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Election Prediction
Yogi Berra is alleged to have quipped “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” That warning notwithstanding, I will go out on a limb and make some predictions about the 2018 midterms.
- Republicans will more than hold the Senate, they will gain seats.
- Republicans will flip the Senate seats in Florida, Montana, Indiana, North Dakota, and Ohio.
- Republicans will fail to flip the West Virginia seat, mainly because Republicans are so good at leaving Senate seats on the table that they should walk away with. (I’m looking at you Todd Aiken, Sharon Angle, Roy Moore, etc.)
- Republicans will pull out a narrow surprise victory and flip one of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, or Minnesota.
- Democrats will flip Nevada. Sorry, Dean Heller, you are probably toast.
- This election will not be a Blue Wave. (For the purposes of this conversation, let’s define “wave election” as not only change in partisan leadership of the House, but decisively so as in 1994, 2006, and 2010.)
- Against almost all prognostications, Republicans will hold the House.
Factors driving election results will include #resistance fatigue, #deepstate fatigue, disgust over the Democrats’ juvenile circus antics during the Kavanaugh hearings, and their transparently disingenuous handling of the eleventh-hour vague accusation that Kavanaugh committed an attempted rape 36 years ago. Democrats have overplayed their hand at virtually every turn, and as a result, they will suffer at the ballot box. Whatever their misgivings about President Trump and the Republican Congress, voters will be reticent to hand the levers of power over to the circus masters of the left.
Sure, there are some anecdotal indicators that Republicans are in for a shellacking in November. The fact that Republicans have performed poorly in many special elections since Donald Trump took office, either winning by much narrower than expected margins or losing outright, has often been touted as a leading indicator. But in truth, special election results are unreliable predictors of general election results. Special elections get inundated with the full weight and force of the left-wing activist machine and therefore produce skewed results. During a general election when resources are spread thin, the left does not have this same advantage. The promising results of so many special elections are a sideshow to the main event and a source of false hope for Democrats looking for signs of what will happen in November. Oh, and by the way, as long as we are talking about special elections let’s acknowledge that in the most recent special election, Republicans just flipped a state senate seat in Texas which was last occupied by a Republican sometime in the late 19th century. This doesn’t exactly conform to the narrative.
High primary turnout among Democrats has also been cited as a predictor of the coming Blue Wave, but Republican turnout has also been high. In Texas where a Blue Wave is highly anticipated and Ted Cruz is supposedly on the verge of losing his bid for re-election to the Senate, the Republican vote far and away outpaced the Democrat vote. In this year’s Florida gubernatorial primary about 109,000 more votes were cast in the Republican contest than in the Democrat contest. Ohioans cast about 148,000 more votes in the GOP gubernatorial primary than were cast in the Democrat primary. Sure, Democrats have cast more ballots than Republicans in many states. But it is far from clear that primary turnout serves as a reliable indicator that Republicans are about to suffer a ballot box catastrophe.
This midterm election should favor the Democrats, as midterms usually favor the party not in control of the White House. But I suspect the American people are tired of the Democrats hysteria which is transparently absurd on nearly all fronts from Russia Russia Russia to their disgraceful performance at the Kavanaugh hearings. Democrats will reap the whirlwind and James Carville will be reduced to hiding his head with a trash can as he did on national television in 2002 when the promised Blue Wave also failed to materialize.
Published in General
I think this is correct. And if in fact Republicans keep the House, this may well be looked back upon as the turning point.
Sherrod Brown wouldn’t be there if Ohio didn’t kick out incumbents. At least once.
We may win the House, given the rapacious and unethical behavior of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The American people are fundamentally fair. It is one thing to elect a Democratic House as a check on Trump. However when Democrats suggest that they would start impeachment proceedings against Kavanaugh, that crosses a line.
That was in 2006, an extraordinary Ohio (and indeed nationwide) election year during which the Republican party in Ohio was massively tainted by financial scandals. It was one of those exceptions that proves the rule in Ohio politics. I’m not even sure DeWine (who lost his seat to Brown in ’06) has a clear path to the governorship this year – he’s not well liked even within the party (he has the same moralistic scolding tendencies of Kasich, but without the charm).
This may be the first reference I have ever heard to Kasich having charm! ;-)
As to Brown’s seat being flipped…you may well be right. I’m certain you know Ohio politics better than I do. I do think, however, that midwest states that voted for Trump have benefited greatly from his policies and I think voters will want to reward him because they are not yet tired of winning (so to speak). Are there more people in Ohio who want to keep on winning than who want to put the circus masters in power? We will find out in a few weeks.
Taft did rather stink things up. To put it mildly. Wondered what the new scandal would be every day. I lived in Ohio back then.
Kasich, charm? I must have missed something.
This article made “The List” — my growing “Best of Ricochet 2018” catalog — for an unusual reason.
I want to remember to read it again after the November elections!
After that event, it will either remain, and indeed be a Top Ten candidate, or perhaps merely escape deletion as a hat tip to its fearless self-confidence :-)
by comparison to DeWine though…
All politics is local, and we have to be extremely careful in extending predictions (and especially hopes, which are themselves often crushed) at the national level to state and local races. Far too many people on both sides of this have been wishfully reading in national trends to every by-election we’ve had since Trump was elected, without considering whether these races may have been won or lost by the candidates themselves.
That’s not to say that national feelings don’t have some influence on these races, but what is the effect? A 1 or 2% shift? Brown has been as much a backer of protectionism as Ohio blue-collars could wish for, and a massive backer of expanded union powers (which are still dominant in Ohio). Ohio’s blue-collars see Brown as their ally, and since Brown doesn’t have any taint of corruption about him, nor has been caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl, is personally eloquent and charming and likable, and his opponent is basically a nobody, Brown is highly likely to coast to an easy re-election. Whatever “wave” does crest in November, it’s not likely to have any bearing on Brown.
On the gubernatorial race, in fact, it may well hurt Dewine, who has been doing everything he can to run away from Trump. If there is a blue-wave, then DeWine is doing nothing to stand against it. If a red one, DeWine is actively opposed to it.
Like I said, by comparison with DeWine, Kasich is Carey Grant.
That was my impression of DeWine back in 2006 – a total nebbish.
Oh, Nathanael. Wake up, you’re dreaming!!!
(Of course, I was also convinced that Sec. Clinton would win in a landslide in 2016, so what do I know?)
I broadly agree with your predictions, I think alot of the democrat waviness will wash ashore in districts that they win by 10 points in a normal election year.
I will add an 8Th prediction; IF correct and the democrats fail to take back the house and loose ground in the senate, they’ll start a new whine about how undemocratic the system is – that more people voted democrat than republican and yet the democrats will get fewer seats. They’ll demand electoral reform so that they can win elections – without the actually winning elections.
If you think things are crazy now… Just wait to see how unhinged things will get if these predictions come to pass…
I have to also cast doubt on Indiana’s Senate race. I think Donnelly will win but the main reason for that is that he is trying to pass himself off as a Republican in disguise.
You might need to file it in the same bin with Al Gore’s climate predictions…. But let’s hope not.
Ditto. For once Katie agrees with me.
I’ve heard it said many times, that Richard Nixon got elected and re-elected on the strength of the 1968 Democratic Convention. Like Trump, Nixon was a flawed man, who probably couldnt have won against normal democrats in a normal year.
Here is an interesting thought. The Cleveland Browns won a football game last night. Perhaps this Browns victory serves as a bit of a prognosticator for the 2018 midterms as in retrospect Brexit did for the 2016 presidential election. ;-)
I’d hate to pin anything, good or ill, on the fate of the Browns.
If the Kavanaugh freak show can’t persuade you to vote against Tim Kaine, perhaps you’re a Democrat and don’t know it. (A vote for the Libertarian candidate will only muddy the waters.)
So sad. It’s because of voters who think like this that our majority is in doubt. Together we stand; divided we fall.
Here we go again. A vote for this is a vote for that. I don’t know that I’m a Democrat. Etc. etc. Didn’t sway me before and won’t sway me this time. Corey Stewart should never be in the Senate. I don’t like Kaine either. So I won’t vote for either. The Libertarian (as usual) is a kook. Maybe Republican primary voters should have thought about defeating Kaine.
So sad that you think it is okay to vote for an idiot who cozies up to white nationalists. I am speaking of Stewart in this case. The majority of people feel the same way. Maybe don’t vote like a moron in the primary. So sad.
Well, sulky establishment Virginia Republicans got us four years of Governor McAuliffe. There’s no reason they can’t top this achievement by getting us six more years of Senator Kaine. Maybe that’ll show the base who’s boss.
He, like 99% of us, doesn’t believe there is a white nationalist movement. It was dreamed up by the Dems years ago to use against the GOP in order to gain minority votes. It was a dirty tactic then, and it’s dirty now. Follow this link to hear what Stewart actually said about it in an interview he gave on PBS.
#2 I think you forgot Kansas in this list.
#7 Nevada is leaning Republican in the past few polls and trending positively.
Ohio is 50/50 at this point. Brown is up 1.6 points but below 50% favorability at Real Clear Politics. That more often than not equals defeat. Very close though.
We still have a few hundred media cycles before the ballots are cast.
Once Kavanaugh is in the Supreme Court, you will see a slight bump for Republicans . Progress in Korea could be a big win that delivers one or more of those surprise Senate seats.
There are also some interesting polls coming out in the House races. The Dems easiest pick-up possibility (Lehtinen-FLA) is now showing some real weakness and some PA and Minn polls are showing that some Dem targets have lost leads and are now even.
The expressions on the face of the PBS interviewer are priceless.
It is not “sulky establishment Virginia Republicans” who will be getting us 6 more years of Kaine.
I live in Prince William County and I know Stewart only too well. Nothing would make me vote for him.
I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
Moderator Note:
RudeThen you are part of the problem. Yes, we should pity Virginia. Unlike my state, Virginia actually offers a chance to keep a leftist out of power. But Corey Stewart is too nasty for you.
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