Daily Kos Elections House Forecast: Anatomy of a wave (final part in the series)

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Wednesday October 31, 2018 · 5:30 AM PDT

2018/10/31 · 05:30

no image description available — Republican Rep. Mia Love (UT-04) is one GOP incumbent who has seen her polling fortunes grow more perilous in recent weeks.

If you start the clock the day after the 2016 elections, then were are now over 99 percent of the way through the 2018 election cycle. Less than a week remains before “the only poll that matters.”

Which means, of course, that we have precious limited time remaining to analyze the polls that “won’t matter” come November 6th. In this week’s edition of the DKE House forecast, we will look at the fourth and final critical element of wave elections, which is the ability to persuade non-traditional constituencies to lend their votes to the cause.

In the 2017 Virginia elections, this was critical to the monster night the Democrats enjoyed—as they were able to create what I would call an “asymmetric recovery”. While Democrats were able to recover some in the blue-collar parts of the state that had snapped hard to Donald Trump in 2016, they managed to not just hold onto the well-educated and more political independent suburban precincts in the state, they improved on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance.

As we noted at the time, if Democrats could replicate that “asymmetric recovery” in 2018, it could very easily be lights out for the GOP’s House majority. So...how is that working out for the Democrats? Better than we might think—we’ll check out the data in a bit.

Steve Singiser

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Wednesday October 24, 2018 · 5:30 AM PDT

2018/10/24 · 05:30

As we now move within two weeks of Election Day, we look today at the third necessary component of a “wave election”, which is tilting the typical playing field for an election via turnout. Prior to this, we looked at the need for the Democrats to generate a vast playing field (check!), and we looked at the need for candidates to have the financial resources to compete late in the game (holy crap...check!).

Your party can have ample money to broadcast your message, and your party can manage to benefit from a ton of races that are within range of success, but those things alone will not bring the avalanche of seats falling on Election Day. The base has to get out, and your party has to pluck the bulk of the persuadable voters. How are the Democrats competing on that score? That is the question we will explore in this week’s edition of the House forecast.

But first, let’s crunch the numbers and see where the polling data takes us this week. It is a forecast that some will meet with increased pessimism, but above all else, it underscores just how narrow the distinctions are between an underwhelming election night for the Democrats and an utter tsunami.

Steve Singiser

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Wednesday October 17, 2018 · 5:30 AM PDT

2018/10/17 · 05:30

In last week’s installment of the DKE House forecast, we began to look at the necessary ingredients to generate a wave election in the House. The first ingredient we cited was the ability to put a lot of races on the table, in order to broaden the possible roster of partisan “flips” on Election Day. On that score, when comparing the 2018 landscape to the most recent major wave election (the quite lamentable 2010 election cycle), we can conclude that the mission was largely accomplished: the number of GOP-held seats that Democrats have managed to put into a competitive range (within 5 points in at least one poll) is only slightly shy of what the GOP managed back in 2010.

The second ingredient is having the resources to flip seats. And, on that front, the answer to whether the Democrats met the threshold there has clearly been a resounding “yes.”

In fact, a more appropriate answer might be “holy crap, they didn’t clear the bar, they left the freaking atmosphere.” It is rare in politics, even for those of us who have been following the electoral cycles for a quarter century, to say that we have not seen something before. But it can be said with confidence—we have not seen a fundraising windfall anywhere close to what the Democrats accomplished over the last three months. And that, indeed, may have put a number of races currently on the radar onto the map for November.

We will delve into that all-important money chase a little bit later. Before we do that, however, let’s update the forecast, where there has been some slight shifts, and one important change in methodology.

Steve Singiser

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Wednesday October 10, 2018 · 5:30 AM PDT

2018/10/10 · 05:30

In last week’s maiden voyage of the Daily Kos Elections House Forecast, we noted that the current poll averages in individual races, if they held up on Election Night, would be enough to propel Democrats into the majority. But we also cautioned that a lot of races were on a knife’s edge, and that only a very small headwind for the Democrats could leave them excruciatingly close, but short of the majority.

Before anyone began to feel the tug of despair, however, we also offered a ray of hope (emphasis mine):

“Wave elections do have their own dynamics, and those dynamics often intensify as we speed towards Election Day. We are not far removed from a major-league wave election, one that Democrats would love to forget (...) we will take a trip down (recent) memory lane, because there are legitimate parallels to be drawn between 2010 and 2018.”

In the coming weeks, we will delve into those parallels, starting with a key ingredient of any legitimate wave election: the ability of the party out of power to put races into an acceptable range of competitiveness. On that metric, the Democrats are putting nearly as many races into play as the Republicans did in 2010 en route to a massive 63-seat gain.

