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2018 House

Sabato's Crystal Ball

House 2018: Health Care Vote Gives Democrats Another Midterm Argument

Democrats are hopeful that Republicans’ vote last week to pass the American Health Care Act provides them an argument to use in next year’s election. Only 20 House Republicans voted against the bill, which is not polling well and which Democrats are angling to use as a cudgel against the GOP. The AHCA’s passage in the House serves as a news peg for us to move a number of Republican-held House districts into more competitive rating categories. That doesn’t mean the AHCA will be an anchor on GOP incumbents next year. It’s just too early to know, for reasons we’ll get into. But broader historical patterns suggest that the Democrats have a chance to win the House next year, and health care could be part of a potential winning message. This weeks’ changes align our ratings with our overall belief that the House is in play, even while noting that the true level of danger Republicans face is as yet unclear. The final story of the AHCA has yet to be written. Presumably, the Senate’s version will differ from the House’s, which means that the two sides will have to sort out policy differences. Whatever emerges may be a little

Kyle Kondik

Overtime in Georgia

Note: This piece has been updated to reflect the final results in GA-6 as of Wednesday morning, April 19. The first round jungle primary in the nationally-watched special election in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District offered something for both parties. Republicans are pleased that they forced a runoff, and Karen Handel (R), the former Georgia secretary of state who has been foiled in two recent statewide primaries, probably has the best track record of the various Republicans who competed for what amounted to the GOP nomination there. Meanwhile, former congressional aide Jon Ossoff (D) wasn’t able to get a majority, but his 48.1% of the vote blows away recent Democratic House performance in the district: Since GA-6 was redrawn following the decennial census, the three Democratic challengers to now-Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price (R), the former occupant of the seat, only won an average of 35.9% of the vote. So this was a big improvement on that, although Ossoff has raised an eye-popping amount of money (potentially eight figures now after he reported $8.3 million as of the end of March) and is clearly a real candidate, while Price’s previous opponents were not. Ossoff also outperformed polls that

Kyle Kondik

Special Circumstances

Whatever happens in the first round of voting in the special election in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District on Tuesday, it seems like a safe bet that the result will get a fair amount of national attention because of what it may tell us about the 2018 midterm. But before getting into what those lessons may be, let’s remember that this is a special election — and thus it features special circumstances. Here are a few: The format for this election is different than most other races: It is an all-party primary where there will be a runoff unless one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote. That means all of the candidates regardless of party run together in the same election. This is not how almost all House elections will be decided next year: With the exceptions of California, Louisiana, and Washington, all of which use some form of “jungle primaries” in their elections, other states will use a traditional primary and general election format next year. That includes all of the House races in Georgia — the jungle primary being used for this race is just used for special elections. And even in California and Washington, there still

Kyle Kondik

EXCERPT FROM OUR NEW BOOK, TRUMPED: POLLING IN THE 2016 ELECTION AND WHAT IT MEANS GOING FORWARD

  Dear Readers: Our new book on 2016’s remarkable election, Trumped, is now available. Trumped features some of the nation’s sharpest political reporters and analysts breaking down an election that truly broke all the rules. The following is taken from Chapter 10 of the book, authored by Ariel Edwards-Levy and Natalie Jackson of Huffington Post, and Janie Velencia, formerly of Huffington Post. The authors write about political polling in the 2016 cycle and the challenges facing the industry. In this excerpt, they argue that the issue and approval polls that we see on an almost daily basis are still good barometers of public opinion. Crystal Ball subscribers can get a special discount on Trumped: The 2016 Election That Broke All the Rules from publisher Rowman and Littlefield. Use code 4S17SBTOCB at checkout to get the paperback at 30% off the retail price at Rowman’s website. — The Editors   The debate over what factors caused pollsters to err in 2016 is likely to continue for some time, as is the argument as to what extent the miss represents either a critical failure for the industry or simply a demonstration of overcertainty by pundits and forecasters. But regardless of the magnitude

