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2016 House

Sabato's Crystal Ball

Vying for Virginia: The 2015 General Assembly Elections

On Nov. 3, the Old Dominion holds elections for all 40 of its state Senate seats and all 100 House of Delegates seats. Control of the House of Delegates is a foregone conclusion (it will remain in the GOP’s hands), but the Virginia Senate contest is on a knife’s edge. With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, the Crystal Ball is here to provide an overview of our home state’s election and what to watch for as the returns come in. In the Senate, Republicans currently hold a 21-19 advantage. However, the lieutenant governor is Ralph Northam (D), who is in a position to break ties in Democrats’ favor. Thus, a net gain of one seat for Democrats would enable them to take back the upper chamber, though they would still need 21 votes sans Northam to pass budgetary legislation (the presiding officer can’t vote on such measures). In the House of Delegates, Republicans have a dominant 67-33 majority. Needless to say, there is absolutely no way the GOP can lose its edge in the lower chamber this cycle. The state midterm cycle suffers from particularly low turnout — a sad state of affairs given the importance

Geoffrey Skelley

House 2016: Is It Possible for Republicans to Kick Away Their Majority?

Republicans working to maintain the party’s historically large House majority appear relatively confident about the aspects of the next campaign they can control: incumbent performance, recruitment of challengers, staffing, fundraising, etc. What concerns them are the aspects of the campaign they do not control. Which brings us to today’s action on Capitol Hill, where the House GOP caucus is taking its first step toward replacing retiring Speaker John Boehner (R, OH-8), who is set to resign at the end of the month. If Republicans ultimately choose poorly in replacing Boehner, or if the more rambunctious members of the House majority do not allow that person to govern, there is a chance, however remote, that the GOP could kick away its otherwise ironclad House majority. But such a monumental disaster for Republicans would require more than just the House becoming even more unruly than it’s already been over the last several years. To be clear, a continuing GOP House majority remains by far the likeliest outcome of next year’s House election. The headline of a recent, helpful Roll Call House overview by Emily Cahn remains an accurate description of the state of play: “GOP House Majority is Sturdy Heading into 2016.”

Kyle Kondik

New Hampshire: Toss-Up Central

Think New Hampshire isn’t getting enough political attention? You’re probably alone, but a long-awaited move by Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) will likely result, remarkably, in an even greater focus on the Granite State during the 2016 cycle. Hassan announced Monday that she will challenge incumbent Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) in the state’s U.S. Senate contest next November, a decision with major consequences not only for that contest but also the state’s concurrent gubernatorial election. The result, at least for the time being, is two toss-up races. The Ayotte-Hassan Senate contest immediately becomes a Toss-up, having previously been a Leans Republican race while Hassan mulled her options. Correspondingly, the now-open gubernatorial election is also a Toss-up, moving from Leans Democratic. Tables 1 and 2: Crystal Ball 2016 Senate and gubernatorial ratings changes Hassan was far and away Democrats’ strongest possible candidate to take on Ayotte; thus, the governor’s Senate candidacy increases her party’s chances of recovering a majority in Congress’ upper chamber. After all, conservative groups had spent the last few months running ads trying to discourage Hassan from running for Senate, a sign that the GOP also viewed her as the Democratic best bet. Early polling, for what it’s worth

Geoffrey Skelley

Ratings Changes: A Senate Sleeper in Kentucky?

The prospect of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) winning the Republican presidential nomination seems as remote as ever. But that doesn’t mean Senate Republicans can just assume the seat will stay safely in their column next year. The Senate situation in the Bluegrass State highlights six Crystal Ball race ratings changes, which are shown in Table 1. Table 1: Crystal Ball race rating changes Notes: Some of these changes were previously announced on Twitter earlier this month. Kentucky Senate: While he appears to be fading in the presidential race, Rand Paul did win a victory in his home state recently. With the help of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Paul persuaded Kentucky Republicans to hold a presidential caucus next March instead of a presidential primary in May. That will allow Paul to compete for presidential delegates in his home state while also preserving his ability to run for renomination in the Senate primary. Kentucky law prohibits candidates from running for different offices in the same primary election. Paul has agreed to pay the state party $250,000 by this Friday to help cover the costs. The party told us earlier this week that it will not publicly reveal whether the payment has

Kyle Kondik

Early Thoughts on 2016’s Presidential and Down-Ballot Races

U.Va. Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato is a regular contributor to Politico Magazine, and this week he and the Crystal Ball team offer snippets and links to a two-part series that takes an early look at the 2016 presidential and down-ballot pictures. The first article, which appeared in Politico Magazine on Sept. 7, 2015, reviews eight important facets of the presidential campaign. The second column, which appeared in the magazine on Sept. 13, 2015, offers eight things to keep in mind about elections for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and governor. — The Editors The Truth About the 2016 Race The rise of Donald Trump might represent some massive sea change in American politics — but it’s far more likely he will fade long before the primary season does. Thanks to Trump, August was a blockbuster month for the political press, but most of what is happening now won’t decide who is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. Given the early beginning to this cycle’s presidential derby — Jeb Bush unofficially jumpstarted the race back in December 2014 — it feels like the primary season should be launching in a couple of weeks. But it’s not. As Nathan

