a Senate majority in 2020 lies in winning Maine, Colorado and Arizona, plus the vice presidency…In this scenario, either Jones would have to win or Democrats would also have to flip either Iowa or North Carolina. In a political environment where Trump remains unpopular and the Democratic presidential nominee wins by enough to have coattails, that’s not too hard to imagine. But barring a clear blue tinge to 2020, Republicans remain favored in the Senate for the foreseeable future.” But if the demographic trends noted above in the NYT article on the ‘burbs’ proceed apace – or accelerate – all bets would be off.

Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith beat Democrat Mike Espy in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate run-off by a margin of 54 to 46 percent.

“Her win secures Senate Republicans a 53-seat majority for the next two years,” explains Dylan Scott at Vox. “If history is any guide, the next two years could see extreme gridlock on Capitol Hill, with even routine spending bills becoming a vicious fight between the two chambers. Senate Republicans, by holding on to the majority, will focus on what they’ve been doing for the past few months: confirming as many federal judges as possible…Now they’ll have an extra vote’s worth of wiggle room if they need to push through judicial nominees — or a Supreme Court justice — on a party-line vote.”

But, “Hyde-Smith will finish out the final two years of former Sen. Thad Cochran’s term, who retired earlier this year due to health concerns. Hyde-Smith will have to run again in 2020 to serve a full six-year term,” reports Eric Bradner at CNN Politics.

Espy did run “the state’s most competitive Democratic campaign for U.S. Senate in decades but fell short in his efforts to bring historic numbers of black voters to the polls,” note Matt Viser and David Weigel at The Washington Post. But Hyde-Smith was helped by a late injection of funds from conservative groups. Further, add Weigel and Viser,

Espy’s campaign executed its turnout strategy, running ahead of its Nov. 6 vote in nearly every county. He was on track to carry all 25 of the state’s majority-black counties, most by bigger margins than he’d won in the first round. He also cut into traditional Republican margins in some suburban counties. In DeSoto County, on the outskirts of Memphis, he improved from 34 percent in the first round to 41 percent Tuesday.

Some observations from “What Went Down In The Mississippi Senate Runoff Election,” a panel at FiveThirtyEight:

Sarah Frostenson – “…Ultimately, Espy did outperform his Nov. 6 marks, but not by enough to overcome the political landscape of a state as red as Mississippi (at least in statewide elections)…Mississippi leans about 15 points more Republicans than the country overall, according to our partisan lean metric. And Hyde-Smith is likely to end up winning by a margin in the high single digits — a sign that her campaign, which was pretty poorly run and dogged by controversies, cost her some votes. A less controversial GOP candidate likely would have won by more.”

Perry Bacon, Jr. – “The other big takeaway is the various racial controversies around Hyde-Smith probably did hurt her. A strong GOP candidate likely would have won by more. But they did not hurt her that much.”

Nathaniel Rakich – “…the Democratic overperformance might bode well for the party in next week’s runoff for Georgia secretary of state. (Laugh if you want at the obscurity of my election obsession, but it’s an important office with the power to administer elections — remember all the liberal complaints about Brian Kemp this fall?)…This should still be a single-digit race — and a solid Democratic overperformance — when all is said and done.”

Geoffrey Skelley – “Based on the turnout change in the counties that are 100 percent in, turnout as a share of the voting-eligible population might drop from 43 percent three weeks ago to about 40 percent today. That may reflect some staying power for the high-turnout midterm environment we just experienced, the ostensible competitiveness of the race and the heavy focus on the race in the media…Hyde-Smith wins, though she underperformed the GOP’s initial vote on Nov. 6, substantially in some places.”

The New York Times has list of vote totals by county, plus a county by county hover-map, which shows that the run-off’s blue counties are overwhelmingly concentrated in the western part of Mississippi.

