This is first in a series of 2018 midterm takeaways I have.
If I had to pick one set of winners from the 2018 midterms, I would have to give it to the professional prognosticators such as FiveThirtyEight, Cook Political Report, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball. A close second would be the punditry class who have suggested the events of the past year were pointing to what actually happened last night.
So what was the broad picture being painted? Quite simply, that Democrats would take the House but Republicans would hold the Senate. Moreover, the generic House ballot average has stayed within a seven- to nine-point range with the Real Clear Politics average pegging it at 7.3 coming into election day. Based on the actual votes coming in, once they are all counted, the prognosticators are now pegging the final generic ballot to be within that same range. It’s currently at 4.1 points but there are still postal votes to count from vote-rich states like California, New York, and Washington state.
In other words, the macro (i.e. national) picture was more or less spot on.
But the micro picture (i.e. state- and district-level polls) is a little bit tricky. For instance, the governor’s races, most notably in Florida have pointed to more Democratic gains. Andrew Gillum was leading, albeit slightly in most pre-election polls. They were also expecting him to provide coattails to incumbent Senator Bill Nelson, who was struggling earlier on. Now though, Republican Ron de Santis is expected to take up the gubernatorial mantle. Not only that, it seems like Nelson’s vote margin his senate race is slightly larger than Gillum’s in his gubernatorial race. Fred Hubble of Iowa was also a disappointment for Democrats since more polls were suggesting he would be in a good position to win. But it wasn’t meant to be.
In the Senate, Claire McCaskill and Joe Donnelly lost their respective races (polls suggested they were strong possibilities) but by a wider margin than suggested. Even some Senate Democrats had a few things to be heartened about from the actual results considering the polling. Beto O’Rourke may have lost his Texas Senate race, but it was a by a narrower margin than polls suggested.
The California House battlegrounds seemed mixed up. If you will read the polls, CA-10, CA-39, and CA-45 were trending Democratic whilst CA-25 and CA-48 were slightly Republican. However, the actual results initially suggested the reverse: CA-25 was called for Democrat Katie Hill, while in CA-48 Harry Rouda maintains a slight lead against Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher. Now we will see what happens as the remaining ballots come in and it may take a week or two to get a clearer picture though even if the postal ballots lean Democratic.
But it was not all bad news for state-level polling in battleground races. As disappointing as Stacey Abrams’ race to become the first African American governor of Georgia is, polls-wise, the results as they stand are expected. Plus the Abrams camp is still finding ballots that were not counted. So for the immediate time being, a run-off is still in play. We cannot also consider Phil Bredesen’s loss as bad news for prognosticators given that the final polls were pointing to a late but clear loss for Bredesen. In fact, Kyle Kondik of Crystal Ball was taken a loss as to why his race was rated by pundits as a ‘tossup’.
So that’s the first takeaway.
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