Before we take the deep dive into the data there, however, let’s kick off this week’s forecast by looking at the current state of play, in a week which saw a mixed bag of data for Democrats downballot. On balance, however, the Democrats appear to be in an incrementally better position than they were a week ago, a result that might defy conventional wisdom.

Steve Singiser

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Wednesday October 03, 2018 · 5:30 AM PDT

2018/10/03 · 05:30

Screen_Shot_2018-10-02_at_11.53.37_AM.png — Will this map look considerably more blue after November? Early indicators are positive for the Democrats.

On Monday, Daily Kos Elections rolled out its new 2018 elections portal. It’s a place with one-stop shopping for elections geeks, with interactive maps showing our race ratings and with polling data from our partners at Civiqs. Maybe most significantly, we have separate Senate, House, and gubernatorial pages, where you can look in more detail at each of those three battlegrounds. Click on any state on those pages and you can get a full list of polls released in those races, along with a trendline that charts the current polling average in each state.

Every week, my colleague David Jarman and I will be offering an update on the state of play in the Senate, the House, and with the various elections for Governor around the country. He got us started earlier in the week with his excellent analysis on the current forecast in the Senate, which is incredibly close and subject to meaningful changes depending on the slightest tailwind or headwind for the Democrats.

The House, on the other hand, does not get the “cliffhanger” moniker that it may well merit.

In the media, as well as in the public conversation, it has been a universal assumption for the majority of the cycle that the Democrats are the betting favorites to reclaim a majority in the House for the first time since the 2010 midterms. It is an assumption driven by audacious special election results, fundraising hauls, and reams of polling data.

So, how legitimate is the basis for the confidence in a forthcoming Democratic House? Well, it really depends on how you look at the math, but there is no doubt that the numbers are close enough to guard against any ridiculous levels of complacency on the Democratic side.

That said, the one thing we can say with absolute clarity is that, to paraphrase an old sports clichè, “We’d rather be us than them.”

Steve Singiser

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Sunday September 09, 2018 · 2:44 PM PDT

2018/09/09 · 14:44

The passage of Labor Day brings with it the symbolic “kickoff” of more than just the 2018 football season. It also kicks off the stretch run of the election campaign season, as we are now less than 10 weeks from Election Day. What’s more—within a week of this piece landing on your screen, we will be done with the primary election season (excluding Louisiana, of course, which has preserved its unique electoral system by declaring the federal Election Day in November as their “primary” election).

With that in mind, it’s time to take our first look, now that the November field has largely been set, at the states which will be the most likely to occupy your attention come Election Night.

Before we do so, though, there are a few caveats. First of all, this is not to imply that these are the only states worthy of your attention come November. This is just an exercise in letting the election enthusiast with a national perspective know, on balance, which states have the largest array of competitive races. Some of the most intriguing individual races on deck for Election Night 2018 are not being held in states that made the top 10 here.

It is also not meant to be exclusionary. Even states that, by our metric, scored a perfect zero still have an array of competitive state legislative races, or local elections, worthy of your attention if you live there. Any election matters, of course, if it is in your backyard. So even the state that, by this metric, comes in 50th place across the country should be on the radar of the residents in that state. The fact that the state’s election docket might not intrigue someone 1,500 miles away does nothing to change that.

Last, but not least, let’s lay out the criteria. The list of “places to watch” was crafted by utilizing a point system that takes into account our Daily Kos Elections race ratings for 2018. For statewide elections (U.S. Senate/governor), a tossup race was awarded 10 points, a race “leaning” to one party was awarded 6 points, and a race viewed as “likely” to be won by a party was awarded 3 points. For U.S. House races, races with those designations were awarded 4 points (tossup), 2 points (leaning), or a single point (likely). As an added piece of the criteria, and a nod to a series of races that we obviously find important here at DKE, state legislatures that were within range of flipping to the out-party were also taken into consideration, with legislative houses within 5 percent (in terms of total seats) of flipping being awarded 5 points, and those within 10 percent of flipping being awarded 2 points.

Before we delve into the top 10, let’s look at the ones that just missed the cut.

Steve Singiser

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Sunday July 08, 2018 · 12:00 PM PDT

2018/07/08 · 12:00

Now that virtually all of the votes have been recorded, let’s talk about California.

Yes, we know: it has been a month since California held its primary elections, and some counties were still tallying votes over this past week. In fact, not everyone is completely done yet. With apologies to the rest of the nation, that’s just how we roll here in California.

The count is slow, for a variety of reasons: (a) the large proportion of California’s vote comes by mail, (b) there are ample grounds for provisional votes to be cast, meaning that the number of provisionals will, post-election, number into the hundreds of thousands, and, of course (c) this is a really, really big state. At last check, the state has just a tick over 19 million registered voters.

