Biden Thread

[Montmorency]

Confirmation that the majority of Republican electeds have become 2020 Truthers.

[Montmorency]

It's just been the same shit for the past decade but Dem electeds are still basically devoted to the politics of normalcy and civility, which in the long-term has had an incredibly corrosive effect on the readiness and mobilization of both the liberal coalition and the party infrastructure.


We can finally comment on the closing stretch to the midterms, two weeks out. There has been, as predicted, a reversion to the mean in public sentiment, though some still maintain the existence of a reproductive-rights swing vote. The reversion doesn't seem to be related to the modest recent reversal (0.15-20c) in gas prices, as the trends preceded it and were smooth during it. The summary from 2 months ago fundamentally still applies:

47-53 Dem Senators, though now 49-51 is the likeliest range. I suspect they maintain the 50-50 split with a one-for-one exchange, but if either of the races in Georgia and Pennsylvania turn out to be flubs as well the Republicans have the majority.
House majority of around 15 seats for Republicans (~230).

The most disturbing development is that Dem gubernatorial candidates have lately slid in the polls in many states, to the point that 5 races are competitive rather than just 2. These are Arizona and Kansas plus Wisconsin, Oregon, and Nevada, with all but Arizona staking Dem incumbency. Losing the governor's office in Wisconsin and falling short of it in Arizona guarantees that those states will declare for the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 if the Democrat carries the vote. (Oregon is at risk today because of the combination of an unpopular incumbent governor and an unusually-strong third-party entrant.)

[Hooahguy]

So how about that midterm huh lol.

I think we are looking at a 51-49 Democrat Senate, plus a narrow GOP House. Honestly if the NY Dem party didnt flub so badly on everything from redistricting to GOTV, we might have kept the House and Senate. Bummer. But on the plus side, the various NY republicans who won in purple districts might not touch impeachment because of how badly it would be used against them in 2024. Also I dont think McCarthy is Speaker in any case, nobody likes him lol

But hey, at least Boebert might lose her seat? Suuuper close race. (as of writing this, the Dem challenger is up 50.01% to 49.99%)

[Montmorency]

Long story short, the midterms actually tracked the polling fairly closely (not Trafalgar or Rasmussen, better luck next time), although a large number of close contests have broken favorably for Dems. Undecideds seem to have broken Democratic for once. If anything polling was slightly too unfavorable to Democrats. Overall you could call it a mediocre night for both parties in terms of normal electoral politics, historically above-average for incumbent parties in midterm elections, and in the process of American degeneration into civil strife another brief respite.

Democrats? half-empty glass might be more full than Republicans?.

It's plain that the abortion crisis counteracted perceptions of inflation, though stable gas prices and Q3 GDP growth might also have helped.

We easily gained two governorships as the "moderate" Republican incumbents of blue states vacated their positions. Keeping the governorships in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and plausibly taking it in Arizona is legitimate security for the 2024 presidential race. Some unusual results include the first Democratic trifecta in Michigan in 40 years, and a potential flip in the Pennsylvania state House on the wire. Altogether it may be enough to foreclose Republican plans to nullify presidential election results.

At first glance voter turnout is probably below 2018, but if so I'm not sure if either party was hurt more than the other.

Control of the Senate will be decided by a runoff election in Georgia yet again, because although Fetterman pulled through in Pennsylvania despite his stroke and everywhere else is a hold, Nevada's Democratic Senator appears to be suffering a predicted narrow defeat.

Trump is widely expected to announce his candidacy for 2024 within a week, and there may be more news on his legal troubles in that time as well.

@Seamus

Bill Nelson won re-election to the Senate with 55% and 4.5 million votes in 2012 in Florida, and Rubio has won now with 58% and 4.5 million votes (after winning with 52%/4.8 million votes in his last election, 2016). Miami is GONE. Every single Florida county swung right compared to 2020, which was already rightward from the 2010s average. Compare with Pennsylvania, where every county swung left or stable this cycle, or Kansas, where a similar statewide blue shift occurred in the governor's race. The notorious Orbanist De Santis performed even better than Rubio and has accumulated enough clout in one term to run a Sanders-scale campaign against Trump in 2024 if he wishes. The state legislature has gone over to a Republican supermajority. This can't be accounted for just by the pandemic influx of conservative retirees, or the tiny Cuban minority.