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Notes on the State of Politics

How the North Dakota gubernatorial race could decide the Senate The decision by Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R-ND) to not run for another term potentially puts a 2016 gubernatorial race in play for Democrats. But winning it might involve a trade-off that most Democrats wouldn’t make: the governorship of one of the nation’s least populous states in exchange for continued Republican control of the U.S. Senate. That’s because the strongest Democratic contender for the open governorship is Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), who was elected to the Senate in 2012. If Heitkamp runs for governor and wins, a special election will be held to fill the remaining two years of her term, a recent change enacted by the Republican-controlled state legislature designed to prevent a future Gov. Heitkamp from appointing her own Democratic successor. The special election must be held no later than 95 days from the time of a vacancy, and the seat would remain vacant in advance of the special election. In North Dakota, the new governor will be inaugurated on Dec. 15, 2016. That would probably put the special election sometime in mid-March 2017. It’s not impossible to imagine the Senate starting 50-49 either way in January 2017, with

Kyle Kondik

Virginia’s Redistricting History: What’s Past Is Prologue

Earlier this month the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District to be a racial gerrymander, therefore deeming the state’s congressional map unconstitutional. The attorney for the Virginia Republican congressional delegation said an appeal of this latest ruling to the Supreme Court is likely, as did Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R, VA-6). But if the Supreme Court declines to take the case, the Virginia General Assembly will have to redraw the state’s district lines by Sept. 1. There are a number of potential outcomes, but this ruling increases the likelihood that Virginia will end up with a fresh set of congressional boundaries. As for what a replacement map might look like, Stephen Wolf takes a thorough look at some potential outcomes. The possibility of future linear machinations prompted the Crystal Ball to take a look back at the last five decades of congressional district cartography in Virginia. We thought it would be useful to readers to see what the lines looked like in the past and how many redistricting conflicts presaged the current one. 1. Post-1960 census district map: First election in 1962 for 88th Congress Note: Click on map to enlarge and see

Geoffrey Skelley

Mapping the Crystal Ball’s House ratings

Our friends over at Daily Kos Elections, a left-leaning site that produces reams of useful, nonpartisan political analysis and resources, just rolled out perhaps the best map of House districts we’ve seen. Visualizing our House ratings is challenging because of the wide disparity between district sizes. The smallest congressional district, that of retiring Rep. Charlie Rangel (D, NY-13), is just about 10 square miles, or less than half of the size of Manhattan. Rep. Steve Pearce (R, NM-2) holds the largest, non at-large district, which at about 72,000 square miles covers the southern half of New Mexico and is bigger than the state of North Dakota, one of the states with just one, at-large district. This leads to an obvious problem: Some districts are very hard to see on a traditional district map. So the best way to show them is to make them all the same size, which is what Daniel Donner did for Daily Kos Elections. We took Donner’s map and added our own House ratings. We’ll be using it from time to time this cycle to provide a much-needed illustration of the competitive seats in the House. Map 1: 2016 Crystal Ball House ratings Donner’s work reminds

Kyle Kondik

Gerrymandering the House, 1972-2014

Redistricting the U.S. House of Representatives is not a unified, national process, unlike most national legislatures. Rather, it’s the result of cumulative actions taken by individual states. Nevertheless, it is useful to look at the entire House to see how the decisions in the states combine to form a fair or an unfair playing field for the parties. The most common method for analyzing the partisan nature of the redistricting process is the seats-votes relationship. For this analysis, a simple regression is used to relate the percentage of the two-party vote that the Democrats received to the percentage of the seats that they won. The Pearson’s R2 tells us how strongly the allocation of seats is related to the votes received by each party. The slope of the regression line is called the swing ratio, and tells us how responsive the system is to changes in the vote. One can determine partisan bias by simply solving the regression equation for the situation in which the Democrats received 50% of the votes. At that level, they should also receive about 50% of the seats if the playing field is level. Determining the percentage of the two-party votes received by Democratic candidates

Theodore S. Arrington

House 2016: Gridlock ahead for a possible Clinton administration?

If Hillary Clinton wins the White House, there’s a decent chance that she will achieve a historic first, but not the one everybody talks about. Clinton could become the first Democratic president in the party’s nearly two century-long history* to never control the House of Representatives while she’s in office. That’s not a firm prediction, but it is what history strongly suggests, particularly if she is elected next year without a House majority. Democrats currently have a fairly large deficit in the House: The Republican majority is 247-188**, meaning that Democrats would need to win 30 seats next year to take control. Let’s assume that Clinton is elected but that Democrats do not win control of the House. If that happens, Clinton would have at most three more opportunities to preside over a Democratic House takeover — a midterm (2018), a second presidential election (2020), and a second midterm (2022), assuming she wins reelection. Midterm elections almost always go poorly for the president’s party. After the GOP’s 2014 midterm victories, which added 13 seats to the party’s already impressive House majority, the president’s party has now lost ground in the House in 36 of 39 midterm elections dating back to

