While many eyes (and with justification!) are already on the 2018 midterm elections, it is worth noting that some very important elections on the statewide level are on tap for this November. So, it is fair to say that the first chance to assess the electoral impact of Donald Trump will come in just nine short months.
The two states that headline the 2017 election cycle are two states that, on the surface, did not seem to change much in 2016.
Virginia, which arguably will get the most attention in this off-year cycle, went from a 3.9 point victory for Barack Obama in 2012 to a 5.3 point win for Hillary Clinton this past year. Meanwhile, New Jersey moved marginally in the direction of the GOP, with an 17-point Obama win in 2012 to a 14-point Clinton win in 2016. Beneath the surface, however, there were some much more substantial shifts on a more granular level. It might surprise folks to learn, for example, that there were legislative districts in Virginia that shifted more than 20 points in either direction between 2012-2016. Quite a few of those “big-shift” districts, in fact, are likely to be pivotal to any shifts in the outsized Republican legislative majority in the House of Delegates in the state.
New Jersey, meanwhile, had a smaller number of large shifts, but that is owed in part to the fact that there are far fewer districts (40) in the state than there are in Virginia (where there are 100 districts in the lower chamber). Still, there are a handful of districts where the size of the shift could surely matter. New Jersey is the converse of Virginia—there, any movement is likely to benefit the GOP.
The bottom line is that, in both cases, more than one-quarter of the state’s legislative districts shifted far more substantially than the state at large. And those shifts could (repeat: could) result in large changes to the legislative balance of power.
VIRGINIA
I addressed the subterranean large shifts in the Virginia legislative districts earlier this year. For those who missed it, the math is simple, and pretty satisfying for optimistic Democrats. A total of 36 lower-house districts (out of 100) shifted at least 10 points between 2012-2016. Clinton outstripped Obama by double digits in a healthy 26 of those districts, with Donald Trump gaining 10+ points on Mitt Romney’s performance in just 10 districts.
What’s more, the 10 districts that saw a substantial shift to the GOP last year contained exactly ONE district that had been targeted at all by the Democrats in the last two legislative cycles. That district was HD-06, centered around Wythe County. When it was an open seat in 2013, Democrats were hopeful of an upset with their candidate, Jonathan McGrady. Instead, he was dispatched rather easily by Republican Jeff Campbell, who won by a 57-37 margin. But Democrats cut their losses after that defeat, and didn’t even field a candidate. In retrospect, that was probably a shrewd call: the district went from 66-31 Romney to (oof!) a 76-21 Trump district.
So, given these numbers, it is clear that the “Trump shift” districts will have no impact on the Democratic drive to narrow the Republican legislative advantage in Virginia.
But the districts that shifted away from Trump? That is another matter entirely.
Arguably the most satisfying impact for the Democrats is the 2016 shifts away from the GOP occurred in practically every district the Virginia GOP might’ve hoped to target. Consider what happened in the four districts where the Democrats won their most recent victories by a dozen points or less:
Shifts in Potentially Targeted VA Democratic Districts
District (incumbent) |
2012 vs 2016 presidential performance
|
percent improvement |
HD-34 (Murphy) |
50-49 Obama to 58-37 Clinton |
Democrats +20 |
HD-86 (Boysko) |
60-39 Obama to 65-29 Clinton |
Democrats +15 |
HD-87 (Bell) |
56-42 Obama to 60-35 Clinton |
Democrats +11 |
HD-93 (Mullin) |
56-42 Obama to 57-38 Clinton |
Democrats +5 |
Contrast that with some districts that are likely to land on the Democratic target lists. Some changed little, but since the 2015 outcomes were close, a small shift in the winds could matter a great deal. One example here is NoVa’s HD-31, where veteran Republican Scott Lingamfelter faces a rematch with Democratic middle school teacher Sara Townsend. The district has shifted a tad (from 53-46 Obama to 53-42 Clinton), but Townsend only fell by six points in 2015, portending a real tossup this fall Further north, in Loudon County’s HD-32, Republican Tag Greason is facing a potentially formidable challenge from longtime Navy veteran David Reid. Greason also managed a six-point win last cycle, but his district underwent a sea change, going from 52-47 Obama to 58-37 Clinton in just four years.
