The latest ABC News/Washing Post poll shows that Democrats have a double-digit advantage in the generic ballot. This comes on the heels of a CNN/SRSS poll which shows a similar trend. On paper, one should think that Democrats are in a good position. As at Sunday morning in the US, the Fivethirtyeight classic model gives Democrats a four-in-five chance of retaking the House.
However, some key questions that still remain. Those numbers I pointed to are just generic numbers. It does not tell us how individual candidates are doing in the states they are standing in. I made a similar cautionary note more than seven months ago when trying to draw conclusions about Trump’s approval numbers. Bottom line: the national numbers don’t matter if such favourable Democratic numbers are coming from individual places expected to vote for Democrats anyway. So Trump can have terrible approval numbers nationally but can deliver a filibuster-proof majority for his Senate candidates given how many Senate seats, are in States that have a Republican DNA.
That same argument can be said about the House. Dave Wasserman and Nate Cohn have expressed scepticism about whether Fivethirtyeight’s generic ballot is any good news for Democrats, especially after the Kavanaugh hearings. Cohn has been processing a series of NY Times/Sienna polls in supposedly competitive districts. So far in October, he has returned numbers relatively favourable to Republicans. Wasserman for his part thinks that Republicans are holding up given that 47 out of 69 identified competitive House districts are Trump-won districts. In other words, there is limited indication that the strong showings by Democrats in the generic ballot have translated to prospects in swing races. It may be possible that the improved numbers may be due to strong swings in house districts expected to vote for Democrats (i.e. solid or not-so swing districts).
In relation to that, another significant issue that I have with using the generic ballot is that it assumes each Congressional district moves in the same direction, even at different paces. Some commentators are suggesting that that may not be the case this time. Ron Brownstein who looks at demographics and the nature of each race suggests that the 2018 campaign will feature more fissures where places that support Democrats will become more Democratic and places that heavily supported Republicans last time will likely swing more Republican. In fact, the latest New York Times-Siena poll shows that Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, a district Trump carried but held by a Democrat, has the Republican candidate is up by 15 points.
I’ve been betting on option 2 all cycle so will stay there. Trump’s presidency tends to reinforce divides & accelerate existing trends. The wide divergence between college whites moving D & non-col whites staying strongly R (except in some MW races) point toward divergent results https://t.co/1OL2YbQrky
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) 11 October 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
This is awful for Senate Dems, who need to win every Clinton state + 11 Trump states for control.
But it also probably limits upper gains for House Dems, since 47/69 competitive seats are Trump CDs. Dems still clear faves for control, but maybe not 79% as @FiveThirtyEight says.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) 13 October 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Probably relatedly, this is also the pattern in our polls. Dems have comfortably led enough of our polls to be at +18. There are then another ~20 races within 5 points. Dems wouldn’t need many. But they haven’t actually led in most of them. There’s a lot of GOP < +3/4.
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) 7 October 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
House polls are going to be noisy, given the small sample size. And that’s ok, and it applies to our own polling.
But take everything together, and, on balance, it’s been a good 10 days of state/cd polling for the GOP in a lot of important battlegrounds https://t.co/nQv5lDynOW— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) 10 October 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
I just heard an argument from Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard which suggests the strategy is for Republicans to try to even win by just margins in enough districts to retain the House. That is a plausible strategy given that Trump has at times shown he can discipline himself in the closing days of the campaign. It also plays well to what I have argued given that Trump or Republicans can be down the ditch nationally but still pull it off if they just win the ‘marginal’ districts. This is also consistent with a New York Times report which shows Republican groups cutting funding to some campaigns to focus on just enough seats to hopefully help them retain the House. After all, a win with a five-, five hundred-, or a five hundred thousand-vote majority is a win and the winning candidate gets full powers. That is where the generic ballot can’t save Democrats. And we haven’t talked about the issue of gerrymandering yet, which, according to the Brennan Centre, would force Demcorats to lead the generic House ballot by 11 points to even get a shot at winning the lower chamber. That point was clearly manifested after looking at the results of the Virginia House of Delegates race.
My Politics and More 