Is it finally time for

So how about that midterm huh lol.

I think we are looking at a 51-49 Democrat Senate, plus a narrow GOP House. Honestly if the NY Dem party didnt flub so badly on everything from redistricting to GOTV, we might have kept the House and Senate. Bummer. But on the plus side, the various NY republicans who won in purple districts might not touch impeachment because of how badly it would be used against them in 2024. Also I dont think McCarthy is Speaker in any case, nobody likes him lol

But hey, at least Boebert might lose her seat? Suuuper close race. (as of writing this, the Dem challenger is up 50.01% to 49.99%)

From what I'm seeing Cortez-Masto probably loses, but it's possible I guess. How many key elections have we won by 3 or 4 digits in the past few years?

NY Dems didn't cause non-partisan redistricting, that was by popular referendum/constitutional reform. Technically it was state lege Dems being so dedicated to trying to gerrymander this cycle that an independent drafter had to be assigned, leaving the state with a more balanced map than we might have gotten away with.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-wo...-redistricting

But it's not that important, since Dems were compensated with a number of seats in other states as a result of anti-gerrymandering actions and some additional gerrymandering of their own; some NY seats would have flipped anyway for the following, more troubling, reason that overall sentiment toward the party here is the lowest since the Pataki era. The long-coveted two-chamber supermajority we gained in the state legislature during the Blue Wave has been lost in both chambers by a seat or two. Schumer had his worst result since his first Senate election in 1998 against New York giant D'Amato. Uber-centrist Max Rose rode the Blue Wave into the Staten Island House district (NY-11) in 2018, then lost it in 2020 53-47. His reaction was to abandon and condemn the Democratic Party, seeking a rematch with Malliotakis as an independent. This time he lost 62-38. While it is pleasing to scornfully regard his comeuppance, we can only hope this broad downturn in the state reverts to the mean.

From what I see of the current returns the GOP winds up with 220-225 seats, I'll guess 222 (the current Democratic majority). Certainly an underperformance but enough to roast up some red meat with vexatious Congressional investigations.

[Montmorency]

The Georgia runoff will not be relevant to Senate control as Nevada's Senate race is a Democratic hold.

It appears the Republicans will only achieve a 2-seat House majority, a drastic underperformance when they were expected to gain a 10-to-15 seat majority. It's a shame, a galvanized Democratic trifecta could have produced a decent amount of necessary legislation.

Democrats did quite well at the state level, though of course Florida was disastrous.

But in 2022, not a single state legislative chamber flipped from blue to red. A party in power hasn’t achieved that result in a midterm election year since at least 1934, according to Post.

Many thanks to the incontinent malice of the Republican base for foisting Trump and rampantly-illegitimate juridical practices on the country when it only detracted from their opportunities.

[drone]

I hope someone informs the honorable Ms. Greene that during an impeachment trial, the Senate can subpoena witnesses and force testimony under oath. The Democrats could easily turn a trumped-up impeachment against Jordan and company (very publicly, and with legal force). Schumer should be able to nip any of those shenanigans in the bud with a few quiet words.

[Montmorency]

Now that we're pretty sure of the final election results in particulars, a brief examination of the House elections.

In 2020, Dems won 222 seats 50.8-47.7.
In 2022, Republicans won 222 seats 50.7-47.7.

222 seats of 435 is 51%.

So despite all the boundary inefficiences and gerrymandering, it may be that the combination of updated boundaries (population movement and changes according to the 2020 census), mutual gerrymandering, and the uptake of neutral districting in some places served to nullify most partisan bias in aggregate.

Polling was pretty good, as early results suggested. A national (across the board) 1pp vote swing in favor of Democrats would have retained their control with the same number of seats they had before: 222 (meaning Democrats would have achieved the very rare result of improving their representation in government during a midterm, accounting for the Senate and state elections). A 1pp swing in favor of Republicans would have given them 5 more seats, putting them almost on the line for the consensus House projection of ~230 seats. Interesting stuff.



Also, a reminder that despite some appearances this year, overall ticket-splitting remains at all-time lows. However, analogously to swing voters,

split-ticket voting isn’t so rare — at least today, anyway — that the actual governing outcomes of these votes produce no split results.