A new Gallup poll finds that Democrats hold an 11-point lead over Republicans in House races among likely voters, 54% to 43%.
Nate Silver: “We’ve frozen our forecasts, the final model runs are whirring away now. And we’ve also frozen our generic ballot average. It wound up at D+8.7. That’s not a good number for Republicans. The Democratic lead ticked up from about 8 percentage points to 9-ish on the last set of polls we entered before freezing everything.”
Brian Beutler: “Trump is a singularly nasty and corrupt individual, but he also embodies something that has been clear about Republican politics for years: Advancing the conservative agenda any further—cutting taxes on the wealthy, slashing public services—requires more and more obfuscation, fewer and fewer voters, and increasingly naked white identity politics.”
“If Donald Trump didn’t exist, Republicans would have had to invent him. Or someone like him. The alternative would have been to moderate the conservative agenda in meaningful ways, and the party has been uncompromising in that regard.”
“By late Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, officials from both parties say we should know whether or not the Democrats have won the House. Until then, everyone is on edge — and the tension is only going to get worse through the long election night,” Mike Allen reports.
“Democrats remain ‘cautiously optimistic,’ one strategist told me, especially ‘after living through 2014 and 2016’ when Democrats had high hopes but suffered major losses. President Trump is sounding the alarm by disputing CNN polls and warning of potential illegal voting.”
Said one national Republican operative: “It’s going to be a bad night in the House.”
Gallup: “More than eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic leaners (81%) say they are very or somewhat worried about what will happen if Republicans maintain control of one or both houses of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections.”
“Alternatively, 66% of Republicans and Republican leaners say they are very or somewhat worried about what will happen if Democrats win one or both houses of Congress.”
First Read: “President Trump and GOP strategists made it all about that base; just see Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh at last night’s rally with Trump in Missouri. But Democrats — especially in the Senate races in red/purples states like Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, Montana and Tennessee — focused their messages on the middle of the electorate.”
“Maybe the best example of this base-versus-middle divide is the 50-50 Senate race in Arizona between Democrat Kyrsten Sinema (whose message was aimed at the middle) and Republican Martha McSally (who was playing more to the Trump base in this traditional GOP state).”
“Be sure to see how independents break in Arizona and nationally. If Democrats are winning them by more than 10 points — our NBC/Marist poll of Arizona had Sinema up more than 20 points among indies — it’s hard to see how they aren’t going to win across the country.”
“In a move that is being decried by several members of the Texas congressional delegation, the U.S. Border Patrol announced Monday that it would be conducting an Election Day crowd control exercise in El Paso, the hometown of Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Beto O’Rourke,” the Texas Monthly reports.
“The exercise will take place next to the Chihuahuita neighborhood, a cluster of about one hundred or so homes along the U.S.-Mexico border that is almost exclusively Hispanic. The exercise is planned to occur within half a mile from at least one designated polling station.“
“One constant of Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency and his two years in power is how behavior that would be not just risky but downright stupid for any normal politician ends up working smartly for him,” Politico reports.
“This is the essence of the Trump Mystique — a three-year record in which he regularly demonstrated that many of the normal precedents, patterns and truisms of American politics simply do not apply to him. This mystique — Is it real or illusion? Is his patented sorcery still working? — is among the big questions being tested in Tuesday’s elections.”
“Trump’s own decisions over the past month have put the issue — whether Trump has defied political gravity or merely delayed its impact — in even sharper relief than it would have been anyway.”
From our friends at the Cook Political Report:
“Follow along on Election Night with this handy guide. Listed are all the 2018 races that we consider competitive or potentially competitive (races in the Likely D/R, Lean D/R and Toss Up columns) sorted by the time polls close (EST).”
The New York Times has a good hour-by-hour guide too.
Exclusive to Political Wire from Cornell University professors Peter K. Enns and Jonathon P. Schuldt:
We interviewed a nationally representative sample of 957 likely voters in early July and late October. Each survey asked likely voters how they planned to vote in the election for the U.S. House of Representatives. In that time, net support for Democrats increased from 8.5 to 10.8%. Considering these are the very same individuals, this represents a substantial Democratic gain.
But Newly Engaged Voters Look Different. We also studied a special group. We randomly selected 136 respondents who said they were not likely to vote in our July survey but who were likely voters by October. Among this group, the Democratic advantage disappeared. But we must remember this is a small group, so there is a lot of uncertainty in this result. Also, those who only recently became engaged in the election constitute a small portion of total voters. In fact, when we combine both groups (likely voters from July and new likely voters), Democrats retain an 8.1% net advantage.
