681

UPDATE: contra MSNBC CNN’s poll has Trump’s job approval at just 39%. Certainly making this a referendum on himself was brilliant. 63% of respondents say they’re voting to send a message to Trump.

Ok so #November6 is coming-in just two days. So it’s time to make my final predictions. I had planned to have this book published prior to #November 6 but I got sick with a bad stomach ache nine days ago which turned out to be a blocked gall bladder. I’m in Good Samaritan Hospital now and tomorrow I will have a few kidney stones removed. I should be-and certainly hope to be out on Tuesday so I can vote-and hopefully attend my own Dem NY2 candidate’s victory party-Liuba Shirley. I think she will win.

UPDATE: Liuba didn’t quite make it though she got close-lost by only 5 which is nothing to sneeze at vs. King who normally wins by 25 not 5.

Meanwhile here I am 10 months later not done yet-still landing the plane! I’m not writing no content-for the most part-just reading all these chapters I wrote…

I wanted to get this published before Nov 6. At least my buddy Kev delivered my laptop to me here at CHS so that I can make my predictions prior to it. At least readers can see how close-or not so close-I got. I’m curious myself.

I expect most Democrats to do well-I think the Dems will have a great night with a surprise to the upside of the consensus. The consensus at this point is the Dems win the House but the GOP hold on the Senate while most likely picking up 1 to 2 seats-possibly more.

Harry Enten has the Dems picking up 33 seats in the House for a Congress sworn in in early January, 2019 with 226 Democrats and 209 GOPers.

This is a fairly typical prediction. Most polling analysts have the Dems winning the House with about 30+ seats. Enten’s Senate prediction is also typical-his model has the GOP picking up two seats for a new majority of 52-48.

Nate Silver has gives the Dems a 6-in 7 chance of winning the House with an average pickup of 37 seats

while giving the GOP a 6 in 7 chance to hold onto the Senate. 

with an average gain of 2 seats.

The Cooke Report is prediction the Dems to pick up 20 to 40 seats. 

The consensus regarding the Senate is that after the GOP plowed Kavanaugh through somehow took the Senate off the table. What’s interesting is to the extent Kavanaugh momentum has simply been presumed without clear evidence. 

Indeed, the majority of the country dislikes Kavanaugh and as we saw in (Chapter A) actually support him being impeached.

FN: Except Pelosi who piously declares ‘we don’t impeach people.’ I’m sure if she’d been there in the 1930s she wouldn’t have wanted to impeach Hitler.

To be sure, based on conventional methods in polling analysis the GOP should a big favorite-and maybe these conventional methods will prove right. But it’s also possible that most analysts are underestimating the size of Democratic gains on Tuesday because of a  presumptions that the electorate in 2018  will look like those of 2010 and 2014-which, of course, were very pro GOP electorates.

Rachel Bitecofer at the Watson Center argues for the Dems ton pick up 46 seats-which is above the consensus-in the 20s or 30s.

FN: So the consensus was about 31 seats and Bitecofer predicted 46 and the final tally was 40 seats with the largest midterm margin in history-greater than even the Watergate Dems-who weren’t so afraid of Nixon like Pelosi and Friends fear Trump.

 

End of FN.

A big part of the problem is the unexamined presumption that this will be the electorate of 2010 and 2014. But what Ms. Bietcofer does is factor in something very important but overlooked by conventional analysis: negative partisanship. Negative partisanship is what explains a very important historical fact of American elections-the President’s party-even a fake ‘President’ like illegitimate ‘President Trump’-usually loses double digit seats in off year elections. This is more a less a historical law of US politics going back to the 19th century.

Negative partisanship  explains this ‘historical law’ I cal it a ‘law’ in the sense it has a large sample size.