All of this means that, for fans of a fast-paced vote count, you’re simply out of luck. Because even in modest turnout, when it comes to the Golden State, you’re talking about millions of votes. Worse still, anywhere between 25-40 percent of those votes remain uncounted even on the morning after the election. So, alas, it takes a while to tally up all those ballots.

But now, the number of ballots remaining to be counted, at the very most, is under 20,000. Meanwhile, well over 7.1 million votes have been tallied. With that in mind, let’s discuss the implications about what we learned, because there are real conclusions that can be drawn from this primary. What’s more: the value of those conclusions, in part, lies in the fact that they confirm a lot of what we have suspected as those special election results have been piling up all cycle long.

Steve Singiser

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Wednesday June 06, 2018 · 11:02 AM PDT

2018/06/06 · 11:02

California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom speaks during Day Three of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 27, 2016. / AFP / Nicholas Kamm (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images) — Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom will top the Democratic ticket this fall in California in the race for governor

Tuesday night, the state of California began to tally the votes from their “top-two” primary. Prior to Election Day, there were substantial—and justified—fears that Democrats might get “locked out” of the general election in critical congressional races. Fortunately, thanks to a lot of hard work and a lot of money, disaster was averted, and Democrats are on track to contest the seven GOP-held seats that Hillary Clinton carried in 2017.

But that didn’t stop the purveyors of political hot takes from finding a hook to declare that Democrats nevertheless had a bad night in the Golden State. Here is one representative example from well-known Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini, which was picked up by a number of journalists:

Cumulative GOP percentage in California battlegrounds:

CA-10 52%
CA-21 63%
CA-25 53%
CA-39 54%
CA-45 53%
CA-48 53%
CA-49 48%

No lockout, but these numbers can't make the @dccc happy.
Ã¢ÂÂ Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) June 6, 2018

What a catastrophe! Seven targeted GOP districts in California, and the Democrats only led the total vote in one of them!

Alas, this is not only a lazy take (“Democrats in disarray” is as big a staple for political journalism as playing “Sweet Caroline” is for sound engineers in sports venues), it’s also an inaccurate one, for a whole host of reasons.

Steve Singiser

Community

Sunday January 07, 2018 · 8:30 AM PST

2018/01/07 · 08:30

While it might be rivaled, or even surpassed, by the shocking upset win of Doug Jones in early December, Election Night 2017 was still a hell of an enjoyable ride for the Democrats. It was an evening that saw the Democrats seize one governorship with ease (New Jersey), reclaim control of a state legislature via special election (Washington), and, perhaps most surprising of all, sweep all the statewide legislative offices in Virginia, while also returning to parity in the state legislature. The final triumph was the most stunning of all, given that the GOP began Election Day 2017 with a 66-34 majority in the state House of Delegates.

Over a month removed from what was indisputably a glorious election night for the blue team, two competing narratives have developed as to the genesis of that wave. In one corner, progressives argue that the key was to spike turnout in deep blue enclaves, a variation on the classic “rally the base” theme. Meanwhile, others have pointed out that suburban voters who historically have favored the GOP proved to be persuadable, and the Virginia landslide can be owed in part to those persuadable voters.

At the risk of appearing spineless and indecisive, a longer look inside the numbers tells us that those two competing theories both have some merit. Let’s take that deep look into the results to understand how both turnout and changed minds brought home the win for the Democrats.

Steve Singiser

Community

Sunday November 05, 2017 · 2:46 PM PST

2017/11/05 · 14:46

As is often the case in non-presidential election years, a ton of attention has been paid this election cycle to the top of the ballot. In 2017, that means the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, particularly the former (which has been viewed as considerably more competitive than the election in the Garden State). But there is a real story to be told downballot in Virginia, as my colleague Carolyn Fiddler reminded us earlier in the week. The Virginia House of Delegates, despite an outsized GOP majority, could well become the story on Election Night.

Few legislative chambers in the nation have as yawning a gap between how their state behaves in statewide elections and the balance of power in the chamber than the HoD, drawn by Republicans to ensure an impenetrable GOP majority. For the first three elections under the map, that mission was most certainly accomplished—the GOP majority has been hovering in the range of 2 to 1, currently resting at 66 Republicans to only 34 Democrats.

The good news for Democrats: the current field, plus movement toward the Democrats in Virginia, have rendered it practically impossible for any other outcome than a Democratic gain in seats.

The bad news for Democrats: the road to an actual legislative majority is an arduous one. For the Democrats to seize control of the House of Delegates, they’ll need to win roughly one-third of the GOP-held seats where they were able to field a challenger. That, to say the least, is a tricky mountain to climb, especially given there are only a small handful of open seats available in this cycle (Virginia doesn’t have term limits).

