Happy Election Day! Here are my House predictions. I won’t go through every district. If you’d like to see how I chose individual races there’s a link to my map here. I predict Republicans will win the House 225-210. Yes, that is on the low end. Here’s how I got there.
First, as I pointed out in my Senate predictions, the election handicappers are being especially risk-averse this year. There is a lot more to lose from overestimating Democrats than overestimating Republicans. The data just doesn’t show a “red wave.” It never has. The FiveThirtyEight generic ballot average is at R+1 (R+1.7 with a likely voter adjustment). But the polling averages are made up of a disproportionate amount of partisan pollsters this year. Split Ticket has a generic ballot tracker that uses only non-partisan polls. That tracker is dead even. Then there’s the special elections from the summer, in which Democrats overperformed by an average of 9 points. That’s hard data. It’s not a poll. Not vibes. It’s how people actually voted.
So am I saying Democrats are going to win the popular vote by 9 points? No. Of course not. In fact, I think Republicans will likely win the House popular vote by 1-3 points. But a 1-3 point popular vote lead does not suggest Republicans will win 235 seats or more. For example, Democrats won the House popular vote by 3 points in 2020 and they only won 222 seats. The FiveThirtyEight forecast predicts Republicans winning 230 seats with a 4 point popular vote margin. In fact, alloftheforecasts, based on objective data, not vibes, show Republicans winning between 223-232 seats.
Anyway, that’s where I am. (225-210) There’s a lot of uncertainty around this election because there have been so few House polls but I think the forecasts are more likely to be right than the “vibes.” Frankly I think my prediction is probably on the low end and Republicans are probably more likely to win around 230 seats but it’s late and I’m tired and I couldn’t find the 5 seats to flip so this is what I’ve got. Enjoy!
Here it is folks! My final Senate prediction. I’m a bit more bullish on Democrats’ chances than most forecasters. Why? Maybe it’s because I’m biased. Maybe. Or maybe it’s because I think the professional forecasters are cowards and picking Republicans, not based on the data but because they have a lot more to lose from underestimating Republicans than underestimating Democrats.
What does the data say? Well it depends on the data you look at. High quality polls show Democrats still ahead in Pennsylvania and Georgia and within the margin of error in Nevada (a state where polls have actually underestimated Democrats in recent cycles). Low quality polls show Republicans with comfortable leads in all of these states and within the margin of error in Arizona. I don’t buy the Democratic conspiracy that “Republican pollsters are flooding the zone” with polls to skew the averages. I think the reason Republican pollsters are dominating the averages is because election handicappers, once again, are being cowards. There are simply far fewer polls being released by traditional, reputable pollsters. Put simply, they’re scared to be wrong.
So what to I think is going to happen? I think Democrats hold on in Pennsylvania and barely squeak out a win in Nevada. I, like other forecasters, am putting my trust in Nevada elections guru Jon Ralston who has predicted a Cortez-Masto win. Georgia is also going to be close and almost certainly headed to a runoff but I think Warnock will be able to hold on. The only pollster rated B+ or higher by FiveThirtyEight showing Herschel Walker with a lead is Trafalgar group, and they are aligned with the Republican party. I’m putting my trust in the higher quality polls. As far as Arizona is concerned, Mark Kelly seems pretty popular and is still leading in the polling. If Kelly loses in Arizona Democrats have almost certainly already lost Georgia and Nevada and probably Pennsylvania. Since we’re not in that universe here, I’m picking Kelly.
So in conclusion I do think Democrats are going to hold onto the Senate. My final map is 51D-49R. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. I wouldn’t be surprised by a variety of outcomes. Frankly, I think GA, NV, and PA are as close to even as possible and could go either way. I could also see Republicans winning in AZ and it’s not inconceivable that they could win New Hampshire as well. Conversely I think Democrats do have a shot at winning both Wisconsin and North Carolina, and hell, though I don’t think it’s particularly likely, Tim Ryan could still pull out a win in Ohio.
So there’s a wide range of possibilities. I wouldn’t be surprised to see anything from 54R-46D to 52D-48R. I would be surprised to see Democrats win more than 52 seats but it’s not outside the range of possibility.