“Just over 4 months ago I posted my forecast for the 2018 congressional midterms. The forecast offers a novel approach to modeling election outcomes based on a theory of voting behavior for the polarized era. My forecast asserts that the results of the 2018 midterm cycle, especially for House and gubernatorial races, have been set in stone since just around 11pm on November 9th, 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost her bid for the presidency unexpectedly to Donald Trump. That loss cemented a considerable enthusiasm advantage for Democrats that will last the length of Trump’s tenure in the White House. The first evidence of this enthusiasm advantage appeared in a series of upset victories by Democrats in state legislative special elections in hostile territory, followed by Democrat Ralph Northam’s 9pt trouncing of his Republican opponent Ed Gillespie in Virginia’s 2017 gubernatorial race. That win also ushered 15 new Democrats into Virginia’s House of Delegates, dramatically altering the partisan division of the state’s lower chamber. Yet, other political analysts expected the election to be close between Gillespie and Northam and were genuinely surprised by Northam’s lopsided victory. They were caught off guard because their understanding of Virginia’s electorate was based entirely on the electorate that existed during the 8 years of the Obama Administration, where strong turnout for Republicans and weaker turnout for Democrats erased much of a growing demographic advantage for Democrats in the ever-expanding northern Virginia area. Democrats went from comprising 37% of the 2013 electorate to 41% of the 2017 electorate and in so doing, increased the vote share for the Democratic Party’s nominee from 48% of the 3 candidate vote in 2013 to 54% of the 3 candidate vote share in 2017.

“This sharp change in the partisan distribution of the electorate also drove Conor Lamb’s surprise victory in a special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, which at the time held an 11pt partisan advantage for Republicans. According to exit polling, Democratic voter turnout was so strong in that largely rural district that Democrats made up a plurality of the electorate, 46%. It happened again in a special election in Alabama to fill Jeff Sessions’ vacant Senate seat. In a state with a partisan advantage for Republicans of 15pts, Democrats turned out in such large numbers they made up 37% of the electorate, compared to the Republican’s 43%, an impressive feat in a deep red state in the Bible Belt.”

What fueled these sharp increases is something called negative partisanship, which I explain in great detail in my original post. In the polarized era, Republicans and Democrats increasingly view each other as existential threats to the survival of the Republic, especially those that the PEW Centercalls the “highly engaged.” As such, fear and hatred of the “other party” motivates voters more than appreciation of one’s own party. I argue that this has had a profound effect on voting behavior. During the Obama years, Republicans felt threatened by the Democratic Party’s control of the presidency, and responded by increasing their turnout rates in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. The result were two banner cycles for the party where they not only picked up control of Congress, but also gained about 1,000 additional state legislative seats and a dozen new state houses, even in blue states. Republican gains were helped by sluggish turnout by Democrats, who having completed their “Yes, We Can” revolution, scaled back their electoral interest considerably in the midterms. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and Democrats are threatened. This threat response provides a useful framework to anticipate what will happen in the 2018 midterms and beyond.

FN: You can see this pattern pretty clearly in the last four Presidencies-including Trump’s fake ‘Presidency.’ Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now fake ‘President Trump’ all begun with Congressional majorities and then saw their party wiped out in Congress in the ensuing years.

My Negative Partisanship Model produces an estimated two-party vote share for Democratic Party candidates running in the 2018 cycle. My quantitative model identifies districts/states with demographic characteristics most conducive to a surge in Democratic voter turnout. These factors include the level of partisan competition in the district, the % of the district’s population that is college educated, the level of diversity in the district, and the district’s population density. A full description of my model can be found here. In addition, I implement a fairly simplistic quantitative handicapping system similar to the one used by FiveThirtyEight, which considers contest-specific factors such as incumbency, primary turnout, fundraising, candidate quality, campaign strategy, presence of a competitive statewide race, scandals, and third-party candidates to refine my model’s estimate. For example, in Georgia’s 6th congressional district, where 65% of the population holds a college degree and 40% is non-white, my model is quite bullish on the Democrat’s share of the two-party vote despite the fact that the district broke for the current Republican incumbent Karen Handel by about 4pts in a special election early in 2017. My model’s initial estimate of the Democrat’s two-party vote share has been adjusted down to account for Handel’s incumbency, the strong turnout of Republicans in their regular Republican primary and in the subsequent run-off election, and for Handel’s considerable fundraising advantage, but adjusted up to account for the historic candidacy of Stacey Abrams as the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor, which will almost certainly increase turnout for Democrats, particularly African-Americans, who under performed their turnout potential in the 2017 special.

