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2018 Senate

Sabato's Crystal Ball

New polls: Democrats in decent shape across the Frost Belt

A series of new Reuters/Ipsos/University of Virginia Center for Politics polls found Democrats ahead in a host of Senate and gubernatorial races in five mostly Midwest states that President Trump carried in 2016, in some cases by sizable margins. However, the polling did find two very close contests for Indiana Senate and Ohio governor. The polls found the following results for the Senate and gubernatorial races among likely voters in the five states surveyed (*indicates incumbent): Indiana Senate: Joe Donnelly* (D) 46%, Mike Braun (R) 43% Michigan Senate: Debbie Stabenow* (D) 55%, John James (R) 35% Michigan Governor: Gretchen Whitmer (D) 52%, Bill Schuette (R) 39% Ohio Senate: Sherrod Brown* (D) 50%, Jim Renacci (R) 39% Ohio Governor: Mike DeWine (R) 45%, Richard Cordray (D) 44% Pennsylvania Senate: Bob Casey Jr.* (D) 53%, Lou Barletta (R) 37% Pennsylvania Governor: Tom Wolf* (D) 55%, Scott Wagner (R) 38% Wisconsin Senate: Tammy Baldwin* (D) 52%, Leah Vukmir (R) 39% Wisconsin Governor: Tony Evers (D) 50%, Scott Walker* (R) 43% President Donald Trump’s approval rating among likely voters was net negative in all five states, and only in Indiana was he close to breaking even: Indiana: 48% approve-51% disapprove Michigan: 39%-59% Ohio: 45%-54%

UVA Center for Politics

Keep on Keepin’ On: 2018 Incumbent Renomination Rates

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — As a whole, incumbents won renomination in U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and gubernatorial nomination contests at a typical rate in 2018. In all, 100% of senators, 99% of representatives, and 95% of governors who sought renomination in Democratic or Republican primaries/conventions won renomination this cycle. — Just four members of Congress lost renomination. No senators lost renomination, but four House members fell in primaries or primary runoffs: Reps. Mike Capuano (D, MA-7), Joe Crowley (D, NY-14), Robert Pittenger (R, NC-9), and Mark Sanford (R, SC-1). Outside of the four congressional defeats, the only other incumbent to lose renomination in 2018 was Gov. Jeff Colyer (R-KS). — Overall, in the 1974-2018 period, incumbents won renomination at the following rates: 97% for senators, 99% for representatives, and 95% for governors. — Although few incumbents lost renomination in 2018, much turnover in the House and governorships remains possible, even likely. In all, 58 House members have retired, second only to the 1992 cycle, and including open seats via redistricting in Pennsylvania and incumbent primary losses, 64 House seats will feature no incumbent running in November. Meanwhile, 17 gubernatorial contests have no incumbent in the general election (including

Geoffrey Skelley

New polls: Tight Senate races across the Sun Belt

A series of new Reuters/Ipsos/University of Virginia Center for Politics polls found close races in the key Senate battlegrounds of Arizona, Florida, Nevada, and Texas. The polls, conducted online in English from Sept. 5 to 17 with roughly 2,000 respondents per state (narrowed down to about 1,000 likely voters per state), found the following results for the Senate and gubernatorial races among likely voters in the five states surveyed: Arizona Senate: Kyrsten Sinema (D) 47%, Martha McSally (R) 44% Arizona Governor: Doug Ducey (R) 51%, David Garcia (D) 39% California Senate: Dianne Feinstein (D) 44%, Kevin de León (D) 24% California Governor: Gavin Newsom (D) 52%, John Cox (R) 40% Florida Senate: Rick Scott (R) 46%, Bill Nelson (D) 45% Florida Governor: Andrew Gillum (D) 50%, Ron DeSantis (R) 44% Nevada Senate: Dean Heller (R) 46%, Jacky Rosen (D) 43% Nevada Governor: Adam Laxalt (R) 43%, Steve Sisolak (D) 40% Texas Senate: Beto O’Rourke (D) 47%, Ted Cruz (R) 45% Texas Governor: Greg Abbott (R) 50%, Lupe Valdez (D) 41% President Donald Trump’s approval rating among likely voters in each state is mixed at best, although perhaps unsurprisingly given how Democratic the state is, Trump’s approval is only very sharply