A final thought: a state I’ll be watching is North Carolina. Not because I think Cheri Beasley is going to win but because I’ll be looking at the margin with 2024 in mind. Beasley and Budd are as close to neutral candidates as you can get. NC is an R+5 state. If the Republican margin is less than 5 points to the right of the national environment, that would suggest that the shift to the left we saw in 2020 could be continuing and that it could be in play in 2024.
A few weeks ago the New York Times’ Nate Cohn wrote a piece where he looked at the 2022 polling averages – where Democrats have been doing surprisingly well – through the lens of 2020’s polling error. His conclusion? As he writes, the “warning signs are flashing again.” According to the article, “Democratic Senate candidates are outrunning expectations in the same places where the polls overestimated Mr. Biden in 2020 and Mrs. Clinton in 2016.” If we applied 2020’s polling error to the 2022 Senate polls, Democrats would lose in places like North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Ohio, by fairly comfotable margins, despite leading in the polls.
Since the time of that writing Republicans have closed the polling gap, essentially running even now in those three states, but I’d still like to push back a little bit on Mr. Cohn’s article. There’s reason to believe 2022 is going to be closer to 2018 than 2020 or 2016. The 2020 election took place during the height of the pandemic and though we’re still technically in a pandemic (sorry Biden) November’s election is going to take place under much more normal circumstances. Plus, there’s reason to believe that Trump being on the ballot was a significant source of the errors in 2016 and 2020 – as his supporters may be much harder for pollsters to reach due to low social trust, and he seems to bring out infrequent voters, which messes with pollsters’ likely voter models. The polls in the Trump era when he hasn’t been on the ballot – 2018 and 2021 in the Georgia runoffs and later in Virginia – have been fairly accurate. The polls so far in 2022, especially in special elections after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade, have actually been underestimating Democrats.
As such I decided to explore what the race would look like through the lens of 2018’s polling error and 2021 for Georgia (which didn’t have a Senate race in 2018). Unfortunately North Carolina hasn’t had a statewide race in the Trump era without him on the ballot so they’ve been left out of this analysis. The story doesn’t change in Ohio and Florida – where polls still overestimated Democrats in 2018– but it does change the view in places like Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsion. In Nevada and Pennsylvania polls actually underestimated Democrats in 2018, and in Wisconsin the polls were pretty darn accurate. Governor’s races are essentially the same story.
If we applied 2018s polling error Democrats would still win by comfortable margins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona (though the AZ governor’s race would be close), and they would actually win by more in Nevada than polls currently show. The only state that would flip Republicans’ way would be Wisconsin, though both races would still be close.
We won’t know which direction polls are going to miss – if there’s a systematic bias at all – until after the election, but hopefully this chart adds one more data point to the conversation about what things may look like come November.
Note: I published this piece a week or so later than I inteded to so my chart isn’t directly comparable to the chart in Nate Cohn’s piece. Here’s a thread I wrote on September 12th, the day the Nate Cohn piece was written.
UPDATE (9/9/22): FiveThirtyEight updated their partisan lean metrics hours after I published this. The story has been updated to reflect the new data.
Special election charts and results as well as the above generic ballot polling average are by FiveThirtyEight. I wanted to credit them in the captions but WordPress is being dumb.
I think people are underestimating how likely it is that we’re in at least as favorable an environment for Democrats in 2022 as we were in 2020. Yes, Democrats are only ahead on the generic ballot by 1.2% at the time of this writing, whereas in 2020 they were ahead by 7.3%. But the polling in 2020 was notoriously bad. Democrats only wound up winning the House popular vote by 3.1%. That’s a 4.2% miss! In 2018 – when Trump was not on the ballot – the generic ballot got things exactly right. It predicted Democrats winning by 8.6% and they won by 8.6%.
The ‘Trump effs up the polls’ theory is going to be tested again this year (it makes sense since he destroys everything else that I love!) but in the meantime, let’s assume the generic ballot is correct, or at least close to correct (lets say for the sake of argument ±2%, which is in between the 4% error 2020 and the 0% error in 2018). Then the environment is anywhere from R+1 to D+3. So either slightly worse than 2020 or about the same.