Kyle Kondik

Explaining the Republican “Lock” on the House

The results of recent national elections in the United States have followed a clear pattern: Democrats have dominated presidential elections while Republicans have dominated congressional and especially House elections. Since 1992, Democratic candidates have won four of six presidential elections and the popular vote for president five times out of six. At the same time, Republicans have won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives in nine of 12 elections and a majority of seats in the Senate in six of 12 elections. As a result, Democrats have controlled both chambers of Congress for only six of the past 22 years. This pattern of Democratic domination of presidential elections along with Republican domination of congressional and especially House elections represents a complete reversal of the pattern that prevailed during the previous four decades. Between 1952 and 1988, Republican candidates won seven of 10 presidential elections. Meanwhile, Democrats held a firm grip on Congress during this time period. Indeed, Democrats won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives in 18 of 19 elections and a majority of seats in the Senate in 15 of 19 elections. For 30 of the 38 years in question (1953-1991), Congress was

Alan I. Abramowitz and Steven Webster

Notes on the State of Politics

West Virginia governor: Manchin’s choice makes Republicans a narrow favorite After months of hinting that he might prefer to return home to run for a third term as governor, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) decided to stay put in the Senate. That creates an open seat in the Mountain State — Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) cannot run again — and there are many potential candidates on both sides. Ultimately, West Virginia’s movement toward the GOP in recent elections suggests that the Republicans should start this race with a small edge, so we’re moving West Virginia’s gubernatorial contest from Toss-up to Leans Republican. While Democrats have suffered setbacks all over the country during President Obama’s time in office — historically, that’s a regular price a party pays for holding the White House (though it’s been particularly rough for Obama) — the party’s losses in West Virginia are amongst the worst in the country since 2009. In 2012 Obama got just 35.5% of the vote in the state — the worst performance for a Democratic presidential nominee in West Virginia since George McClellan (D) versus Abraham Lincoln (R) in 1864, which was the first election held in the new state after it

Kyle Kondik

Notes on the State of Politics

The retirement of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last week gives Republicans something they have been lacking in the early stages of this Senate cycle: a 50-50 shot at picking up a seat currently held by a Democrat. True, Reid’s poor approval numbers meant he was going to be a target of Republicans anyway. But he’s also a proven commodity who would have had the power of incumbency. In our view, the open-seat race is now a Toss-up, as opposed to the prior rating of Leans Democratic. Democrats are only defending 10 of the 34 Senate seats that are up for election in 2016, which is a consequence of their poor performance on this map during the 2010 cycle, the last time this group of Senate seats (Class III) was contested. But of those 10 seats, three are open: In addition to Reid, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) also have already announced their retirements. Reid’s retirement is almost certainly the most costly — we still consider both the California and Maryland seats to be Safe Democratic, a rating that so far has been vindicated by the seeming lack of interest from big-name Republicans in running for

Kyle Kondik

Are Voters Drifting Away?

For the first decade after Sept. 11, national elections showed a steady rise in voter turnout. The number of ballots cast in presidential elections jumped from 105 million in 2000 to a record 131 million in 2008, an increase of 25% in just eight years. Similarly, the midterm congressional turnout swelled from 66 million in 1998 to an all-time high of 86.5 million in 2010, a 31% increase over a dozen years. The number of ballots cast from election to election should be increasing at least a bit as the size of the voting-eligible population constantly grows. But in the last two national elections, 2012 and 2014, the upward turnout trend has been broken. The total votes cast in the 2012 presidential election were down by more than 2 million from four years earlier, while the midterm vote last fall for the House of Representatives (the only office contested in all 50 states in a midterm election) dropped by more than 8.5 million votes from 2010. It marked the first time since 1996-98 that the turnout declined in back-to-back national elections. What has happened? Surveys point to an increasingly busy and mobile society, where voting is not a high priority

Rhodes Cook

Maneuvers in 2016 Senate Races Necessitate One Ratings Change…in the House

Early this week, developments in Florida and Indiana caused a stir. First, news broke early Monday morning that Rep. Patrick Murphy (D, FL-18) will run for the Sunshine State’s Senate seat currently held by Sen. Marco Rubio (R), who is exploring a presidential run. Then, on Tuesday, Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) announced that he would not seek reelection in 2016, creating an open seat in Indiana. While neither headline caused the Crystal Ball to make a Senate ratings change, Murphy’s decision did necessitate a reappraisal of his House district. The Sunshine State’s simmering Democrats In Florida, Rubio has repeatedly said that he will not run for both the presidency and the Senate in 2016, and Murphy’s entry into the Senate race may reflect the conventional wisdom that Rubio appears more likely to launch a presidential run than to seek another term in the Senate. Backed by many establishment Democrats, Murphy is the first Democrat to declare, but he may not be the last. Moreover, it appears Democrats are not entirely unified behind him. In a radio interview on Sunday just before Murphy’s announcement, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz highlighted a number of Democratic mayors from around the state

Geoffrey Skelley