Sunday, November 4, 2018

Mid-Term Musings

Several BeeLine readers have reached out to me and asked me my predictions on the upcoming mid-term elections.

The 2012 Presidential election taught me to never make a political prediction again. Let's call this blog post my musings about the election rather than a prediction.

It seems that other people in the polling business should be taking the same advice. They were just a tad off in their projections in 2016.



2012 Election

This is what I wrote on the morning of the 2012 election in "If I Am Wrong, I Am Wrong About America".

There are people making predictions about today's Presidential election that are going to be very right or very, very wrong.

I have looked at a variety of polls.  I have looked at past elections.  I even watched the NFL games yesterday because somebody said they have been an election indicator in the past.  Supposedly if the Washington Redskins lose at home in the last game before the election it spells doom for the incumbent.  I guess if President Obama loses he can blame it on Robert Griffin III. Wouldn't you know it is another guy from Texas.

I am throwing all of that stuff out the window.  I am making my prediction based on one belief.  I refuse to believe that we still do not have a majority of people left in America who believe in America. People who don't vote on revenge.  People who still care more about the country than themselves. People who still believe in the United States of America rather than the Divided States of America. People who still believe that we remain the last real hope for the world.

My prediction is based on the two factors that I have written out before-- Turnover + Turnout.  I believe there have to be a significant number of Americans who voted for Obama in 2008 that will not do it again.  I estimate that turnover has to be at least one voter in every ten.  Some voters who voted for McCain will switch to Obama but it will be far fewer than those that turn on Obama. 

There will also be significantly higher turnout by Republican-inclined voters compared to 2008. There will not be a seven point Democrat edge at the polls as there was the last time.  I would expect it to be no more than a couple points advantage. It might even reach parity like 2004 and 2000.

I predicted a Romney win with at least 295 electoral votes.

I was wrong and it shook me to the core. It was not the fact that my prediction was wrong but that so many of my fellow Americans could have such a different view about the job that Barack Obama had done as President. It was discouraging and disheartening.

I fully understood Obama's win in 2008. He said all the right things. Four years later more people should have understood it was just words. He might have had some style but there was no substance behind it.

2016 Election

I was smarter in 2016. This is what I wrote on the Sunday before the 2012 election in "Predictions, Words and Actions".

I don't make election predictions anymore. I especially don't make predictions when you consider that the pollsters who do this for a living do not seem to have a clue.

For example, consider these two national tracking polls that came out this morning. They could not be further apart.

LA Times-Trump + 5.6%

ABC- Clinton + 5.0%

Of course, what really matters is the electoral college tally. However, state polls in the key battleground states also do not "predict" anything. All of these states are tied or well within the margin of error.

Florida
Ohio
North Carolina
Iowa
Pennsylvania
Michigan
Colorado
Nevada
New Hampshire

As I have written before, this election will be decided on turnout. Will the traditional Democratic constituencies--African-Americans, Millennials, Single Women---turnout like they did for Barack Obama? If they do, Hillary Clinton will win. If they don't, Donald Trump can close the history books on the Clintons and The White House. However, it remains to be seen whether the FBI investigation of the Clintons will open a completely new chapter to close the book once and for all.

The first six states on my list above all went to Trump. He also won Wisconsin which I thought was outside his reach. Trump lost New Hampshire by 0.5% and Nevada by 2.5%. He lost Colorado by just under 5%.

That night restored my faith in the American people. It was a 180 degree turn in my emotions compared to four years prior.

What is going to happen in this year's election?

The Republicans have an uphill challenge to retain the House. The party in The White House has lost an average of 33 seats in midterm elections since 1938. The Democrats need to win 23 seats to gain control.

The GOP is also dealing with the retirement of almost 40 House members. That eliminates the significant advantage of incumbency in those districts.

The Democrats have also been energized all year. We saw that energy in almost every special election.

Republican voters did not turn out in those races and it indicated to me that a Blue Wave could sweep a number of Democrats into office as a result.

However, in the last month, GOP enthusiasm seems to have returned in the wake of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing.

The Democrats also have the challenge of defending 26 of the 35 Senate seats up for election. 9 of these are also in states that Trump won in 2016. The numbers clearly favor the GOP in the Senate races.

Enthusiasm from both Democrats and Republicans is in uncharted territory for a midterm election. Look at this poll from Gallup on relative enthusiasm about voting in the mid-term in the years 1994-2018.






There is no precedent for this. Therefore, making a predictions about this election is very risky. There is nothing that looks like this in recent history.

Many of the polls that you are seeing predicting a blue wave are based on the final vote count only being composed of 25% Republicans, 33% Democrats and 42% Independents. That seems to assume that many Republicans will stay home. For example, Republicans made up 33% of the voters in 2016 (Dems 36%, Independents 31%). In the 2014 mid-terms Republicans made up 36% of the voters (Dems 35%, Independents 28%). 

The enthusiasm factor suggests that the GOP turnout is going to be higher than many of these polls are suggesting. So does early voting results. More on that below.

The other factor that is difficult to assess this year is the impact of early voting on the election. Historically, absentee voting favored Republicans but with many states implementing early voting separate from absentee ballots this has added an additional factor that is hard to assess in any prediction model.

Early voting this year is through the roof. It seems we have reached the point where voters are becoming comfortable with the convenience this option affords them. I have seen some projections that suggest that almost 40 million votes may be cast early. To put that in context, about 78 million votes were cast in the 2014 midterm. This means that early votes in this election are approaching almost half of the what the total votes were in the last midterm election.

Since early voting was implemented it has been dominated by the Democrats. The Democrats had a fantastic mobilization effort and concentrated on getting their voters to the polls during early voting. Their strong presence in urban areas made this easier for them to do than it was for the GOP. The Democrats could send a bus to a community center or church and get dozens to the polling place easily. This is not easily done in rural or suburban areas. Those voters need to show up one by one.

Republicans reliably have showed up at the polls on election day over the past election cycles and this advantage was enough in most years for the GOP to prevail in many races across the country despite losing the early vote. It should be remembered that Republicans have captured over 1,000 state, local and federal offices from the Democrats since 2009.

This year the Republicans have flipped the script and in many states the GOP is leading in early voting.

Here are some early vote totals from a few key states. This is taken from a website TargetEarly which gathers early voter information and them models the vote based on available information (party registration, etc) between Democrat, Republican or Unclear.  It does not tell us the exact vote but it has proprietary methods to determine voter affiliation. Even then, the affiliation of the voter could still be incorrect. For example, a registered Democrat who voted for Trump in 2016 might also vote for a Republican for Congress. Likewise, a registered Republican who dislikes Trump could have lodged their protest by voting for a Democrat Senator.

(numbers in thousands of votes)

Arizona        578.6 D       758.9  R
Florida       1,999.9 D     2,142.7 R
Michigan      284.6 D        438.7 R
Nevada         297.7 D        278.4 R
Ohio             379.3 D        465.4 R
Tennessee     395.9 D        861.3 R
Texas         2, 235.9 D    3,038.6 R

Based on this analysis, Nevada is the only state Democrats are leading in early voting in these key states. Democrats typically come out of early voting with the lead. This early vote may not predict GOP wins in these states but it certainly does not look like a blue wave election. Republican turnout is too high.

This is an impressive turnout for the Republicans but does it simply mean that the traditional election day advantage for the GOP has been cannibalized? This is a big question that remains to be answered this year.

The Trump Effect

The other big factor this year is the "Trump Effect." Donald Trump is not on the ballot but his presence looms over every race. Will his 2016 supporters turnout to defend his agenda by voting Republican? Will his detractors turnout to vote Democrat as much to protest Trump as anything else?
It is another question that is unanswered at this point. It is particularly interesting as Trump had the support of a lot of blue collar Democrats in 2016. This made the difference for Trump in winning Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Will these traditional Democrats crossover again and vote for Republican candidates in Senate and House seats in this election.

What is undisputed is that no President has ever worked harder on the campaign trail in a midterm election than Donald Trump. I have never seen anything close to the work ethic and effort this President has put in. The 72-year old President will have done 30 large rallies since Labor Day  For example, on Monday, November 5 he is scheduled to do three rallies (Cleveland, OH 3:00pm EST, Fort Wayne, IN 6:30 EST and Cape Girardeau, MO 9:00pm CST). In addition, he is participating in a telephone town hall meeting at 10am in the morning with swing-state and swing-district voters explaining why he needs their vote to support his agenda.

Ironically, from a strictly personal political perspective you can argue that Trump would be better off with a Democrat Congress heading into the 2020 Presidential election. Things have been very good economically under Trump. If the economy falters, or the recent stock market correction turns into a big fall, it will be easier for Trump to shift blame away from himself. "If only we had not messed things up by returning the crazy Democrats to power." It is something Trump is very good at.

Final Musings

The fact that there are only 35 Senate seats up for election makes it a little easier to guess how it will turn out. My guess (not a prediction!) is that the Republicans should net 2-4 seats on the night.

435 seats in the House make that a much tougher task for guesstimates. I am thinking that we will end up with a very evenly split House of Representatives whichever way it goes. If the Republicans retain control it will be a margin in the single digits. That means they will lose anywhere from 14-22 seats.

If the Democrats take control it will also be a margin that will be less than double digits. If this scenario occurs it means a pick up from 23-33 seats which would be right in the range of average turnover of seats in midterm elections for the opposition party.

As I wrote in an earlier blog post, a nightmare scenario would be if the House margin is a couple votes either way. That will insure that every special election the next two years will be something akin to the Kavanaugh nomination and a Presidential election all rolled into one. Control of the House could conceivably rest on the results of a single House special election. It is the last thing we need in the country right now.

It is time to vote if you did not vote early. It is then time to tabulate the results.

Crying or cheering comes next.

Been there and done both. As a result, I predict I will be well prepared for whatever the numbers show on Tuesday night (which will undoubtedly end up being Wednesday morning). I am not sure that some others can say the same based on what we have seen over the last two years.

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