But we also have other figures to go by, namely special elections. The advantage of special elections is that they aren’t polls. They’re actually elections where people go out and make a choice. The disadvantage is that they are usually low turnout affairs that attract only the most politically engaged. Still, they usually are pretty predictive. In the special elections since Dobbs, Democrats have been overperforming by between 7 and 11 points (depending on how you count Alaska).
So based on the generic ballot and special elections we can say that we’re in anywhere from an R+1 environment to a D+11 environment. To be clear, I don’t think we’re in a D+11 environment, so let’s use D+7 (the conservative calculation of special elections) as our high. So the environment is anywhere from R+1 to D+7, for a median of D+3. That puts us in basically the exact same environment we were in in 2020, when Democrats won 222 seats.
So Democrats should expect to win 222 seats? Not so fast. You forgot about redistricting! There’s a number of different ways to calculate the effect of redistricting but I think the easiest way is to look at how many districts Biden won. On the old map Biden carried 224 districts. On the new map he would have carried 225, according to Redistricter.
But Democrats ran 1.5% (or 2 seats) behind Biden; one of the reasons their House majority is so thin. So instead we can look at each district’s partisan lean or (PVI) using data from FiveThirtyEight. In a D+3 year Democrats should expect win every district with a PVI <R+3. This would give us a final result of 220D-215R. In an R+1 year it would be 206D-229R. A D+7 year would give Dems 237 seats, one more than they won in 2018, which makes me think we’re not in a D+7 environment (though stranger things have happened). So going by PVI we’re looking at Democrats winning anywhere from 206-237 seats, with the median being 221.5.
Another way of looking at it is to use FairVote’s Monopoly Politics Projections, which allow you to estimate each party’s share of seats based on different environments. I like this better because it uses toss-ups (so I have less likelihood of being wrong). In a D+3 environment there are 218 safe/lean D seats and 181 safe/lean R seats, with 36 toss-ups. 218 is the exact number you need to win the House. An R+1 environment gives us 209R-183D with 43 toss-ups. They don’t allow you to calculate D+7 but back of the napkin calulation tells me there’d be about 232 lean/safe D seats.
So going by FairVote, Democrats could expect to win anywhere from 183 seats (an R+1 environment where Republicans win all the toss-ups) to 254 (a D+3 environment where Democrats win all the toss-ups) with the median being 218.5. In a D+7 environment, Democrats would win close to 280 seats if they won all the toss-ups, but nobody’s had that kind of majority since the 1970s so I’m going to assume that’s not going to happen. Let’s stick to 254 (D+3 w/ all toss-ups) as our high.
So based on my read of the current environment Democrats are favored to win around 221.5 seats using PVI or 218.5 seats using FairVote’s projections. I guess this was all a long winded way of me saying that things are really freaking close! Also, someone’s going to have to be chopped in half. I suggest Marah Palintola.
Democrats are looking to defy history. Can they? Here’s a thread I wrote, analyzing how the current race compares to past races. Enjoy!
In good Republican years they tend to run away with the race around labor day as pollsters switch over to likely voter (LV) models. For instance, at this point in 2014, Republicans were ahead by 0.3%, but less than a week later they were leading by close to 4%
Democrats are currently leading on the generic ballot by 1 point, and Democrats and Republicans are essentially tied in LV polls taken in the month of September.
This is good news if you’re Democrats because it differs from 2010 and 2014 when Republicans were leading by 7.8 pts and 3.4 pts respectively in LV polls taken in the first half of September
Generally the party out of power holds an enthusiasm advantage, however this year, with the overturning of Roe v Wade, Democrats have closed the enthusiams gap, especially when compared with past midterms.
We’ve seen it in special elections where Democrats have overperformed by an average of 7-11 pts since the Dobbs decision (depending on how you count Alaska).
Whether this can hold for the next 2 months remains to be seen, but in past midterm cycles the party out of power has tended to run away with the race after labor day. Needless to say, the next few weeks should tell us a lot about where this race is headed.