UVA Center for Politics

Rooting for failure

It’s been nearly a week since the Republican plan to dramatically alter the Affordable Care Act died without a vote in the House of Representatives. It’s 84 weeks until the next national election, the 2018 midterm. So saying anything with confidence about how, if at all, the GOP’s failure to pass its American Health Care Act affects the next election is difficult. It may be that Republicans actually dodged a bullet: While Democrats still can and will attack members who backed the bill in committees, the GOP’s inaction on health care may mean that the next election is about some other issue. That may be a blessing for the ruling party from a strictly political standpoint. (Then again, Republicans may circle back around and find some way to enact a health care plan before they face the voters again. That’s impossible for anyone to analyze until the details are unveiled — if we ever see another plan at all.) But at the very least, Republicans have some explaining to do to their base. Nearly every Republican candidate running for federal office over the last four cycles (2010-2016), Trump included, has emphasized at length the need to “repeal and replace” the

Kyle Kondik

Initial 2018 House ratings

Democrats have a path to winning a House majority next year, but that possibility is highly dependent on variables over which they have effectively no control. That’s the takeaway from our initial ratings of 2018’s House races, a list that is heavy on Republicans who start this cycle only mildly endangered. Historically, the president’s party loses ground in a midterm: That’s what happened in 36 of the 39 midterms since the Civil War. American political history is dotted with elections where the president’s party suffered big losses because of a bad economy (1930, 1938, 1958, and 2010 are all examples), unpopular wars (1950, 1966, and 2006), scandal (1974), or other factors. If a wave is developing, we may be able to track it through President Trump’s approval rating (particularly if it falls into the 30s) and/or the House generic ballot. Watch to see if the latter metric, which measures national opinions on how voters intend to vote in their local House race, starts to show a significant Democratic lead approaching double digits in polling averages. Those are the kinds of numbers it’s probably going to take for Democrats to crack the GOP’s House majority, which is protected both by the

Kyle Kondik

How Midterms Do (and Do Not) Differ from Presidential Elections

Editor’s Note: The Crystal Ball is taking off next week for the University of Virginia’s spring recess. We’ll be back on Thursday, March 16. — The Editors With politicos everywhere turning their eyes to the still-distant 2018 midterm election, we thought it would be useful to review some of the basic differences and similarities between the electorates in presidential and midterm cycles. Basically, midterm electorates are smaller, older, and less diverse than presidential ones, but the demographic voting patterns and divisions that we see in midterms are quite similar to presidential contests. What follows is a look at the similarities and differences between the two kinds of national electorates. For the most part, this analysis is based on exit poll data: We used the national exit poll data for the presidential race in presidential years and the national exit poll data for the national House vote in midterm years. Differences 1. Turnout is always lower in midterm elections The most fundamental difference between presidential and midterm cycles is that far fewer voters participate when there is no presidential contest. According to available data, the last time midterm turnout exceeded the previous presidential election was in 1838, when 70.8% of the

Geoffrey Skelley and Kyle Kondik

Can Democrats Take Back the House in 2018?

Democrats would appear to face long odds in the 2018 U.S. House elections. They need to pick up 24 seats to take back control of the House, and there are only 23 Republicans who hold districts carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. In this politically-polarized era, presidential election results strongly predict House election results, and Democrats also have to defend 12 of their own seats in districts carried by Donald Trump. But in 2006, the last midterm election with a Republican in the White House, Democrats appeared to face even longer odds. At that time, there were only 18 Republican seats in districts carried by John Kerry in 2004, and Democrats had to defend 42 of their own seats in districts carried by George W. Bush. Nevertheless, Democrats were able to win back control of the House, making a net gain of 31 seats. In addition to winning 10 of the 18 Republican seats in districts carried by Kerry in 2004, Democrats won 20 Republican seats in districts carried by Bush and won an open seat previously held by then-Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The lesson of 2006 for Democratic strategists is not to focus exclusively on districts carried by Hillary

