The 2018 mid-term elections in the US will be one of the most high profile mid-term elections in last few mid-term election cycles. The mid-term elections are held every 4 years in between the two presidential election cycles 4 years apart. The midterms involve elections to be held for all the members of the Lower House called House of Representatives & 1/3 of all seats of the Upper House called Senate.

Currently the Republican Party has a majority of 46 seats. In 2018 Democrats are looking for a gain of 23 seats to retake control of the House.

The Senate currently is very close with the Republicans having 51 members while the Democrats having 49. Here the Democrats would require pickup of two seats to retake the Senate. The Senate elects 1/3 of its members every 2 years. This year the Democrats are on the defensive & fighting to retain seats in many states that Trump won comfortably. It looks very likely that Republicans will not only retain control of the Senate but expand its majority in the Senate.

I will focus most of the article on the House of Representatives where all the 435 members are up for reflection every 2 years including this year on Nov 6^th.

VOTER TURNOUT, TRENDS & “ENTHUSIASM GAP”

The midterms historically have seen quite a depressed turnout (~40%) compared to the Presidential elections (~60%).

Image courtesy of fairvote.org

The midterms have historically mostly seen the incumbent President’s party losing seats in the House. This would cause of concern for the Republicans as they seek to defend their 23 seat majority in the House. This can also be partly attributed to what we call the “enthusiasm gap” among the party in power in the White House. The opposition party voters are motivated to change the House majority in their favor as a sort of “check” on the President’s powers.

The electorate in the midterms has generally been older. However this year there have been some nascent signs of the youth actually coming out in larger nos. to vote which will bring cheer to the Democratic Party which usually corners most of the youth vote. Since Democrats in midterms have underperformed (compared to their presidential-year turnout) by 2-3% points on average in the last 3 midterms &  Republicans have over performed by 2-3% points the youth turnout should help the Democrats even the scales in terms of turnout.

Image courtesy of fivethirtyeight.com

Partisanship is already at an all-time high with ~90% of both Democratic & Republican voters planning to vote on party lines. That makes the remaining 10% highly important to win over in this battle. Getting the undecided voters to the booth is going to make or break the election for both parties. In 2016, Trump in the final polling was fairly close to Hillary Clinton (within margin of error). The unusually large pool of undecided voters in the 2016 election introduced a great deal of uncertainty which was not picked up by many. Some studies showed that the undecideds broke 3:2 in favor of Trump (combined with the quirks in the Electoral College) at the last moment clinching him the presidency.  

Let’s rewind back to the 2016 US Presidential elections. One of the several reasons that Trump won was a big surge in the rural areas which lean towards the Republican Party. As I have written before Trump during the campaign was criticized for campaigning in rural America away from the big population centers & where the voters anyway leaned towards the Republican Party. In the end it proved the masterstroke as the surge in rural areas overcome vote deficits vs the Democrats from the urban areas. The image below for Pennsylvania shows where the Democrats with a 400-500K plus vote differential from Philadelphia & Pittsburgh overcame Republican advantages all over the remaining part of the state which favors Republican. In 2016 this advantage of Democrats in the urban areas was wiped out with huge increases in Republican vote% in multiple rural counties.

Image courtesy of BBC

Now with the Republicans holding power in all 3 branches of Power: Presidency, House & Senate the challenge for Republicans is to recreate this surge in turnout. They seem to be afflicted by what is commonly known as the “enthusiasm gap” that affects the party in power.

An example of the voter apathy was seen in the 2017 Special election to Alabama Senate Seat. Alabama is one of the reddest state in the country (i.e. Republican citadel). Once Jeff Sessions joined Trump’s cabinet a special election was called in 2017 to fill his vacant seat. Normally this should have been a slam dunk for the Republicans. But the Democrats energized by election of Trump rallied around the Democratic candidate to deliver one of the biggest shocks in recent US political history. Comparing the numbers for the 2017 special election vs 2016 Presidential election one can see that Roy Moore the Republican candidate received only half the votes that Trump received just a year ago in 2016. While the Democrat Doug Jones received 92% of votes compared to what Hillary got in 2016. This shows that while some Republicans stayed home most of the Democrats came out in droves with greater fervor to vote for their side. Now granted some of the Republican voters were turned off by the sordid allegations against their candidate Roy Moore but it goes to show the kind of shock results which are possible due to the enthusiasm gap.

All summer long there was a constant stream of reports in voter apathy among the Republican electorate. The highly contentious hearings for the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh seems to have fired up the Republican base. Trump with his playing up of the immigration issue be it in the references to birthright citizenship or sending troops to the border in response to the stories of the caravan of Central American migrants heading up north towards the US-Mexico border. He is doing this to “fire up” his core constituency of voters. Now closer to the election the levels of enthusiasm among Republicans is much better than the early days of summer. All this has helped them to close the gap to the Democrats which is reflected in the multiple opinion polls conducted in the last few weeks. The ‘enthusiasm gap’ in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll for the Democrats moved from +10-12 earlier this year to a smaller D+4 lead in October.

GERRYMANDERING

Does this mean it is completely gloomy for the Republican Party & that a big Democratic wave is going to sweep them out of power come Nov 6? Certainly not. They have what we call a “gerrymandering” advantage. In USA (unlike other countries like India) the politicians themselves have the leverage in drawing of boundaries for the constituencies. Gerrymandering is a practice to create an advantage for a party by manipulating district boundaries. There are two principal tactics are used in gerrymandering: "cracking" (i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts) and "packing" (concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts). For those who would like to know more about this “gerrymandering” please refer to this excellent article on the same. Republicans after having won big in 2010 got to draw the boundaries post 2010 census. This helped them further consolidate their advantage in the House. Now Democrats are at a disadvantage that a simple “wave” won’t sweep them into power. There is Republican gerrymandering “wall” that they need to climb over to capture power back in the House. The so called Democratic “wave/tsunami” will have to be high enough to get over this Republican “gerrymandering wall”. In terms of popular vote anything short of 8% in the plus vote differential for the Democratic Party (vs Republicans) they could possibly fail to get majority. A 5% differential might give them slim majority but is prone to vagaries of voting patterns in the swing districts. Anything over 8% which help them safely get over this “seawall of gerrymandering” & will trigger a Democratic “tsunami” in the House.

BATTLEGROUND SEATS

A good indicator in past election cycles on which side is going to win is the no. of retirements of incumbent representatives. The number of retirements usually fluctuates between 20 to 40 in number. Whenever there is wave building up against them incumbents (especially in swing districts) many announce their retirement to get out of dodge when the wave hits their party hard. This year an usually high no. of 41 incumbent Republicans (vs 18 Democrats) have announced their decision not to contest again feeding into the perception that a Democrat wave is coming.

Trump won in 2016 including in the Midwest where no Republican candidate since the 80’s had won those states. He was able to convert some of the same voters who had always voted for Democrats & Obama to his side. There are around 20+ such Obama-Trump districts which crossed over from voting for Obama to Trump. Many of these districts are in the Midwest which consist of blue collar workers without college degree. These voters were swayed by Trump’s anti free trade & globalization rhetoric & a promise to look after the American worker’s interest first. On the opposite side of the spectrum there are 15+ districts where they voted for the Republican presidential candidate Romney in 2012 & switched over to voting from Clinton in 2016 called the Romney-Clinton districts. These are in suburban areas outside major towns dominated by high income highly educated voters many of which were turned off by list of Trump scandals & his demeanor on the campaign trail. The outcome of the election will be decided whether voters now in midterm will continue on this path of switch over or will simply revert to the mean in line with the historical trends. Current polling shows that Democrats to be doing well in most of the Obama-Trump & Romney-Clinton districts. However polling in most of these districts is well within the margin of error & lack of multitude of polls in individual seats means that this has to be interpreted with some caution.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who studies American politics believes that while Trump won as he uniquely understood what blue collar, working-class voters in the Midwest region cared about, some of the Republican Congressman/woman in tight races over there are more worried about different things like entitlement reform and free trade & hence wouldn’t fare as well as Trump did i.e. “They aren’t Trumpy enough”. This combined with the fact that 25 Republicans who currently hold seats carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016 means they will in trouble in 2018.

Dave Wasserman, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report (& one of the best political analysts I might add) recently has a fascinating insight in these battleground seats. He tweeted that Dems already hold 14 Obama-Trump seats but 0 Romney-Clinton seats. So it would be accurate to say, Democratic gains are likely to be from the suburbs where Trump is weak.

The latest Cook Political Report has 182 Safe Democrat seats with another 12 likely & 15 lean seats. While the Republicans have 140 safe seats with 29 likely & 28 lean seats. Out of the 29 tossup seats 28 are Republican seats while only 1 is Democrat seats. This shows that the battleground is in the Republican territory where there are furiously playing defense to hold off a Democratic wave. Considering the (15+27) lean seats & 30 tossups these are 73 “swing” seats where this elections is going to be decided.

Lot of the polls are showing that well educated suburban voters (some of which who are the Romney-Clinton votes) are not very enthused about voting for a Republican in 2018. Similar to the reaction against Obama in the 2010 mid-terms when the Tea Party led grassroots movement surged the Republicans to power, this year there is a coalition of college educated white women, minorities and millennials forming as a counter reaction to the Trump presidency. The Democrats highly upset with Trump want to express their anger at the ballot box by trying to make the election a sort of national referendum on the Trump presidency. The so called “suburbanites” are fired up about Trump & this where Democrats could make the gains to regain control of the House. There are quite a few suburban seats up for grabs. This number is so high that FiveThirtyEight even forecasts that Democrats could get a close to majority just winning a majority of these suburban seats.

WOMEN

Data has shown that men without a college degree have been slowly moving towards Republicans over the years with a big surge coming in 2016 with Trump as the candidate. Trumps acerbic style including calling his female opponents by various names has turned off women voters who are moving towards the Democrats. President Trump’s election combined with Hillary’s loss became a tipping point for women across the nation to become more engaged in politics & running for office. Some are calling this year as a “pink wave” where record no. of women (234: 182 Democrats 52 Republicans) are running for House. The upcoming House is projected to have the maximum number of female representatives ever. The anger against Trump among women is so deep that even an economy with record unemployment & robust growth is not narrowing the gender gap among the parties among women. Republicans facing loss of women voters this year can partly compensate with white men without college degrees who still back Trump by a big margin. But that is assuming that men show with the same fervor as women to vote on Nov. 6^th. Any drop-off in the vote % for men will result in trouble for the Republicans.

CONCLUSION

The only guarantee is that one can make as of today is that that it is going to be a very high turnout election. With partisan loyalty at ~90% turnout & independents are going to make or break the election for either side. As we know in 2010 Democrats who in power under Obama lost a whopping 63 seats in the House. The Tea Party inspired grassroots movement coalesced as a reaction to Obama & his policies. This rout in 2010 was then described by Obama as a “shellacking”. If the Democrats want to turn the tables this time around women (especially those in the suburbs) could be the most important demographic in this election. Dave Wasserman very succinctly captured this emotion with the following tweet

If 2010 was the "Year of the Angry White Senior," 2018 is most definitely the "Year of the Fired Up Female College Graduate."

Democrats are favored to win back control of the House but the question in the end could the margin of the victory. The gain could be anywhere between 20 to 40 seats. A small majority might not be sufficient to pass any legislation as some Democrats in swing districts or rural areas might break with the rest of the party on several core issues. Only a good governing majority would be of practical use for the Democrats to pass any serious legislation. But to generate big gains, they will also need to overcome the “gerrymandering wall” that the Republicans have built plus the disadvantage of packing themselves into smaller urban areas.

REFERENCES

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/young-voters-might-actually-show-up-at-the-polls-this-year/

https://statmanblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/what-just-happened-on-nov-8th.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/?utm_term=.61e450e82e34

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/09/upshot/congress-retirements-tracker.html

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-can-get-close-to-a-house-majority-with-suburban-seats-alone/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/17/strong-economy-not-helping-gop-with-gender-gap.html

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/16/politics/house-women-update-september/index.html