In 2010 Scott Brown stunned the political world by winning a Special Election for the Massachussetts Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy after he died. Brown won 52-47, a 5 point margin in a state Obama had won two years earlier by 26 points. It was a stunning upset and a harbringer of things to come as Republicans picked up 63 seats in the 2010 midterms to easily retake the House in what then President Barack Obama called a ‘shellacking.’
Fast forward to 2022 and we have a very different situation. Democrats have overperformed in special elections by an average of 5.7pts since the Dobbs desicion overturning Roe V Wade. Democrats have overtaken Republicans on the generic ballot (at this point in 2010 it was R+4.5) and the Senate seems to be moving farther and farther away from Republicans – with Fetterman leading by 10pts in Pennsylvania and Mark Kelly leading by 8 in Arizona. Even Wisconsin and Ohio look within reach for Democrats (though we’ve been burned by polling in these states before).
The president’s party almost always loses ground in the midterms. In the 19 midterms that have taken place since World War II, the president’s party has lost seats in the House in all but two: 1998 (after the Clinton impeachment) and 2002 (after 9/11). Needless to say if Democrats don’t lose the House it would be a shocking turnaround from where we were just a few months ago. It would be less shocking if Democrats don’t lose seats in the Senate, but that’s still only happened 4 times since WWII.
So why are Democrats overperforming in a year where – if history is any guide – they should be losing ground? Well I’m sure the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade certainly has something to do with it. As the Washington Post reported Monday 1 in 3 women have lost access to abortion, and more restrictions are coming. I think some of Democrats’ recent legislative victories have also helped though people usually don’t vote based on policy. We’re also seeing an improving economy with inflation and gas prices falling after (hopefully) peaking in June.
But I think the biggest reason is that Republicans have simply become too extreme. They’ve leaned into the Trumpist wing of the party, at the expense of regular voters. Republicans had a choice to make after January 6th. Trump or democracy. They chose Trump. That was a mistake and now they’re reaping what they’ve sewn. His voters simply don’t come out when he’s not on the ballot (just ask Republicans running in 2018) and it turns most Americans, at least the ones who vote in midterms, actually like democracy. They’re not okay with Republicans abdicating their responsibility to protect it. They like having rights and are not okay with Republicans taking those rights away, like the right to an abortion. And they’ll take boring competence that they don’t have to think about every day over the constant chaos, corruption, and conspiracies that come with Trump and the Republican party.
I never thought I’d see the day when one of our two main political parties simply stopped believing in democracy. When your response to someone trying to overturn the results of an election and a literal violent attack on our democracy is to look the other way or worse; actually defend these actions, you have turned your back on democracy and our not worthy of even being elected Dog Catcher (no offense to Dog Catchers). A democracy where voters don’t punish politicians for that kind of behavior is a country dangerously close to no longer being a democracy. I’m glad to see that maybe, just maybe, Republicans are in for the type of ‘shellacking’ they deserve.
If the last eight days have shown us anything it’s that we’re still in an incredibly charged political environment. With supporters of the former president attacking and threatening FBI officers and federal judges, over lies and wild accusations, one wouldn’t want to do anything to pour more fuel on the already raging fire. That is what makes the latest lie being spread about the IRS funding in the Inflation Reduction Act so insidious.
The crux of the matter is that Republicans would like you to believe that Democrats are weaponizing the IRS to – as they say – go after YOU. This could not be further from the truth. Both Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig (who was appointed by Trump) have said that audit rates will not go up for Americans making less than $400,000 a year. Republicans correctly point out that the CBO projected audit rates would go up for all income levels but that report, which also states that, “higher-income taxpayers would face the largest increase,” is over a year old and analyzes the old Build Back Better Act. There are tangible differences between the old bill and the new bill that likely change the calculus.
Finally Republicans point to an estimate by the Joint Committee on Taxation, which says, “78 to 90 percent of the revenue collected from under-reported income will come from tax filers earning less than $200,000 a year.” However upon closer inspection this analysis is of a proposal from the president’s FY2022 budget request called “Introduce Comprehensive Financial Account Reporting to Improve tax Compliance,” not the Inflation Reduction Act. The proposal, which would have required financial institutions to report to the IRS inflows and outflows of at least $600 from all bank accounts, was dropped a long time ago and was never actually a part of either the Build Back Better Act or the Inflation Reduction Act.