UPDATE: As it turned out this time the Dems were able to defeat Handel behind candidate Lucy McBath.

“Because my initial House ratings were released in July, at the time my ratings largely reflected the unadjusted output of my statistical model (although there were a couple of key exceptions, VA 7 for example which received a bump for challenger quality and for Democratic turnout in the primary which allowed me to put this district on the radar far earlier than other analysts). My final ratings reflect both the estimate of the Democratic candidate’s two-party vote share as well as any applicable adjustments from the factors listed above. That being said, there is not much change from my original forecast although my gross seat gain for Democrats has increased to 47 seats. This is largely due to the unique approach of my model, which derives the bulk of its estimate from fixed factors. As I said in my original post my model was designed to closely reflect the seat gain for Democrats 4 months later, on Election Day. Rather than moving my seat count, the last few months have been about filling in the blanks on which specific seats will flip. In my initial release, I had 12 districts coded as “Will Flip” and an additional 12 coded as “Likely to Flip.” I had 3 races rated as “Lean Democrat” and then I had a long list of “Toss-Up” races. Heading into this final update my “Will Flip” list more than doubled, to 26 seats, which locked in the majority for Democrats. I had 11 “Likely to Flip” districts, 7 “Lean D” districts, and 25 “Toss Ups.” This final update identifies 47 seats my analysis suggests Democrats will pick up, offset by one they are likely to lose to the Republicans (MN 8).

So note the etymology-for a long time the conventional wisdom was a lot less bullish on the Blue Wave than she was. Now the CW has largely caught up-though she’s still above the average consensus-she projects the most likely result 46 seats.

While she doesn’t totally connect the dots if the Dems do win 46 seats, there’s a very good chance they do win the Senate too-the tailwind effect. She did point out that if the Dems win 40 seats they likely will win the Senate too-but didn’t formally predict the Dems take the Senate-though if 40 should be enough with 46 they should blow through 50.

FN: Of course they ended end up winning 40 seats while losing two in the Senate-considerably more than the CW and close to her final prediction of 42. The Dem consultant class alas appears to remain particularly resistant however to her point about negative partisanship-there’s a strange state of affairs where both the Democrat and GOP leadership prefers to focus on GOP voters and ignore the Dem base.

She continues to argue this crucial point for the upcoming 2020 election in a campaign you can focus on persuasion or turnout-call it the battle of Persuaders vs the Turnouters-and she argues the Dems err in focusing so much on persuasion as 2020 will be about negative partisanship. 

But a major myth is that the Democrats won in 2018 because of GOP leaning independents or even Trump voters. They did so well in 2018 primarily because of a Blue Wave-a huge mobilization of the Dem base.

As I documented in Chapter A I ran for NY Congress in the Democratic primary and clearly my own instincts hew very much to the turnout side of the equation-I’m less interested in persuading those who love Trump-or think Hillary is the demonseed-than all those who agree with me who feel disenfranchised.

My own sense is that the CW is still underestimating the Blue Wave. Besides her very interesting and persuasive point about negative partisanship  there’s the issue of the Dems absolutely blow through the ceiling fundraising. advantage on the GOP.

Nate Silver-who else?-is one of the few polling analysts to seriously look at it:

Until recently, it was rare for House candidates to raise $2 million for their races, but it’s become more common in recent years as fundraising has gone digital and candidates have learned how to make highly tailored online appeals. There was a huge jump in the number of $2-million-plus candidates in both parties between 2014 and 2016, for example. But while Democrats’ numbers have held steady or improved from the high levels they had in 2016, Republican numbers have collapsed. The 17 GOP candidates that we project will raise at least $2 million this year is down from 64 in 2016. (All figures are adjusted for inflation.)

The result is a fundraising disparity the likes of which we’ve never seen before — at least not in recent years. (Our data on House fundraising goes back to 1998.) In the average House district, the Democratic candidate has raised 64 percent of the money this cycle,2 or almost two-thirds. Likewise, the Democrat has raised an average of 65 percent of the money in districts rated as competitive3 by the Cook Political Report. In all previous years in our database, no party had averaged more than 56 percent of the money in these competitive districts.”

But many analysst simply ignore the numbers-as it simply isn’t in conventional prediction models.