Alan I. Abramowitz

House 2018: Crossover appeal

It’s become far less common in recent years for voters to vote for one party for president and another for their local U.S. House seat. While the number of “crossover” districts did go up from 2012 — there are 35 of them, as opposed to 26 after the 2012 election — the percentage of crossover seats, just 8% of the 435 districts, is low historically. To put that in perspective, 40 years ago during the 1976 presidential election — a race that, like this one, saw a national popular vote difference between the two candidates of just about two percentage points — 28.5% of the seats (124 of 435) voted differently for president and for House. These crossover districts are important because they can be the best targets for the opposing party. If a party can win the district at the presidential level, it’s reasonable for that party to believe it can win the seat at the congressional level, too. But many of these 35 crossover districts may be more competitive on paper than in practice given that several have strong incumbents, and it’s also possible that their Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump vote is not really an accurate gauge of their

Kyle Kondik

2018 House: The Ground Moving Under Their Feet

Election years are separate but also connected. Assuming he is confirmed by the Senate to be the next secretary of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price (R, GA-6) will be vacating his suburban Atlanta seat sometime soon. He would be replaced by the winner of a special election, which could be held as soon as this spring. All candidates from all parties will compete in a single “jungle primary,” and barring anyone winning a majority of the vote, the top two finishers will advance to a runoff election. Prior to 2016, there would have been no reason to think that both parties could compete for GA-6. Since being elected in 2004, Price has never won less than 60% in a general election, and Republican presidential candidates routinely won by lopsided margins there — John McCain carried the district by 19 points in 2008, and Mitt Romney followed that up with a 23-point victory in 2012. But Donald Trump only carried it by a point and a half — 48.3% to 46.8% — in November. Of all 241 Republican-held districts, Hillary Clinton improved on Barack Obama’s 2012 performance more in GA-6 than she did in any other except for TX-7,

Kyle Kondik

Gerrymandering the House, 1972-2016

Editor’s note: This is an updated version of a story we previously published in June 2015. 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 commonly used 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 votes that the Democrats received to the percentage of the seats 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

Theodore S. Arrington

An Inexperienced Congress and Cabinet

Dear Readers: Several times a year, Bruce Mehlman releases a fascinating PowerPoint presentation filled with interesting nuggets about American politics and government. Mehlman, a Republican lobbyist with the bipartisan firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas, is a University of Virginia Law School graduate and friend of the Crystal Ball. Because we get so much out of his presentation, which often cites Crystal Ball data, we thought we would link to it here so that readers could take a look. There are two slides from his most recent presentation we wanted to highlight: The first shows that despite very high reelection rates for members of Congress, there is still a considerable amount of turnover in the U.S. House. The second shows the relative inexperience of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet choices, which is perhaps fitting for a candidate whose lack of government experience ultimately proved beneficial to his campaign. To see Bruce’s presentation, click here. — The Editors

UVA Center for Politics

2017: AT THE DAWN OF THE AGE OF TRUMP

It’s already clear that the very strange political year of 2016 is bleeding over into the New Year. How could it be otherwise? President-elect Donald Trump, loved and hated by about equal numbers of Americans, continues to ignore or break with convention in a wide variety of areas. Just as the normal rules didn’t apply to him in the campaign, they may not apply to him in office either. Let’s review what we’ve got as we head toward Inauguration Day: Trump won the election with narrow but convincing margins in six states won by Barack Obama twice (Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, along with bigger victories in Iowa and Ohio). This kind of swing-state sweep cannot be called a fluke or an aberration, especially given Hillary Clinton’s towering financial and organizational advantages. At the same time, Trump lost the popular vote by close to 2.9 million, the largest number ever by a candidate who captured the all-important Electoral College. Losing nationally by 2.1 percentage points will hinder Trump in various ways during his term; at the least, it provides a stinging rebuke for Trump’s opponents whenever he takes unpopular actions. (While the popular vote is not how the United States

Larry J. Sabato