So the IRS is not hiring an army 87,000 armed auditors to shoot up mom and pop shops and middle class families just trying to get by. In fact, as the IRS Commissioner says in his August 4th letter, “Enhanced IT systems and taxpayer service will actually mean that honest taxpayers will be better able to comply with the tax laws, resulting in a lower likelihood of being audited.” As anyone who’s ever had to deal with the IRS’ antiquated system knows, they could badly use an upgrade to bring them in to the 21st century.
Here’s why Republican criticism of the Inflation Reduction Act misses the mark. Republicans seem to have settled on the attack that you shouldn’t raise taxes during a recession. This is a clever attack because it’s really a two-fer. They get to infer that we’re in a recession (we’re not) AND criticize the legislation. Technically they’re right. You shouldn’t raise taxes during a recession. Luckily, we are not in a recession and the bill does not, on net, raise taxes.
First the recesssion part. I’m not going to get into a semantic battle about whether two quarters in a row of negative growth is the definition of a recession (it’s not). But both Q1 (-0.4%) and Q2 (-0.2%) were barely negative and are going to be revised at some point. Chances are that one, or both, will be revised up and end up being slightly positive. So even if 2 quarters of negative growth was the definition of a recession (it’s still not), we probably haven’t actually seen two quarters of negative growth.
Add to that the fact that we found out yesterday that unemployment is at it’s lowest rate in 50 years (3.5%) and the economy just added another 528,000 jobs and it gets really hard to argue we’re in a recession.
Second, while the IRA does raise taxes on some corporations – through a 15% minimum tax on billion dollar companies and a 1% tax on stock buybacks – it also includes tax credits for health insurance and clean energy. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the IRA will actually result in a net tax decrease of about $2 billion a year once fully implemented.
So we’re not in a recession, either by the technical definition or the lazy journalist definition, and even if we were, the bill actually cuts taxes on net, undercutting Republicans’ main attack.
But just because we aren’t in a recession doesn’t mean things are all rosy for the economy. We are in a period of very high inflation and we shouldn’t do anything to exasterbate it. Republicans have been arguing for over a year now that government spending – pumping money into the economy – is the reason we have inflation. If that is true, then taking money out of the economy and paying down the deficit should reduce inflation. The Inflation Reduction Act does just that – lowering the deficit by more than $300 billion in it’s first decade. By the end of two decades it could reduce the deficit by as much as $1.9 trillion, which coincidentally, is exactly how much Biden’s COVID relief bill cost.
So if you were upset last year that the COVID relief bill was $1.9 trillion of unpaid for spending, guess what? You’ve got your chance to pay for it. It’s called the Inflation Reduction Act.
Here’s what to know about the feud taking place, most famously between Jon Stewart and Ted Cruz, over the PACT Act – a bill to help veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. The bill passed the Senate back in June with overwhelming bipartisan support (84-14). But there was a problem. The Senate added a tax exemption that was meant to encourage more public health professionals to work in rural areas. This presented a problem because any tax policy has to originate in the House. So the Senate sent it back to the House, which removed the tax exemption and then sent it back again to the Senate where it failed, with 25 Republicans who supported it the first time voting against it.
So why did Republicans vote against it? The explanation Republicans give is that it contains a budgetary gimmick that moves $400 billion in veterans benefits from discretionary spending to mandatory spending. Here’s the problem with that explanation. That provision is unchanged from the version those 25 Republicans voted for back in June. You can listen to Pay Toomey complaining about the mandatory spending back on June 22nd here. It still passed with the majority of the Republican conference voting for it.
So either Pat Toomey is very persuasive, or something else is going on here. I propose that what’s happening is Republicans are pissed because Democrats came to an agreement on a climate/healthcare reconciliation bill, even though weeks earlier it seemed like it was dead. Mitch McConnell essentially tried to blackmail Democrats on June 30th, saying that he would sink a bipartisan bill to invest in semiconductor manufacturing if Democrats passed their reconciliation bill.