UVA Center for Politics

Introduction: The 2018 Midterm Election Forecasts

Editor’s Note: In an effort to provide as broad a view as possible to readers about different methods of forecasting the 2018 midterm election, we have been featuring models from respected political scientists that aim to project the net seat change in the U.S. House of Representatives. So far, we’ve published models from Crystal Ball Senior Columnist Alan Abramowitz and from the team of Joseph Bafumi, Robert Erikson, and Christopher Wlezien. Both suggest the Democrats are favored to retake the House majority. This week, we’re featuring two more models from James Campbell and the team of Charles Tien and Michael Lewis-Beck. They too forecast a Democratic House takeover, and of a bigger size than the two previously published models. However, these forecasts also address the Senate, and they suggest Republicans are favored to retain control of the upper chamber. Those two models are described in this week’s Crystal Ball. But first, Campbell has an introductory piece explaining these models and the overall midterm environment. Explanations of all of these models, as well as Campbell’s introduction, will be appearing in PS: Political Science and Politics. We’d like to thank Campbell for once again convening this collection of forecasts, which is something

James E. Campbell

The Seats-in-Trouble Forecasts of the 2018 Midterm Congressional Elections

The Seats-in-Trouble model of party seat change in national congressional elections (both on-year and midterms) is a hybrid election forecasting model. It combines the insights and comprehensive assessments of expert election analysts examining in depth the conditions of individual House and Senate contests with a rigorous statistical analysis of historical aggregate data of partisan seat change. From seats exposed to seats in trouble The model essentially builds on the seat exposure idea explored by Bruce Oppenheimer, James Stimson, and Richard Waterman and similar notions examined by others who recognized the simple facts that you can’t lose what you don’t have and you are more likely to lose a lot if you have a lot to lose. Taking it to the next level, if you have a lot of vulnerable seats, chances are greater you’ll lose a lot of seats. The Seats-in-Trouble forecasting equation built from these observations was first used in the 2010 House elections. It has since been modified, tweaked, and extended to Senate elections. The accuracy of its forecasts in its various incarnations has been quite good until 2016, when substantial expected Democratic seat gains failed to materialize. As a result, the model’s standard of what constitutes a

James E. Campbell

Congressional Forecasts for 2018: Structure-X Models

We build here on our “Structure-X model,” successfully applied in 2014. We first generate a 2018 forecast from our classic structural model. Next, we adjust this forecast on the basis of expert judgments provided in Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. With respect to the first step, the structural model, we employ the following equation: House Seat Change = Presidential Approvalt–1 + Disposable Incomet–1 + Mid-termt  (Eq. 1) OLS yields the following results, HS = -44.83 + 0.82*P + 4.91*I – 28.53*M  (Eq. 2) R2 = .59, adj. R2 = .55, RMSE = 18.06, D-W = 1.87, N = 35 Notes: HS = presidential party seat change in the House of Representatives, I = change in real disposable income, for initial six months of the election year (from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s National Income and Product Account Table 2.1: Personal Income and Its Disposition), P = June Gallup poll presidential popularity rating from Gallup’s Presidential Approval Center, M = midterm dummy (0 = presidential election, 1 = midterm election), figures in parentheses are t-scores, * = statistical significance beyond .05. To forecast the 2018 seat change in the House, we insert the independent variable values: I = 1.73 (December 2017 through June

Charles Tien and Michael S. Lewis-Beck

Senate 2018: At Least for Now, the Elephant Endures

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — In what is a somewhat unusual development, the incumbent party is not a clear underdog in any single Senate race with just two months left to go. But there are at least a couple of cases where the incumbent party is likely behind. — Republicans remain favored to hold the Senate, but the Democrats do have a path. — Texas goes from Likely Republican to Leans Republican. Table 1: Crystal Ball Senate ratings change Senator Old Rating New Rating Ted Cruz (R-TX) Likely Republican Leans Republican Map 1: Crystal Ball Senate ratings With Labor Day in the rearview mirror, the race to Election Day is on. The national picture remains favorable to Democrats, but because of the Senate playing field, the Republican majority still will be difficult for Democrats to dislodge even in an optimal environment. One oddity as we reach the final stretch of the campaign is that while there are many very competitive Senate races, we don’t consider the incumbent party to be a clear underdog in any seat they currently hold at this juncture. That’s not to say the incumbent party is leading in every seat they already hold — in

