Within the Margin

As is generally well-understood at this point, midterms tend to go poorly for the president’s party. Seat losses typically number in the dozens. Given that the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives cannot survive even a half-dozen seat loss, it is overwhelmingly likely that Republicans will take control. Narratives abound as to why, with lots of the usual gnashing of teeth over Democratic messaging and strategic weaknesses. But the basic fundamentals are that inflation is high and economic concerns loom largest, and that’s usually going to hurt the party in control even before we contemplate the usual dropoff form the president’s party relative to the prior election. All of that is reflected in my projection: a 224-211 majority for the GOP, meaning an eleven-seat gain for them.

But that’s actually on the low end of forecasters’ projections. It’s pretty close to Fivethirtyeight’s seat forecast, though we disagree with each other on plenty of individual seats. Various other prognosticators are more bullish on Republicans, coming in somewhere around 25 seats and noting the possibility of gains as large as 35 seats.

Why am I lower, even as I acknowledge that independents are fixing to punish Dems over inflation (despite the American government having, you know, next to nothing to do with this global problem)? Well, a few reasons.

• First, I do continue to believe that the Dobbs ruling will drive notable Democratic turnout and prevent some of the midterm erosion typically seen for the president’s party. Those summertime special elections where Democrats outperformed Biden’s 2020 showing substantially in some redder districts, and then held a hotly-contested seat against the GOP’s prize recruit in NY-19 while flipping Alaska’s seat blue for the first time in 50 years…those all mean something even if it’s clear Dems aren’t going to match all of those performances to the number.
• This is likely correlated to the previous bullet point: Dems have pulled even with Republicans in enthusiasm in some of the final polling. The party whose voters cite higher enthusiasm tends to be the party that performs better in a given election. I suspect that enthusiasm shines through for Dems more in affluent districts with lots of college graduates, and less so in more working-class districts. But when Dems operate from a high floor in terms of turnout, they obviously can cut their losses – as opposed to a year like 2010 and 2014 when the bottom falls out in Democratic turnout and the losses pile up.
• Democrats have a lot of solid incumbents. In my self-scouting, I have tried hard this year to temper exuberance and to suppress a tendency to root for incumbents or challengers I particularly like. Maybe I’m not doing that successfully enough – but as I examined the map, district by district, I found very few candidates who are just fundamentally bad fits for their district, or are dramatically overextended in terms of partisan fundamentals in their districts, or are beset with scandals. That was definitely not the case in 2010 – a year that I underestimated Republican gains, but could easily identify 35, 40, 45 plausible Dem losses even as I fell quite a bit short of the actual number in the mid 60s.
• I’m not “unskewing” the polls much in either direction. I think it’s possible that polls are missing some younger voters who are particularly motivated by the Dobbs ruling; I think it’s entirely possible that partisan non-response problems are plaguing pollsters as they did in 2014, 2016 and 2020. But pollsters have taken some steps to address the latter issue and one potential driver of those misses – Donald Trump’s presence on the ballot in 2016 and 2020 – is not here this time. In my mind I’m generally assuming Reps beat the generic ballot polling average, but I see little reason to mentally adjust by three or four points as opposed to one or two. The sum of available data – far less than previous cycles as an apparent polling death-spiral continues – points to a political environment favoring Republicans but not by landslide margins.

If I were to make another few tweaks to my house ratings, I’d probably get aggressive on Long Island. I’m quite bearish for Dems there – I expect them to lose several state senate seats and to struggle in all four Congressional seats. But in my final ratings I still had Dems holding on in NY-3 thanks to a weak Republican candidate and in NY-4 because of the district’s partisanship. I was very close to moving both into the Republican column, but especially NY-4 where the partisan fundamentals are less durable – in other words, Dem turnout can be expected to drop off from a presidential year in southwest Nassau County more than up on the north shore. Further upstate, I’d be tempted to move Pat Ryan’s NY-18 into the Tilt Dem category (it’s currently Lean Dem) because of tepid early voting turnout in Poughkeepsie and Newburgh. Yes, folks could still turn out on Election Day – but I don’t think they will. The resilience of Ryan’s vote will come from Ulster County and in places like Beacon, Red Hook and Rhinebeck, and I think they’ll suffice – but more narrowly than ought to be warranted given the vast gulf in candidate quality here.

Out west, I’d probably shift CA-40 to safe Republican. At a time when Dem-inclined observers are pointing to early voting data as a reason Dems will defy expectations – and in the process drawing stronger conclusions from that data than I would outside of a place like Nevada where the track record in extrapolation is so strong – CA-40 doesn’t offer much to like in that data.

In the other direction, with Nevada guru Jon Ralston predicting that Dems hold onto two of their three seats in a state where I’ve been pessimistic for months, maybe I’d trust his instincts – so often masterful – and move Dina Titus (NV-1) back into the Dem column.

I’m sticking with the map I published Sunday night, though. Here it is once more – we’ll see soon enough if it’s anything close to reality.

Click here for interactive map.