An analysis of the key districts at play, and in particular an analysis of the precincts that make up these competitive districts, tells us that major gains are certainly possible, and that while seizing the majority is highly unlikely, it is not completely out of the realm of possibility.

Steve Singiser

Community

Monday September 04, 2017 · 8:56 AM PDT

2017/09/04 · 08:56

Perhaps predictably, when election junkies turn the discussion to 2018, virtually all of the discussion centers on the United States Congress. And, admittedly, that’s understandable. For one thing, the Democratic prospects (in the House, at least) have greatly improved over the course of the year. For another, any surge in Democratic membership in the Congress would be heartening to progressives eager to see some sort of a bulwark against the Trump presidency.

More quietly, however, there is a huge set of elections next year that could have long-lasting implications for the Democrats as they seek to claw their way out of the minority across the United States. And those are the roughly three dozen gubernatorial elections which will grace the ballot next November.

If you read the piece on Sunday where we explored November’s off-year elections, you know that the Democrats have a very good chance of reducing that deficit, given that New Jersey Democrat Phil Murphy is an overwhelming favorite to flip that statehouse for the blue team. However, painfully, that would only mildly dent the enormous statehouse deficit that the Democrats currently face. Indeed, a Murphy win would only get the Democrats to 16 governors out of 50 (one governor, Bill Walker of Alaska, is an Independent).

However, there are some real opportunities for the Democrats in 2018. In fact, the Democratic gubernatorial landscape in 2018 looks a lot like the Republican Senate landscape—few vulnerable seats and a boatload of targets on favorable turf.

Consider: there are eight Republican-held gubernatorial seats up next year in states which were won last year by Hillary Clinton. Some of those will feature potentially vulnerable incumbents (Bruce Rauner in Illinois), and others will feature open-seat races in amenable territory (New Mexico). What’s more—there are five gubernatorial seats up in GOP-held states where Donald Trump won by margins ranging from 0-5 points. Some of these will almost certainly be in play, given the states in question (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin).

That adds up to a total of thirteen Republican-held statehouses which will be in play for the Democrats. Conversely, there is exactly one state which Trump carried which will feature a Democratic governor on the ballot: Pennsylvania. And there is only one state carried by Hillary Clinton by 0-5 points on the docket held by the Democrats: Minnesota.

Steve Singiser

Community

Sunday September 03, 2017 · 8:56 AM PDT

2017/09/03 · 08:56

A few weeks ago, I noted that while Democrats had fallen just short on a few (high-profile) occasions, there had been a reasonably consistent trend of Democrats overperforming their “expected performance” in nearly three dozen special elections to date. I also noted, at the time, that the sample size (which currently stands at 32 state and federal special elections) was small.

That changes in a little more than two months. On Tuesday, Nov. 7, voters go to the polls in two states: Virginia and New Jersey. At stake will be 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates (the state Senate is not up for election until 2019), and a total of 120 seats in the New Jersey state legislature (80 in the state Assembly, and 40 in the state Senate). Also, both states will elect governors, with New Jersey Democrats having an opportunity to reclaim the governor’s mansion after eight years of Chris Christie.

Democrats are already dreaming of a wave year in 2018, given the available polling data, incredible recruiting for the blue team, and a hugely unpopular Republican president. But there is a nonzero chance that the party could get started early, with critical shifts in the balance of power in Virginia, and the chance to solidify a huge edge in New Jersey, combining to give Democrats critical momentum heading into the midterm elections.

So, what could that “wave” look like in real, tangible numbers? Let’s dig into the numbers and get a feel for how good (or … alas … average) things could be in a touch over nine weeks.

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Daily Kos Elections House Forecast: Anatomy of a wave (final part in the series)

Daily Kos Elections House Forecast: Anatomy of a wave (part 3 in a series)

Daily Kos Elections House Forecast: Anatomy of a wave (part 2 in a series)

Daily Kos Elections House Forecast: Anatomy of a wave (part 1 in a series)

Daily Kos Elections House Forecast: Democrats have the wind at their backs—but is it strong enough?

Ranking the states: An early look at the places to watch on Election Night 2018

What California's June primary might have told us about the midterms this November

Ignore the predictable #demsindisarray hot takes. Democrats did very well in California's primaries

Was the Virginia rout the result of a turnout spike, or voters changing their minds? (Answer: Yes)

Key precincts will tell the tale: is it an average night for Virginia House Dems, or a great night?

The potential big 2018 shift in the balance of power that few folks are talking about

What a Democratic 'wave election' could look like—the 2017 edition