Kyle Kondik

Notes on the State of Politics

Governors: The Last Frontier’s three-cornered fight favors the Republicans On Tuesday, an important deadline came and went in Alaska’s gubernatorial race: the final day that a candidate could officially withdraw and not appear on the November ballot. Since former Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) entered the race on June 1, the final day to file as a candidate, Democrats have worried that he and Gov. Bill Walker (I-AK) might draw from some of the same base of support in the general election, easing the GOP’s path to victory. Walker, a former Republican, ran as an independent with a Democrat as his lieutenant governor nominee in 2014 (Byron Mallott, who is on the same ticket with Walker again), and was something of a de facto Democratic candidate four years ago (there was no Democrat on the ballot). Given the Democrats’ concern about fragmenting the vote, the Sept. 4 deadline to withdraw loomed large, especially as behind-the-scenes dealmakers tried to push Begich or Walker to get out. Begich announced on Tuesday that he would hold an afternoon press conference, leading to speculation that he planned to exit the race, thus preventing a likely split of the left and center in a right-leaning state.

Geoffrey Skelley and Kyle Kondik

A Labor Day Status Report

We’ve been starting Crystal Ball pieces with a few “key points” summing up the article. As we head into Labor Day weekend and the start of the sprint to Election Day, we thought we’d do something different. Instead of key points from this article, here are some key points about this election so far: Pluses for Republicans: The economy is good and we’re not in the midst of an unpopular foreign war, two sometimes-predictors of poor midterm performance for the White House party. The map benefits Republicans in both the battle for the House and the Senate: The median House seat by presidential performance (NE-2) voted for President Donald Trump by two percentage points, while Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by two, making the median House seat about four points to the right of the nation, which is a good shorthand for the generic GOP edge in the House. In the Senate, Democrats are defending 26 of the 35 seats being contested, one of the worst maps any party has had to defend in a midterm. The president’s approval rating, while poor, has not gotten worse in recent months; the House generic ballot, generally showing a Democratic lead

Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley

Center for Politics, Ipsos Public Affairs release new midterm election forecasting tools

(WASHINGTON, DC) — The University of Virginia Center for Politics and Ipsos today launched the UVA Center for Politics-Ipsos Political Atlas. The new site combines Sabato’s Crystal Ball race ratings for every House, Senate, and gubernatorial race; Ipsos’ poll-based modeling; and Ipsos’ tracking of social media trends. Ipsos and the Center for Politics unveiled the Political Atlas, www.political-atlas.com, at an event at the National Press Club on Tuesday morning. The idea behind the Political Atlas is that election projection is done best by offering readers several different sources of information, which the Atlas provides through the Crystal Ball’s qualitative race rating assessments and the Ipsos’ poll-based model and social media tracking. The three methods provide separate race ratings (Toss-up, as well as Leans, Likely, and Safe Democratic or Republican) to assess the likelihood of either side winning a given race. “The best practice in forecasting understands that no single approach leads to knowing the future. The most robust predictions use multiple, independent indicators and looks for common conclusions or divergent directions,” said Clifford Young, president of Ipsos Public Affairs. The Political Atlas will include: Daily updates of the main issues affecting citizens in all 50 states. Polling and social media

UVA Center for Politics

Senate Observations: Placing 2018 in the Context of Upper Chamber Elections Since 1913

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — From 1914 to 2016, presidential cycles featured a higher rate of straight-ticket outcomes than midterm elections, with 74% of presidential-Senate results going for the same party in presidential years. Midterm cycles showed more splits, with just 61% of presidential-Senate results won by the same party. In 21 of 25 midterm cycles that followed a presidential election in the 1913-2016 period, the share of split-ticket presidential-Senate results increased compared to the share in the previous presidential cycle. — In 2018, the Democratic caucus is defending 26 of the 36 seats (72%) that will contested this cycle, the most for any party in the post-World War II period. That figure includes the Alabama special election in 2017 as a seat for the GOP to defend, which it remarkably failed to do. Democrats are defending more seats than any non-presidential party in previous midterm elections. Of those seats, just over half (14) are in states that leaned toward the Democrats in the 2016 presidential election while 12 are in states that leaned toward the GOP in 2016, including 10 in states that Trump carried. — Conversely, 2018 Republicans are tied with the 1970 GOP for the fewest