Democrats’ Unprecedented Fundraising Edge Is Scary For Republicans … And Our Model

The fundraising numbers are so good for Democrats — and so bad for Republicans — that it’s hard to know quite what to make of them. From a modeling standpoint, we’re extrapolating from years in which fundraising was relatively even, or from when one party had a modest edge, into an environment where Democrats suddenly have a 2-1 advantage in fundraising in competitive races. Moreover, this edge comes despite the fact that a large number of these competitive races feature Republican incumbents (incumbents usually have an easier time raising money than challengers) and that most of them are in red terrain.”

A number of analyst types seem to dismiss the fundraising: like if Beato is able to raise millions of dollars from liberals across the country in a Texas race that might show these donors aren’t so bright. If the polls show  Cruz with a consistent small lead but Beato raises record setting amounts of cash they simply ignore the fuundriaising and look at the polls-which are in line with and confirm their models and recent election patterns.

Silver doesn’t entirely know what to do either-but certainly doesn’t think you just ignore such a counterintuitive counter indicator.

I don’t either. I suspect that Dems will surprise to the upside of CW.-maybe even more than 46 or even 50. Between the CW’s assumption that previous patterns will hold in 2018, the lack of awareness of the importance of negative partisanship, and the failure to make any attempt to factor in the unprecedented fundraising numbers among other things that are different about the Blue Wave I believe the big surprise will be to the upside for the Dems.

If the Dems win the Senate how will they do it?

Just watching FOX News-needed a new kind of self abuse and they were discussing  ‘President Trump’ being in Tenessee again. And they did say this shows the race is very tight

Phil Bredesen was on Kasie DC on MSNBC tonight and claimed the Dem brand-his own party-is ‘elitist’ and doesn’t represent the working class. I guess that’s how you win as a Democrat in TN: repudiate your own party and say it’s terrible. Look-whatever works

 

I don’t agree that’s true-the Democrat message during the 2018 general election couldn’t have been clearer-protecting and expanding American’s healthcare. How is that elitist?’ But if that gets him the win, ok.

UPDATE: As it happened running against your own party wasn’t such a brilliant strategy and it didn’t work for him.

Now what is true of my party is it’s way too willing to concede the point of virtually any criticism you levy against it. That I find very frustrating. But as noted in (Chapter B) maybe the Democratic party is a girl. Certainly it is in the sense of the way Democrats always apologize wether they’re right or wrong.

At least Bredesen isn’t scared to criticize Trump-he did hit him on the despicable caravan thing. Then there’s Beato in Texas. Regarding him, Nate Silver:

Heide Heitkamp would seem to be the most endangered Democrat-and she may well be as her poll numbers have sunk. However, what’s interesting is that despite the idea that she committed campaign malpractice in voting no on Kavanaugh-that this was effectively sticking a fork in her own campaign, she did see a huge spike in fundraising post Kavanaugh-she effectively almost doubled the donations in the first 17 days of October she got in the entirely of her whole campaign previously

Again what does this mean? We will know very soon. At this point we don’t know that this will help her utterly shock the CW and win after all, but it certainly doesn’t hurt her-if she loses it won’t be due to insufficient funds. If she does win it would be the ultimate egg in the faces of the Church of the Savvy and truly icing on the cake.

UPDATE: I guess I should make clear predictions-it makes it more fun if nothing else.

1. House: As we saw above Rachel Bitecofer has the Dems winning 46 seats. That would leave them with 239 seats in the 116th Congress. I will predict they win 50. That would leave them with 243. Beitcofer states that a pick up of 40 seats would be enough for a tailwind effect would push even the Senate over to the Dems.

This brings us to

2. Senate: 50 seats will definitely be enough to drag the Senate along on the Blue Wave. What races will the Dems win to take the Senate? Logically they need both Beto O’Rourke and Phil Bedesen to win. I believe they will. As suggested above, I think even Heitkamp may be a lot less ‘dead’ than presumed.

UPDATE: Again they went on to win 40-had they won 50 maybe they would have picked up the Senate. Still their 40 seats was a record landslide-due to gerrymandering and redistricting they picked up 40 seats rather than 65 seats.

 

 

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