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2018 Senate

Sabato's Crystal Ball

New Poll: Some Americans Express Troubling Racial Attitudes Even as Majority Oppose White Supremacists

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in conjunction with the University of Virginia Center for Politics finds that while there is relatively little national endorsement of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, there are troubling levels of support for certain racially-charged ideas and attitudes frequently expressed by extremist groups. The survey also found backing for keeping Confederate monuments in place, the removal of which has become a hot-button issue in communities across the country. As is often the case, these survey results can be interpreted in two quite different ways. On the one hand, despite the events in Charlottesville and elsewhere, few people surveyed expressed direct support for hate groups. But on the other hand, it will be disturbing to many that a not insubstantial proportion of those polled demonstrated neutrality and indifference or, worse, expressed support for antiquated views on race. The large-sample poll (5,360 respondents for most questions) was conducted from Aug. 21 to Sept. 5 in the aftermath of a neo-Nazi rally and counter-protest on the Grounds of the University of Virginia and in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia on Aug. 11-12. Among the questions, respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with statements asking whether white people and/or racial minorities

UVA Center for Politics

Senate Sequels: The History of Upper Chamber Rematches

About one month after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) announced a long-expected 2018 U.S. Senate bid against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who defeated Mandel 51%-45% in Ohio’s 2012 Senate contest. Should both politicians win their party nominations — at present, each appears favored to do so — the Buckeye State will likely see a rollicking rematch with millions upon millions of dollars spent on behalf of or against the populist-liberal Brown and Trumpish-conservative Mandel. In the GOP primary, Mandel will first have to get past businessman Mike Gibbons, who has hired staffers with connections to Gov. John Kasich (R-OH). Mandel and Kasich have a strained relationship for a few reasons, including Mandel’s refusal to back Kasich during the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Additionally, Melissa Ackison (R) just entered the GOP primary as well; Ackison, who owns a surveying and engineering firm with her husband, is another newcomer, and the White House recently highlighted her family’s health care struggles. Ohio doesn’t have a runoff, so it may be better for Mandel if he faces multiple opponents who could split whatever anti-Mandel vote there may be. So Mandel begins as a clear favorite for the

Geoffrey Skelley

Senate 2018: Republican edge runs up against Trump, history

Ever since Donald Trump won the presidency, 2018’s race for the Senate seemed to pit two powerful, competing forces against one another: the Republicans’ long and enticing list of Democratic targets, several of which are in some of Trump’s best states, versus the longstanding tendency of the president’s party to struggle to make gains in midterm elections. That second point, on midterm struggles, is not only amplified by the president’s poor approval ratings, but also by some history that is daunting for the president’s party: It’s uncommon for an incumbent in the presidential out party to lose reelection in a midterm. My Crystal Ball colleague Geoffrey Skelley looked at all of the Senate midterm elections in the popular election era, which dates back a century and includes 26 midterms from 1914 to 2014. He found that Senate incumbents who did not belong to the president’s party have a sterling reelection record: 91% (287 of 314) of non-presidential party incumbents won reelection in midterms. If anything, out-party incumbents losing in a midterm is becoming less common: In six of the last eight midterms, including the last three (2006, 2010, and 2014), no such incumbent lost reelection.[1] The last three midterms were

Kyle Kondik

Alabama’s Long History with Senate Special Elections

The 2017 Alabama special election for the U.S. Senate kicks off with party primaries this coming Tuesday (Aug. 15). Should one or both parties have no candidate win a majority that day, a primary runoff will take place on Sept. 26. Both sides have crowded fields, but given the dark red hue of the state, most expect the eventual Republican nominee to hold the seat for the GOP. The appointed incumbent, Sen. Luther Strange (R), appears somewhat vulnerable, at least in the Republican primary. Of the nine total Republican candidates, Strange and two others — Rep. Mo Brooks (R, AL-5) and former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore (R) — are viewed as the likeliest to win the GOP nomination. However, a Republican primary runoff looks probable. Notably, the last time a Senate primary runoff took place without an incumbent (elected or appointed) who sought reelection was in 1944, when Sen. Hattie Caraway (D-AR) finished a distant fourth in Arkansas’s Democratic primary; then-Rep. J. William Fulbright went on to win the Democratic nomination in the runoff and the seat in November. Plenty of Senate incumbents have lost renomination since then, but if there has been a runoff,