Geoffrey Skelley

Mountain State Manchin-ations

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is once again a small favorite in our ratings, moving from Toss-up to Leans Democratic in his race against state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R). — That ratings change leaves six Toss-ups on the Crystal Ball Senate map: Democrats are defending seats held by incumbents in Florida, Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota, while Republicans are defending the seat held by Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) and an open seat in Arizona. — Democrats likely have to sweep all of those Toss-ups to win a narrow 51-49 Senate majority. That is possible but — at this point — probably unlikely, so Republicans remain favored to hold the Senate. Table 1: Crystal Ball Senate ratings change Senator Old Rating New Rating Joe Manchin (D-WV) Toss-up Leans Democratic Map 1: Crystal Ball Senate ratings Manchin again favored as we assess the Senate playing field This week, the Crystal Ball offered a substantial update of its U.S. House ratings. Additionally, we have one ratings change in the U.S. Senate, a shift that also allows us to offer a fresh outlook for the elections in the upper chamber. Our one Senate ratings change comes in West

Geoffrey Skelley

Registering By Party: Where the Democrats and Republicans Are Ahead

KEY POINT FROM THIS ARTICLE — Altogether, there are 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) with party registration; in the others, such as Virginia, voters register without reference to party. In 19 states and the District, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans. In 12 states, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats. In aggregate, 40% of all voters in party registration states are Democrats, 29% are Republicans, and 28% are independents. Nationally, the Democratic advantage in the party registration states approaches 12 million. Poring over party registration This is not the best of times for the Democratic Party. No White House; no Senate; no House of Representatives; and a clear minority of governorships and state legislatures in their possession. Yet the Democrats approach this fall’s midterm elections with an advantage in one key aspect of the political process — their strength in states where voters register by party. Altogether, there are 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) with party registration; in the others, such as Virginia, voters register without reference to party. Among the party registration states are some of the nation’s most populous: California, New York, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Arizona, and Massachusetts. The

Rhodes Cook

The uncertain political ramifications of Justice Kennedy’s exit

Editor’s Note: The Crystal Ball will be off for the Fourth of July. We’ll be back on Thursday, July 12. An already turbulent national political environment was rocked by another major development Wednesday afternoon: Justice Anthony Kennedy, the closest thing there is to a swing vote on the Supreme Court, decided to retire. President Donald Trump, who already got to appoint conservative Neil Gorsuch to the court after Senate Republicans decided not to consider then-President Barack Obama’s replacement for the deceased Antonin Scalia in early 2016, is now poised to pick a second justice, and one who likely will push the court further to the right. This comes on the heels of several key, 5-4 decisions released at the end of this year’s Supreme Court term that broke against the court’s liberal bloc. From a jurisprudential standpoint, this is a nightmare for the left. Trump seems likely to pick a Gorsuch-style conservative for the seat, and Republicans have been building a judicial farm team for years after the disappointments they suffered in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush years, when GOP high court selections sometimes did not turn out to be as conservative as many on the right would

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Never Say Die Senate Candidates: Don Blankenship Lost His Primary but Plans to Run in November Anyway

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Although he lost in West Virginia’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate, Don Blankenship (R) is actively seeking to run in the general election as the Constitution Party’s nominee. His attempt to run in November will likely involve a legal challenge to “sore loser” election rules that prevent a losing primary candidate from running in the general election. Most states have such laws today. — Blankenship’s primary vote was more concentrated in the southern and central parts of the Mountain State, particularly the southern congressional district, WV-3. Blankenship’s best district in the GOP primary also happened to be Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D) best district in his 2010 and 2012 Senate contests, and the district also was Trump’s best in his 2016 presidential victory. If the race between Manchin and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) is close and Blankenship does indeed run in the general election, the former coal baron could affect the outcome. — If Blankenship runs as the Constitution Party’s nominee or as a write-in candidate, he will join a short list of candidates who lost their primary contests but then ran in the general election. In all, 39 Senate elections have featured

Geoffrey Skelley