“Mr. Espy needed a substantial turnout among black Mississippians, who made up more than a third of the voting-age population and historically sided with Democratic candidates,” notes Alan Blinder in his NYT report. “But Democrats also recognized that Mr. Espy needed to win about a quarter of the white vote.”

As Ed Kilgore concludes at New York Magazine, “Southern Democrats will continue to feel some frustration at their three strong but ultimately unsuccessful performances behind the historic statewide candidacies of African-Americans Espy, Stacey Abrams (Georgia gubernatorial nominee) and Andrew Gillum (Florida gubernatorial nominee). Political experts will intensely examine the turnout patterns in all these states to determine whether a coalition of minority and white suburban voters might revolutionize southern elections in the very near future. In the meantime, Mike Espy, who didn’t have the progressive street cred or media buzz enjoyed by Abrams and Gillum, did an admirable job of challenging the ancient race-driven status quo of Mississippi.”

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

As a sort of companion piece to my post on Purple Texas, it’s worth considering the 2018 results in Extremely Blue California. Despite the endless articles conservative Republicans churn out on how California is a hellhole and only getting worse, the actual voters in that state don’t seem to see the GOP as in any way preferable to the Democrats who are allegedly ruining their state.

In 2018, Republicans got absolutely crushed in California Congressional races. Once they call CA-21 for Democrat TJ Cox, the GOP will have lost half of its already meager allotment of California House seats, diving from 14 to a mere 7 out of 53 seats. That’s bad–almost unbelievably bad for a party that was competitive in statewide elections and at least a healthy minority of House seats not so long ago.

What’s happening? Trump’s happening. And it’s causing an implosion in an already-weakened party in the nation’s biggest state. Ron Brownstein explains in a excellent, detailed article (lots of good data and California political history!) on the Atlantic site:

“The final ingredient in the GOP collapse was Trump. From the start, his open appeals to white racial resentments and the fear of social change faced enormous resistance in diverse, culturally cosmopolitan California: He won less than 32 percent of the state’s vote in 2016. That essentially tied Alf Landon in 1936 as the weakest performance for a Republican presidential nominee in California since 1860. (William Howard Taft won even less of the vote in 1912, but only because Theodore Roosevelt, the former Republican president running as an independent, narrowly carried the state.)

But despite the unmistakable indication of Trump’s local unpopularity, the California GOP delegation locked arms around his turbulent presidency. …California Republicans serving in Clinton-won districts voted more as if they were representing Alabama than swing seats in a state steadily becoming more Democratic. ([Mimi] Walters even told one interviewer that she thought Trump would win her affluent, diverse coastal district today and that she’d welcome a campaign appearance.)

Those choices emphatically caught up with them during this month’s sweep,….Now most California Republicans see little prospect of regaining many, or perhaps any of these seats, so long as Trump’s stamp on the party repels both minority voters and college-educated white suburbanites, key growing constituencies throughout the state. They have been reduced to a literal handful of inland districts, almost entirely isolated from the state’s racially diverse and economically dynamic metropolitan areas.

“The national party has become a cultural brand that’s anathema to the demographics that have grown here,” says GOP consultant Rob Stutzman, the former communications director for Schwarzenegger.

With Republicans so marginalized in the state—Democrats this month restored supermajorities in both of the state’s legislative chambers and routed the GOP in all statewide races—just raising enough money to make their case may grow increasingly daunting for Republicans, Stutzman says.

California may be an extreme case of the political risks the GOP faces in a changing nation as Trump focuses the party’s message and agenda ever more narrowly on the priorities and cultural preferences of older, blue-collar, rural, and evangelical whites.

But Cain, the Stanford political scientist, notes that California is not unique, particularly in the west. Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and even Utah and Texas are being reshaped by forces similar to those that have dyed California so deeply blue….

The most ominous prospect for national Republicans is the possibility that the California GOP’s slide into the ocean is only a preview of the growing strain they may face under Trump in the other southwestern states advancing along a similar trajectory of economic and demographic change.

“They have got themselves into this little echo chamber, and now Trump has added to that,” Cain says. “But obviously this blew up on the Republicans in California. And it’s blowing up on them in these suburban areas in the West and other parts of the country.”

Yup, there does seem to be a trend here. Why in California even white noncollege voters are going Democratic!–they supported Democrat Gavin Newsom for governor by a solid 10 point margin. Shockingly, white noncollege men also joined the party, giving Newsom a 5 point edge.

Interesting. And if I was a Republican, just a little bit frightening.

Katha Pollitt argues in The Nation that “You Can’t Get Conservative White Women To Change Their Minds: The great electoral opportunity of 2020 is not in converting Trump voters. It’s motivating the large numbers of Americans who don’t vote at all.” As Pollitt explains, “Mostly, what changes people’s minds about important convictions is experience: something new and unusual that shakes their settled views…Of course, people do change their minds, but probably not after being proselytized by someone they barely know (or, in the case of family, know all too well). You won’t get far inviting your Trumpie co-worker out for coffee so you can politely suggest she’s a racist, or giving your Trumpie cousin a hard time about her Facebook posts at a baby shower…So why is it so hard to believe that white women who voted for Trump are mostly as fixed in their views as you are? They voted for him for dozens of reasons: to fit in with their family and community, to preserve or gain status, to piss off the libtards, to ally with their menfolk, to keep MS-13 from killing their children, to bring back jobs stolen by Mexico and China, to keep taxes low and black children out of their schools, or because it’s what Jesus wants…Rather than devoting yourself to chipping away at Trump’s base, it makes more sense to forget about them and outvote them…The great electoral opportunity of 2020 is not in the marginal number of repentant Trump voters you might be able to convert. It’s in the nearly 40 percent of eligible voters—many of them younger voters, rural residents, and people of color—who in 2016 did not vote at all.”

Politico headline: “GOP leader concedes ‘we have room for improvement” on House diversity.” Ya think?

In her New York Times op-ed, “Ohio Isn’t a Red State Yet: But it will be if Democrats do not fight for working people in every corner of the state,” Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley argues that “the results of this year’s election don’t support the argument that Ohio is firmly in the Republican Party’s column. Instead, they suggest how Democrats can still win statewide with a reorientation of our resources and our message…Those who see 2018 as a blood bath for Ohio Democrats are forgetting that Senator Sherrod Brown won by 6.4 percentage points. This was a larger margin of victory than he had in 2012 — when he shared the top of the ticket with President Barack Obama, who also carried the state…In Senator Brown, we see a model for success across the industrial Midwest: He maintains a laserlike focus on economic issues without compromising on civil rights and other core progressive values. He laid it out in his victory speech: “As we celebrate the dignity of work, we unify. We do not divide. Populists are not racists. Populists are not anti-Semitic. We do not appeal to some by pushing down others.”…If we’re serious about being the party of working people, we must meet them where they are — including engaging deeply in places like Chillicothe, Canton and Steubenville.”

Speaking of Senator Brown, Esquire’s Charles Pierce commends his candor in refusing to walk back his comments questioning the integrity of the ballot-count in the Georgia governor’s race. When MSNBC’s Chuck Todd questioned whether Brown’s description might undermine public trust in elections, Brown responded, “I was the secretary of state in Ohio 30 years ago. I know what you do, as secretary of state. You encourage people to vote. You don’t purge millions of voters. You don’t close down polling places in rural areas where voters have difficulty getting to the polls, which were mostly low-income areas. You don’t do what Republicans are doing all over the country…the secretary of state of Georgia should have recused himself from running that election, as Jimmy — as former — Georgia resident, former-President Jimmy Carter said he should.” Brown added that Republican Secretary of State Kemp “did everything he could to put his thumb on the scale and…quote, unquote “won” that election by only about a point…So don’t play this false equivalency. Because a former secretary of state, like me, said that about this election, which clearly is an effort to suppress the vote, not of people that look like you and me…” Todd was respectful and fair in giving Brown his say, but, with the notable exception of MSNBC, major broadcast media have generally glossed over voter supression, at best.

Danielle Root and Aadam Barclay have a post up at the Center for American Progress, a comprehensive survey entitled “Voter Suppression During the 2018 Midterm Elections.” The authors note that “This year—perhaps uncoincidentally—severe voter suppression occurred in states with highly competitive political races, including Georgia, Texas, Florida, and North Dakota.” The authors share details regarding: Voter registration problems; voter purges; voter ID and ballot requirements; voter confusion; voter intimidation and harrassment; poll closures and long lines; malfunctioning voter equippment; Disenfranchisement of justice-involved individuals; and gerrymendering. In one excerpt they note, “more than 10 percent of voter registrants in the “heavily African-American neighborhoods near downtown” Cincinnati were purged for failing to vote since 2012, compared with only 4 percent of registered voters living in the surrounding suburb of Indian Hill.” in another, they note, “In October 2018, Kansas officials moved the last remaining polling location in Dodge City—a majority-Hispanic community—outside the city limits and far away from public transportation. Compounding the problem, officials sent mailers to newly registered voters, incorrectly informing them that they were allowed to vote at the old location.” Also, “In Georgia, more than 1,800 voting machines sat unused in a warehouse on Election Day in three of Georgia’s largest and most heavily Democratic counties.”

“Voting reforms also ought to be top priority in the 14 “trifecta” states where Democrats now control the state house, state senate and governorship,” urges Jill Lawrence in her article, “Democrats need to be ruthless on fixing voting. They’re paying a steep price for neglect” in USA Today. “And whether through the party or other organizations, by whatever means are legal, rich Democrats ought to direct money to equipment upgrades, professionalizing voter administration (including ballot design) and candidates who are committed to reforms…The soonest Democrats could run the table nationally from Washington would be 2021. In the meantime, the House Democrats should pass all reforms they can and force Republicans to show what side they’re on. And state activists should aim to put reforms directly before voters in 2020 ballot measures wherever possible. This year, while a few states added voting restrictions, more states made it easier to vote and changed how districts are drawn to prevent gerrymandering situations like North Carolina.”

Alex Rogers and Clare Foran write at CNN Politics: “Massive fundraising in Maine. A countdown clock in Alabama. Calls and texts encouraging potential challengers in Colorado. Just a few weeks after 2018’s Election Day, the signs are clear: the 2020 Senate campaigns are already underway….Democrats start 2020 in a solid position, though they remain in the minority in the upper chamber of Congress. Of the 12 Democratic seats up for re-election, only two are from states President Donald Trump won in 2016 — Alabama’s Doug Jones and Michigan’s Gary Peters. Republicans have more seats to defend, with 22 GOP seats on the line…”The map looks good for the Democrats — I’ll tell you that,” Sen. Catherine Cortez, the new chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told CNN.”

At The New Republic, Alex Shephard outlines Democrat Mike Espy’s campaign strategy for tommorrow’s run-off in his race for the U.S. Senate: “Espy has an uphill climb. According to Vox, Democratic strategists have a clear goal for turnout: “Thirty-five percent of Mississippi’s population is black, and Democrats need them to make up at least that much of the electorate—preferably more, of course—to have a chance.” The centrist Espy is also hoping to pick off moderate Republicans. In Tuesday’s debate, he distanced himself from his party and made the case that he would be a forceful advocate for his state’s interests, touting a “Mississippi First” approach. “That means Mississippi over party. Mississippi over person,” he said. “I don’t care how powerful that person might be. It means Mississippi each and every time.”…During the debate, he also underscored his strong positions on gun rights and promised to push for a “strong immigration policy.” Meanwhile, concerns about health care, one of the defining issues in the midterms, may help Espy, who has returned to the subject again and again on the campaign trail. Hyde-Smith claims that she supports coverage of pre-existing conditions while also demanding that the Affordable Care Act be repealed. (This common Republican position is, of course, nonsensical, and voters punished the GOP for it in other states.)” David Weigel notes at The Washington Post, “Hyde-Smith’s party has the numbers, if it can tune them in to a post-Thanksgiving election. Espy’s campaign is working to convert a small pool of moderate voters, while it and multiple third-party groups try to fire up black voters. To win, Espy would need to combine historic turnout among African Americans with perhaps 30 percent of the white vote — easier to achieve if some white conservatives sit the election out.”

In his  WaPo wrap-up of the midterm elections, Dan Balz notes that “the Trump-centric strategy backfired spectacularly in the race for control of the House, as suburban voters revolted against the president, delivering a rebuke to his party’s candidates in district after district…If the enthusiasm for Trump in rural and small-town America constituted the story after 2016, the revolt against him in the suburbs, led by female voters, has become the story of the 2018 elections. The more you analyze the House results, the more the GOP’s suburban problem stands out…There were 30 districts categorized as suburban-sparse. Heading into the election, Republicans held every one of them. As a result of the election, Democrats will have 16 to the GOP’s 14. In the 15 districts described as suburban-dense, something similar happened. Republicans held all 15 before the election. In January, they will have control of just three. In the nine districts categorized as urban-suburban, Republicans will go from holding seven to holding just one.”

The following article by John B. Russo, visiting researcher at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, co-author of Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown, and co-editor with Sherry Linkon of the blog Working-Class Perspectives. is cross-posted from The American Prospect.

The midterm elections showed that the Democrats’ blue wall is being rebuilt brick by brick in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and northern Illinois. A red wall also seems to be going up, and its bricks include West Virginia, Indiana, Iowa, southern Illinois, and Missouri. As these new political walls get built, one brick that once seemed to fit neatly with its blue neighbors looks to be turning red: Ohio.

Many Democrats seem ready to give up on Ohio. Michael Halle, who coordinated Hillary Clinton’s battleground state strategy before managing Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray’s campaign this year, told The New York Times that “it was time for Democrats to jettison Iowa and Ohio in future campaigns in favor of Arizona and Georgia.” Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri now says that that the Clinton campaign should have spent less time and money in Ohio and spent more in Georgia, Texas, and Arkansas. Speaking from ground zero for Democratic crossover voters in Youngstown, Mahoning County Democratic Chairperson David Betras commented after the midterms that it wasn’t the people who had left the party. Instead, Betras stated, the Democratic Party had left Ohio.

The Republicans in Ohio somehow overcame ongoing scandals involving their promotion of charter schools, sexual harassment charges against Republican leaders, and the schism between the Trump and Kasich wings of the Ohio Republican Party. The Democrats and community organizations also mounted an impressive organizing campaign that generated record turnout for a midterm election. Yet Republicans swept statewide offices save for the non-partisan Supreme Court races.

The Ohio results make Republican dominance clear. The Ohio GOP won 73 of 116 Statehouse races while collecting just over 50 percent of the total vote. That sounds close, but Republicans did not even field candidates in nine races. They also won 12 of Ohio’s 16 congressional districts with just over 52 percent of the overall vote. The results reflect past gerrymandering by the Kasich administration—which will only get worse as Republicans will control reapportionment in 2020.

So what’s the matter with Ohio? Conventional wisdom says that Ohio is too white, too working class (by education), and too rural to support Democrats anymore. That might seem to explain voting patterns in the midterms. Republican Mike DeWine won the largely white exurban, small town, semi-rural, and rural areas that dominate the state. Cordray won in urban and some suburban areas, mostly in the northeast, where the population includes many people of color. Unfortunately, those areas are chiefly found in just nine of Ohio’s 88 counties. Some of those blue regions, especially the traditional Democratic strongholds of Cuyahoga, Mahoning, and Trumbull Counties, no longer deliver enough votes to overcome growing Republican power elsewhere in the state.

But conflating race, class, and region misses several complicating factors. First, Ohio illustrates a point made recently by John McCullough, writing for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting: When pundits talk about the “working class,” they are usually not talking about class but about whiteness.  According to a 2016 Brookings Institution report, Ohio is whiter than other rust belt states (82 percent, compared with 77.6 percent in Michigan). And while much of the state is rural, its suburban and exurban areas are growing, and their predominantly white populations include both working- and middle-class residents.

Ohio’s whiteness explains only part of the problem, though. The Democrats also created their own obstacles through inbred party leadership and poor messaging. Despite a series of defeats, the Ohio Democratic Party still relies on the same leaders, consultants, and lobbyists who failed in past elections and have not developed a bench of future candidates. Twelve years ago, the last time Democrats won Statehouse races in Ohio, the party capitalized on Republican scandals. Not this year. Further, as Alec MacGillis has written in The New York Times, the Ohio Democratic Party, unions, and some progressive organizations failed to support more progressive Democrats or to invest time or money in “areas where the party is losing ground.”

Cordray and other statewide candidates also failed to offer concrete proposals that would address the economic challenges facing both working- and middle-class voters. The only candidate who focused on such policies was also the only Democrat who won statewide: Senator Sherrod Brown. Why? Brown’s campaign embraced his small town Ohio roots and stressed his consistent support of policies—like protectionist trade rules, increasing the minimum wage, and reducing prescription drug prices—that would improve the lives of working people. This message, combined with his long-standing commitment to campaigning in every county, red or blue, ensured that his message appealed to broad range of voters across races, class affiliations, and regions.

Unfortunately, Cordray wasn’t able to follow Brown’s model. Despite Cordray’s leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which should have defined him as a progressive who would defend ordinary people from Wall Street and corporate misbehavior, he failed to directly address the economic anxieties of working people. While Cordray and Brown voiced some of the same concerns—like lowering the cost of college education or addressing the opioid crisis—Cordray waited until late in his campaign to emphasize the kind of economic policies that have long been at the core of Brown’s political identity. He also lacked Brown’s track record and his down-to-earth style.

Brown’s coattails were simply not long enough to carry other Democrats. In fact, Brown’s numbers may have been pulled down by the other statewide candidates. He won by only 6.4 percent, despite a weak Republican opponent and an 8-to-1 fundraising advantage, according to David Skolnick, political analyst for The Vindicator—the local paper in Youngstown, a Brown stronghold.

As the 2018 midterms make clear, Ohio Democrats cannot count on a strong organizing effort alone to yield victories. They also need the kind of clear message, wide-ranging outreach, and concrete proposals that Brown offered. If Democrats want to reclaim Ohio, they need to recognize that many Ohio Trump voters are also Sherrod Brown voters and vice versa.

But will the Ohio Democratic Party change its approach? Will there be a return to Ohio’s history of northern progressivism that Sherrod Brown channels? I doubt it. Even Brown acknowledges how conservative Ohio has become. And unless they embrace the kind of pro-worker world view that Brown has championed, Ohio Democrats will remain helpless as Republicans continue to cement the state within their red wall.

One of the great post-election rituals in recent years has been an assessment of the polls we all obsessed over before the first ballot was cast. I wrote about that at New York.

In retrospect, the national polls didn’t do badly at all that year, as Nate Silver explained:

“Trump outperformed his national polls by only 1 to 2 percentage points in losing the popular vote to Clinton, making them slightly closer to the mark than they were in 2012. Meanwhile, he beat his polls by only 2 to 3 percentage points in the average swing state.3 Certainly, there were individual pollsters that had some explaining to do, especially in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Trump beat his polls by a larger amount. But the result was not some sort of massive outlier; on the contrary, the polls were pretty much as accurate as they’d been, on average, since 1968.”

Still, many Republicans have continued to believe that pollsters are generally part of a media establishment conspiring to undermine their confidence via the “fake news” of cooked data, as their leader has suggested:

The two fake news polls released yesterday, ABC & NBC, while containing some very positive info, were totally wrong in General E. Watch!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 24, 2017

“Nonpartisan House polls have historically missed the mark by an average of 5.9 points. This year it was just 4.9 points. Again, that means the average district poll was a full point closer to the result than usual….

“Statewide polling also had a strong year, although it should be noted that Senate and governors’ polling did pick fewer winners than usual. The average poll in the Senate was off by only 4.2 points. The average Senate poll historically has been off by 5.2 points, which means this year’s polls were a point better than average. Likewise, the average governor’s poll had an error rate of 4.4 points. That’s 0.7 point more accurate than the average governor’s poll since 1998.”

The reason for the “pick fewer winners” problem wasn’t so much polling error as the exceptional number of very close races. The gold-standard Cook Political Report rated nine Senate races and 12 gubernatorial races as toss-ups. There were a few races — which happened to be very high-profile contests — where the polls seemed to be off more than a hair, such as the Florida governor’s race, where the RealClearPolitics polling average on election eve showed Andrew Gillum up by nearly four points; it showed a slight lead for Bill Nelson in the same state; both lost by an eyelash. And the polls missed Mike Braun’s solid Senate win in Indiana. But the RCP averages correctly predicted the outcome of many cliff-hangers like the Georgia’s governor’s race and Senate contests in Missouri, Montana, and Texas.

Where there were mistakes, they didn’t follow any partisan pattern, as Nate Cohn observed in his review of midterm polling:

“On average, the polls were biased toward Democrats (meaning the Democrats did worse in the elections than polls indicated they would) by 0.4 points, making this year’s polls the least biased since 2006 and nothing like the polls in 2016, which were three points more Democratic than the results.”

And if you get into particular types of races, as Harry Enten did, the partisan “errors” were mixed:

“The average governor and Senate polls were about a point more favorable to the Democrats than the result. The average generic congressional ballot and House district polls were less than a point more favorable to Republicans than the actual result.”

Since sky-high turnout (the highest as a percentage of eligible voters in a midterm in over a century) may have been the biggest surprise of the elections, and the one pollsters would have had the hardest time predicting, the overall accuracy and balance were especially impressive. Certain types of voters, however, still seem to marginally elude pollsters, notes Cohn:

“The higher-than-expected turnout might have inadvertently contributed to a 2016-like pattern, since lower-turnout voters in the big urban states tend to be nonwhite and Democratic, while lower-turnout voters in rural, less educated states tend to be white working-class voters.

“In the Times Upshot/Siena polls, undecided voters tended to follow a similar pattern: In the Sun Belt, the undecided voters tended to be nonwhite Democrats; in the North, they were more likely to be white voters without a degree.”

So unsurprisingly, polls again tended to underestimate Republican votes in states with big white working-class populations and to underestimate Democratic voters in states with large nonwhite populations. And very late trends in undecided voters — which polls always miss to some extent — may have mattered here and there as well.

From a consumer’s point of view (and no one consumes polls quite like a daily political writer like yours truly), the big new development in 2018 was the large battery of House polls conducted by the New York Times in conjunction with Siena College. The combine not only supplied rare data on competitive House races (where a lot of the polling is private), but hit the mark quite often, as Enten notes:

“[The] increase in accuracy [in House races] was driven in large part by the Siena College/New York Times polls, whose surveys made up the bulk of district level polling and had an average absolute error of just about 3 points. That’s nearly 3 points better than average, which is off the charts good.”

If, like me, you believe the answer to questionable data is more, not less, data, the proliferation of polls is a good thing, even if quality continues to vary. And while Republicans may continue to follow Trump’s cynical habit of attacking any information that doesn’t confirm their own biases, you’d hope that at least privately they’d concede that more competition produces a better and more reliable result.