With 200 days remaining until the midterm elections, most of the punditry seems to have decided that Democrats will face crushing losses in November. The reality is more complex, as Republicans are finding themselves out of step with the mainstream electorate, while underperforming historic precedents for midterm elections. What’s more, the anticipated Republican victory in redistricting never materialized, resulting instead in a slight Democratic advantage with the new maps, along with fewer competitive districts overall. All of this, directly contradicts the all but certain prediction of an embarrassing defeat come Election Day.
- Politico: A sour and angry America poised to punish Dems this fall
- Business Insider: Newt Gingrich predicts 2022 could be ‘the most catastrophic election for Democrats since 1920’ when House Republicans won their largest ever number of seats
- NBC News: NBC News: Poll numbers are pointing to a midterm shellacking for Democrats
In politics, the only constant is change. Election Day 2021, when Republicans recaptured the Governor’s mansion in Virginia and Democrats held onto the Governor’s mansion in New Jersey, was just 172 days ago. The much-ballyhooed California recall election that Republicans had promised would turn the tide for Republicans was just 234 days ago.
With that in mind, how do things look for Democrats heading into the midterms? The environment is undoubtedly challenging for a variety of reasons: war in Europe, global inflation due to the pandemic, the continued spread of Covid variants and much more.
So, what will that mean for Democrats heading into Election Day? How are Democrats positioned?
Historic Precedent
We all know that since 1982, the President’s party has lost the popular vote for the US House in their first term midterm election by an average of 6.2%. That is a tough hill to climb for a president of either party and more so in these polarizing times.
The good news is that according to the Real Clear Politics poll average, Democrats trail by just 3.3%. Despite all the headlines, Republicans are actually underperforming the historic benchmarks.
Given the historical record, more people should be asking why Democrats are overperforming historic benchmarks for midterms elections.
Presidential Approval
The most common misconception regarding midterm elections is that they are a referendum on the president, but historically, midterm performance has not been closely connected to presidential job approval.
For example, in 1990, President George H. W. Bush was enjoying job approval ratings in the 50s, yet Democrats won the popular vote for the House by 5 points. In 2010, President Obama’s net job approval ratings were close to even, yet Democrats lost by a landslide margin of 7 points, ceding 63 seats to the GOP. By 2014, Obama’s job approval ratings had worsened significantly, yet the GOP’s popular vote margin narrowed relative to 2010 by 1.5 pts.
This tells us that instead of looking at how a particular president is doing in the polls as an indicator of how well the party will do in the midterms, we should be looking at larger trends and movements and issues affecting voters across the country.
Redistricting
As recently as last year, most pundits thought Republicans would once again emerge victorious in the redistricting battle. Politico published an article, “State losses plague Democrats ahead of redistricting,” which laid out the added challenges Democrats were going to face heading into this cycle.
Democrats have performed much better than expected as the redistricting process has unfolded. In fact, according to Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman, Democrats are actually on track to pick up 2 to 3 to seats in this redistricting cycle, a result of key victories in New York, Alabama, and Pennsylvania.
Republican Extremism
Over the last decade, we’ve grown accustomed to Republican extremism poisoning the political discourse in DC. Those troubling trends are continuing at the local level where right-wing ideologues are pursuing policies that appeal to a narrow slice of the electorate, while alienating clear majorities.
- Texas Governor Greg Abbott implemented an unnecessary inspection regime at the US-Mexico border that cost Texas $4.2 billion, or the equivalent of 36,000 jobs.
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ effort to punish Disney for their opposition to the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law could force taxpayers to cover the costs of $1 billion in bond debt.
- And lastly, staying in the state of Florida, Senator Rick Scott unveiled “An 11 Point Plan to Save America”, which would increase taxes by more than $1,000 on average for the poorest 40 percent of Americans.
This is reflected in how the electorate views the Republican Party at this point – the party’s net favorability rating has never been lower, as shown in the Pew polling trends below. While the Democratic Party’s favorability has trended slightly downward lately, their net favorability (-12) pales in comparison to that of the GOP (-28).
Conclusion
The average midterm losses are significant for the president’s party, and this year could follow that trend. As a party, we need to contextualize what is happening and dispense with the type of ‘bed wetting’ and self-criticism that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In the next 200 days, progressives have a lot of work to do. We need to register – and re-register – our voters. We need to engage with key constituencies that are disenchanted and underperformed in 2021, like young voters and communities of color. We need to draw a clear contrast with Republicans at every level.
We have a clear playbook for doing this: no one ever thought we would win one, let alone two Senate seats in Georgia in 2020. With the playbook and the resources, we, together, can change the narrative and win races that the pundits are already writing off.