Geoffrey Skelley

Senate Ratings Change: Heller Moves to Toss-up

The failure — so far, anyway — of Senate Republicans to concoct a health care proposal that could win the necessary 50 votes from the 52-member GOP Senate caucus must have proven particularly agonizing for Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV). The endangered senator, who is the only Republican from a state that Hillary Clinton carried facing reelection in 2018, ended up voting for the so-called “skinny repeal,” which would have rolled back the Affordable Care Act’s individual and employer mandates (that’s the one that Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska killed), but Heller did not support other proposals that would have scaled back the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. Depending on the salience of health care next year, Heller could find himself in a tricky spot. Democrats will be enthused to vote against him no matter what, but he also could lose a very small but significant number of President Trump supporters because of his health care triangulation. Something similar arguably happened to former Rep. Joe Heck (R, NV-3), who lost a competitive Silver State Senate race to now-Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) last year. Both Heck and Trump lost Nevada by almost identical

Kyle Kondik

Center for Politics Reveals Trailer for New John F. Kennedy Documentary

A trailer for the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ forthcoming documentary, This Is The House That Jack Built, is now available. The documentary is the latest collaboration between the Center for Politics and Community Idea Stations, which regularly partner to produce documentary films for public television on American politics and history. This Is The House That Jack Built touches on familiar themes of JFK’s life and his ascent to the presidency, his mistakes, and his triumphs. But the film also explores new and little-known stories, some that surfaced after the Center for Politics’ Kennedy Half Century project in 2013, which included Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato’s New York Times-bestselling book, an Emmy Award-winning documentary, and an Emmy Award-nominated Massive Open Online Course. These new stories include a CIA staffer and her discovery of a file on Lee Harvey Oswald that soon thereafter went missing; the sonic analysis of the infamous dictabelt recording from the day of Kennedy’s assassination; and the Warren Commission’s pressure on 19-year-old Buell Wesley Frazier, who drove Oswald to work on Nov. 22, 1963. This program also explores why JFK is still relevant and why he so interests the public even 100 years after

UVA Center for Politics

The New Dominion: Virginia’s Ever-Changing Electoral Map

In 2008 Barack Obama carried Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, becoming the first Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to win the Old Dominion. Obama’s victory broke a run of 10 consecutive Republican victories in the commonwealth, and 13 of 14 going back to 1952. The 2008 presidential election started a new Democratic streak, which has now seen the party carry Virginia three consecutive times, with Hillary Clinton winning it by 5.3 percentage points in 2016. Obviously, this party flip shows a shift in Virginia’s partisan leaning. But if we dig deeper, the nature of this realignment becomes more complicated. Some parts of the state have drifted inexorably toward the Democrats while others have moved unceasingly in the GOP’s direction. These changes aren’t best shown simply by looking at which party carried which region, city, or county in a given election. Rather, the shifts are better illustrated by comparing voting in localities to the national conditions, i.e. the national popular vote. Table 1: Virginia’s relative partisan lean compared to national popular vote margin, 1968 to 2016 Source: Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections To start, just consider Table 1, which displays the national popular vote margin and statewide

Geoffrey Skelley

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

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

2018’s Initial Senate Ratings

At first blush, one might think that the Democrats have a decent chance of taking control of the Senate in the 2018 midterm. After all, midterms frequently break against the president’s party, which has lost an average of four seats in the 26 midterms conducted in the era of popular Senate elections (starting with the 1914 midterm). Democrats only need to win three net seats to flip their current 52-48 deficit into a 51-49 majority, a gain that would be in keeping with the average midterm performance. Additionally, midterm elections often end up becoming a negative referendum on the president, particularly if he is unpopular or the country is undergoing some sort of trauma, economic or otherwise. It’s too soon to say what the public will think of President Trump in November 2018: His early approval rating is historically weak for a new president, and there have been a record number of controversies for the first month of a modern presidency. Still, there’s no way of knowing what his standing will be and what will be on the mind of the electorate more than a year and a half from now. However, as we noted in a Crystal Ball piece

Kyle Kondik

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

2018 Senate: The Democrats Are Very Exposed

A potential silver lining for Democrats is that they head into the 2018 midterm as the party that does not hold the White House, and the “out” party typically makes gains down the ballot in midterms. But it will be difficult for Democrats to make Senate gains in 2018: Despite being in the minority, they face a near-historic level of exposure in the group of Senate seats being contested in two years, Senate Class 1. It’s hard to overstate how disappointing 2016 was for Democrats in the Senate. Yes, the party did net an extra two seats by defeating Republican incumbents in Illinois and New Hampshire despite Hillary Clinton losing her bid for the presidency, so the next Senate will be 52-48 Republican. But given that for most of the cycle it looked like Clinton would win the White House and also deliver the Senate, the Democrats clearly did not realize their potential this year. One of the big reasons why the Senate majority appeared in reach for the Democrats in 2016 was that the Republicans were, and still are, overexposed in Senate Class 3, the 34 seats that were up for election this past November. Republicans controlled 24 of

Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley