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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
We won’t win the house if you have your way, Gary.
What has he actually done in Virginia to make you hate him so?
Perhaps. I would never presume to speak for O-Sensei, but in my experience sometimes the best way to protect your attacker, or in this case poster, is irimi rather than tenkan.
And happy greetings to a fellow aikidoka. Houbo kore dojo!
Right back at you dear.
Many things. He is also a buffoon who doesn’t belong in the Senate.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/corey-stewart-virginia-campaign-flails/
I also think he acted in a very underhanded way to push through an enormous mosque in our rural community on a small, unsuitable 15 acre lot. I wouldn’t have opposed the mosque in a more commercial area of Prince William County but there was understandable opposition from most Nokesville residents who expected Stewart to defend the rural character of this area. But the normally outspoken Stewart on matters such as confederate statues crumpled like a cheap suit when pressured.
https://www.fauquier.com/prince_william_times/news/group-launches-effort-to-recall-corey-stewart-over-mosque-vote/article_241abca8-98f8-11e7-9385-37f9b11391e0.html
And we could have had Nick Freitas.
White nationalist Islamophiles are the worst.
The truth he isn’t much of anything except a cheap, grasping politician.
Get back to me when he crawls into bed with Planned Parenthood and NARAL.
Ah, good old NIMBY, it defies party lines. After 6 years of Kaine you may end up nostalgic for the days of having only one mosque. Democrats just LOVE to air-drop entire communities of illegal immigrants into the oddest places, it shows their cred.
I really have no dog in this hunt as I don’t live in Virginia. However, I followed your links and think it might be a bit unfair to blame him for the mosque. He didn’t “push through” but rather simply approved the permit for it to connect to the sewer. He said it would have been unfair to do otherwise as they had approved Christian churches to connect to the sewer. He has spoken out proudly for the heritage of Virginia and keeping historic statues, something we should all defend in this current ignorant climate to erase our history. Dems have thrown everything at him but the kitchen sink, so it appears that he won’t be elected. It’s a shame as we need every Republican we can get in the senate.
You left out the part about him being a buffoon.
He was a very easy target because of his behavior. You may not think it is unfair to go after him about the mosque (which is the size of a mega church on a small lot), but people who live here feel differently. But you are right – he won’t be elected.
Kaine?
All politics is local.