It Will Come Down to Turnout. These data highlight an overlooked x-factor on Election Day. Those who recently tuned into the election appear to have different voting preferences than those who’ve been engaged all along. The key question is which type of voters will turn out, and we all are part of the answer. Whatever your political preferences, make sure you vote!
About the survey: Data from Enns and Schuldt 2018 Midterm Election Study. The nationally representative survey of likely voters was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. This panel survey was funded by Cornell’s Center for the Study of Inequality.
“This election is about who gets the vote out and who doesn’t and I hope it rains hard tomorrow.”
— New Jersey Senate candidate Bob Hugin (R), quoted by the New York Times.
“After largely standing by President Donald Trump as he has led his party for the past two-plus years, some Republicans now worry that his campaign rhetoric has gone too far and will cost some GOP candidates their races and jobs in Tuesday’s midterm elections,” NBC News reports.
“Trump has spent the final stretch of this election season in some of the most conservative areas in the country, rallying his base of supporters by warning that Democrats will usher in an age of ‘socialism’ and ‘open borders’ if voters put them in charge of either chamber of Congress.”
I’m sure most Political Wire readers will vote today. But please take some time to encourage your friends and co-workers to vote as well.
Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared on stage with President Trump at his Missouri rally to parrot his midterm campaign slogans — despite earlier insisting he would only be covering the event as a journalist, the Daily Beast reports.
Said Hannity: “I had no idea you were going to invite me up here.”
New York Times: “The show onstage might well have been called Fox & Friend.”
Playbook: “After nearly two years of President Trump executing his vision for America, voters will get a chance to decide whether they are happy with the direction of the country, or if they want to break up Republican Washington.”
“But also, today could mark the final gasp of a House Republican majority that was built in 2010 principally on repealing Obamacare, cutting government spending and opening up the legislative process. Now, eight years later, not only have Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare, they are getting hammered over their opposition to the Affordable Care Act and some of its key provisions on the campaign trail. Government spending is through the roof. And critics complain that the legislative process is as closed as ever before.”
“There is not true geographical consistency to where Republicans are struggling. They have their backs against the wall in Southern California, suburban Chicago, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina, New York, New Jersey and even Texas.”
“Something interesting happened on the campaign trail the night before Election Day. President Trump seemed to recognize he had a problem with female voters,” the Washington Post reports.
“Ivanka Trump, who has maintained a low profile this campaign season, appeared alongside her dad at an Indiana rally along with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and press secretary Sarah Sanders. Sanders opened her remarks with a joke that she ‘wasn’t used to addressing friendly crowds,’ a line she’s been employing in her stump for candidates around the country.”
“A White House official told us that Ivanka, Conway and Sanders are the three most requested White House surrogates by Republicans. Conway and Sanders have headlined dozens of fundraisers and events this fall, while Ivanka has campaigned with a handful of candidates with whom she’s developed close relationships.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said that “he plans to move to Florida for tax reasons and teach at a university there regardless of who Mainers elect to succeed him,” the Portland Press Herald reports.
Said Page: “I’ll be a resident of Florida if Janet Mills wins, I can promise you that… I’ll also be in Florida if Shawn Moody wins because I am going to retire and go to Florida.”
He added: “I am done with politics. I have done my eight years. It’s time for somebody else.”
“If Democrats seize the House majority, it will mark the third time in 12 years that the chamber switched control, a level of voter volatility not seen since just after World War II,” Washington Post reports.
First Read: “We haven’t seen this level of volatility since after World War II, when control of the House changed hands several times in the 1940s and 1950s. And like after World War II and the Great Depression, this country is in the midst of a political realignment that has created this volatility. The contested 2000 presidential election. 9/11. The Iraq War. The Great Recession. Obama. Trump.”
Aaron Blake: “We don’t know what’s going to happen in the election, but we’ve got a pretty good idea how it’s likely to be spun. With Republicans probably losing the House, they (and President Trump, in particular) have focused on the Senate. And if they hold it or even gain some seats, you can guarantee they’ll cite it as a win, and possibly even a split decision overall.”
“This will be false.”
”Yes, Republicans would technically be improving their lot in the Senate, while Democrats would be surging in the House… But it would also owe almost completely to some highly unusual circumstances — for which there is very little historical precedent — and it wouldn’t exactly indicate an evenly split electorate.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.