Let me be perfectly clear: there will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill.
So is it any wonder why Democrats waited until after the semiconductor bill passed to announce their agreement? That’s not being decietful, it’s just being not stupid. Still, Republicans – angry that Manchin and Schumer out played them – sunk the PACT Act as a form of revenge.
Look, I get Republicans being angry at Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer. I’ve spent most of the last year angry at Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer. But to take it out on our veterans is just wrong. Republicans say this bill will still pass. That’s great. But unlike most bills, this bill is time constrained. Veterans dying of cancer from toxic exposure don’t have the luxury of waiting a few more days or weeks to find out if they’re going to be able to afford the care that they need.
Pass the damn bill. And pass it today. Like Jon Stewart said, this isn’t a game.
US Government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The problem with going after Trump is, and always has been, proving that he had corrupt intent. Put another way, proving that he knows right from wrong. The Committee attempted to show this during their hearings but nothing they’ve presented so far has convinced me that this man has any connection to reality. Yes, he’s a 76 year old man who SHOULD know right from wrong; but this is a guy who wanted to nuke a hurricane, he wanted to bomb drug cartels in Mexico, and he wanted to build a moat filled with snakes and alligators at the border to keep migrants out (he also wanted to shoot them in the legs). That sounds less to me like some evil genius and more like a petulant child (okay, shooting them in the legs is pretty evil).
I was hoping to be convinced at the January 6th hearing Thursday night that Trump understood the gravity of what was happening at the Capitol and chose not to act out of corrupt intent, but I ended up exactly where I started: just like after Charlottesville and Helsinki, David Duke and the Proud Boys, he can’t seem to separate someone saying nice things about him from them doing evil things. He’s so narcissistic that his entire view of a person seems to be dependent on how they view him (or what they say about him).
Here’s the test I did, and I’ll ask anyone trying to assess Trump’s culpability to try this test too. Take anything he did as President, replace him with an actual child, and tell me you couldn’t see a child doing that exact same thing. I can’t think of one instance where I would say, “no a child wouldn’t do that.” What would a child do if they said a hurricane was going to hit Alabama and they ended up being wrong? They would probably alter a weather map to make it look like the hurricane was headed towards Alabama (the only difference is the child might use a crayon whereas he used a sharpie). What would a child do if given bad news during lunch? They’d probably get angry and throw their plate of chicken nuggets against the wall, splattering ketchup and broken glass everywhere (who gave them a glass plate!?)
I’m not saying Trump isn’t dangerous. Having a child as president is incredibly dangerous – there’s a reason you have to be 35 to run for president – but he’s not some evil genius that’s just putting on an act to look like a bufoon. If he was he’d be the greatest actor of all time, and I don’t know if you’ve seen Home Alone II, but he’s not.
His actions on January 6th were apalling and impeachable and he should have been convicted and removed from office for the political crime of inciting an insurrection. I continue to believe that he should be barred from ever holding office again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Bringing a mob to DC, riling them up, and then refusing to do anything as they attack the citadel of democracy is the definition of “giving aid and comfort to the nation’s enemies.” The fact that many of them stayed at his hotel only bolsters the case (except the part about comfort). Additionally the fact that he badgered state election officials, the Justice Department, the FBI, and even his own Vice President – to illegally overturn the results of an election he clearly lost – plus he’s been paying the legal bills of many of the witnesses and has said he’d like to pardon those convicted in the insurrection, further bolsters the case.
I’m not saying he didn’t committ a crime. Just that it would be hard to prove, and it’s not the Comittee’s job to prove. Hand your evidence over to the Justice Department and let them do their job but ultimately the political process remains the best way to hold Trump accountable and more importantly, safeguard our democracy. The case for the political crime is open and shut. That’s what we should be focusing on. Besides, you can still run for president from jail, but you can’t run if you’ve been barred under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
This is one of 3 pieces I wrote after Thursday night’s hearing. The other two I posted on my Facebook here and here. I don’t feel like rewriting them.
Wonkness Blog 