Other districts shifted more substantially, but have historically lacked first-tier Democratic challengers. A classic example of such a district is HD-68, a district in the Richmond suburbs held since 2007 by Republican Manoli Loupassi. Loupassi has not been challenged since his inaugural bid a decade ago (which he still won 54-42), but his district lurched hard to the left last year: from 55-44 Romney in 2012 to 52-41 Clinton last year.
And, for what it’s worth, at least the Democrats bothered to challenge Loupassi in 2015. Three of the GOP incumbents who saw their districts shift the most substantially (NoVa’s Jim LeMunyon and two Richmond-area incumbents, Jimmie Massie and John O’Bannon) did not even see challengers in the last cycle. Indeed, neither Massie nor O’Bannon has seen a Democratic challenger in the past three cycles.
The good news: of the aforementioned quartet, only Loupassi does not have a Democratic challenger already waiting in the wings.
The bad news: Democrats are in such a deep hole that even a substantial blue shift this cycle will only dent what is a ridiculously wide GOP edge in the lower house. Republicans (barring any late special elections) are likely to go into November with a 66-34 edge in the House of Delegates. Even in an extremely optimistic scenario, it is hard to see the Democrats picking up more than 10 seats. More likely: a low-to-middle single-digit gain seems plausible.
NEW JERSEY
Unlike the commonwealth of Virginia, any substantial shifts in the Garden State this year are more likely to favor the GOP. There are two reasons for this:
- In New Jersey, it is the Democrats that enjoy the outsized legislative edge. Democrats hold a 52-28 edge in the state Assembly, and a 24-16 edge in the state Senate.
- Here, the statewide shift favored (albeit modestly) Donald Trump, who cut three points off of President Obama’s 2012 edge (an edge that, in fairness, was probably aided by a localized rally effect stemming from the President being on the ground quickly after the election-eve landfall of the megastorm known as Sandy).
Whereas in Virginia the bulk of the “major shifts” (read: double digits) favored the Democrats by a total of 26 districts to 10, in New Jersey the 11 shifts of the same magnitude favored the GOP 9-2.
If there is any good news in that for Democrats, most of those shifts came in districts that either went from being enormously Democratic to merely being solidly Democratic, or they came in safe Republican territory.
That said, there are three legislative districts where the Democrats have to be at least a little nervous. They all, as it happens, are located in the southern tier of the state, where Donald Trump did extremely well.
LD-01, which has a trio of Democratic incumbents (Assembly Members Bob Andrejczak and Bruce Land, as well as Sen. Jeff Van Drew), might be the most perilous for the blue team. The legislative district, which is centered around Wildwood and Cape May, went from 53-46 Obama in 2012 to 53-44 Trump in 2016.
Just to the north, LD-02 (which includes Atlantic City) also moved to the GOP, but it did not lurch quite as wildly as its neighbor (the 2nd district shifted from 60-39 Obama to 54-43 Clinton). That might be good news for the blue team, which holds two of the three seats in the district.
Sharp movement to the GOP, however, might’ve put a typically Democratic district on the target list. That was in LD-03, a chunk of New Jersey just across the river south of Philadelphia which shifted from 55-44 Obama to 50-46 Trump. State Senate President Stephen Sweeney has historically knocked off Republican challengers by modest margins (his last two victories were by 10 and 12 points, respectively), but that 15-point shift is definitely a head turner.
Meanwhile, the two districts that shifted substantially to the Democrats are unlikely to have a substantial impact come November. One, the 27th district located in northern New Jersey, already has three Democratic incumbents, and shifted from being comfortably Democratic (57-42 Obama) to hugely Democratic (63-34 Clinton). The other district, the 21st district which straddles I-78 north of Plainfield, did shift in a way that seems relevant: it went from 52-47 Romney to 53-43 Clinton. However, the issue there is historical competitiveness—the Democrats have not really played there in years. Veteran Republican State Sen. Tom Kean Jr. has won there consistently, and easily, since 2003. He won there 70-30 in 2013. Meanwhile, the GOP incumbents in the Assembly (Jon Bramnick and Nancy Munoz) have not sweated a legislative race in the 21st legislative district since Munoz was appointed to her seat in 2009.
So, the analogy is simple this year: Virginia is an opportunity for the Democrats much like New Jersey is an opportunity for the GOP. In both cases, it seems the most plausible scenario is a denting of majorities, rather than a shift in the balance of power. But one thing seems certain: these two states will be the first substantial test of the electoral “Trump effect”. And that’s not even weighing whether his presidency still exists in the same fashion come November.