| Dear Readers: This is the latest edition of Notes on the State of Politics, which features shorter updates on campaigns and elections. Today we’re offering a few takeaways from last night’s presidential debate, a tally of incumbent success in U.S. House primaries this year, and how New Hampshire set up a woman-vs.-woman gubernatorial election, a historical rarity that has only recently become more common.
— The Editors |
About last night
It seems fairly obvious that Kamala Harris “won” last night’s presidential debate with Donald Trump. Certainly that seemed to be the post-debate consensus, even from several right-leaning commentators. A CNN flash poll of debate watchers found that 63% thought Harris did a better job in the debate, and 37% thought Trump did.
This is a decently-sized disparity for a poll like this, although the difference between the two candidates was larger in the June debate that eventually forced Joe Biden from the race (67% thought Trump did better while only 33% thought Biden did) and the first debates between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in 2012 (67%-25% Romney) Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016 (62%-27% Clinton), and Biden and Trump in 2020 (60%-28% Biden). CNN’s Harry Enten also noted that the viewership for this Harris-Trump debate, as observed in the poll, was Republican-leaning, which may have had an impact on the poll findings. It’s also worth remembering that judging someone to have won a debate is different than voting for that person: A couple of the aforementioned big winners of previous first clashes between candidates (Romney in 2012 and Clinton in 2016) didn’t end up winning the actual election.
Democrats will come out of last night feeling better about what happened than Republicans will. That could have at least some short-term implications for the horse race, which is absurdly close in the polls (we’ll have more to say about the polls in tomorrow’s Crystal Ball). We would advise against jumping to strong conclusions about a changed race based on immediate changes in the numbers, if such changes materialize. Some longer-term growth for Harris is possible, though—there’s been some recent discussion of polling floors and ceilings, and it does seem reasonable to suggest that Harris may have a higher ceiling than Trump, if she is able to reach it (Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO and a shrewd elections commentator on the left, recently pointed out some of this growth potential for Harris).
Meanwhile, Trump’s support has a way of sometimes deflating in the short term and then regenerating over the longer term. The best example was in October 2016 following the release of the infamous Access Hollywood recording, but we have seen it over and over again.
Memories are short. Even though this is already the second general election debate of this year’s campaign season, it also was held earlier in the calendar year than any other televised presidential debate in American history from 1960-2020 (although there were no such debates in 1964, 1968, and 1972). There’s plenty of time for whatever impact the debate has—if there is an impact—to fade.
One of the key questions now is whether there actually will be a second Harris-Trump debate, which the Harris team immediately called for following the debate. She clearly has good reasons to want a second debate, while we could see why Trump would not. Trump was noncommittal about a second debate immediately following this one. Part of Harris’s debate plan was to irritate Trump, which clearly worked. She and her allies now will likely employ the same tactics to goad Trump into a second debate in October, at a time when many will be voting early or filling out their absentee ballots and when Election Day itself is closer.
2024: A great cycle for House incumbents in primaries
With the debate looming large last night, another campaign 2024 milestone passed: the primary season effectively ended. With a trio of smaller states—Delaware, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island—voting, the only state that has yet to hold its primary election is Louisiana. Louisiana, for the purposes of primaries, has long been an exception: for the past two decades, it has usually held jungle primaries concurrently with the November election, although the state is set to move to a more “regular” primary format next cycle.
Of the 5 House races on the ballot yesterday, 3 featured incumbents running for renomination—and not surprisingly, all easily won renomination: neither of Rhode Island’s two Democratic members had any opposition while three-term Rep. Chris Pappas (D, NH-1) took 95% in his primary.
Overall, these results fit quite nicely into a broader theme of 2024: compared to some recent cycles, it’s just been a great year to be a House incumbent seeking renomination. Table 1 considers incumbent renomination rates in postwar election years.
Table 1: House incumbent renomination rates, 1946-2024
Sources: Vital Statistics on Congress for 1946-2020, Crystal Ball research for 2022 and 2024
Despite coming immediately after two cycles that saw relatively high turnover—although the fact that we’re considering 98% and 96% to be “low” rates is possibly notable—2024 has been more on par with 2016 and 2018. In fact, 2022 represented a rare year where more members were defeated in primaries (15) than in the general election (9). While part of this was because of redistricting—one trend that is evident in Table 1 is that years ending in “-2” naturally tend to have higher loss rates—several losses that year were due to Donald Trump trying to settle scores with some GOP members. But this year, only 4 members were denied renomination (all 5 of Louisiana’s members running in November are well-positioned, so we are assuming they each prevail).
The first primary loss of 2024 came in Alabama, and was entirely due to a mid-decade redistricting. As the state was ordered to add an additional Black-majority seat, GOP Reps. Barry Moore and Jerry Carl were drawn into the same district. In the March contest for the GOP nod in the new AL-1, Moore’s base in the Wiregrass region barely bested Carl’s in metro Mobile. Three months later, our home district, VA-5, was the scene of the year’s other GOP primary loss. Although Rep. Bob Good (R, VA-5) ended up losing by only a few hundred votes, he was on the wrong side of a Trump endorsement and also had to contend with attacks from center-right Republicans who were upset over his role in now-former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster. After a recount, Good conceded to state Sen. John McGuire (R).
On the Democratic side, both primary losses involved members of the left-wing “Squad.” Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D, NY-16) and Cori Bush (D, MO-1) were each initially elected in 2020. But both, to varying degrees, suffered from self-inflicted gaffes and lost this cycle to Democrats who were perceived to be closer to the center.
If primary losses this year were low, there were also several “close calls.” According to a spreadsheet compiled by Drew Savicki, 38 members were renominated with less than 70% of the vote. It would not have been hard to see some additional Republicans who barely got by this year losing. For instance, Reps. Mike Bost (R, IL-12) and Celeste Maloy (R, UT-2) both ran in competitive two-way races and easily could have lost had Trump backed their opponents instead of them.
New Hampshire, and possibly Virginia, set to see woman-vs-woman gov election
In the New Hampshire Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who got a boost from popular outgoing Gov. Chris Sununu (R), handily defeated former state Senate president Chuck Morse. Morse carried his state senate district, based around Salem, but lost everywhere else. Meanwhile, the Democratic race was more competitive but former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig defeated state Executive Council member Cinde Warmington 48%-42%. While Warmington carried the townships in the north and west that make up her Executive Council district, Craig swept much of the more populous southern part of the state. As of now, our Toss-up rating remains operative for the race.
Though it was not unexpected, it is still notable that both major-party nominees in the Granite State’s contest this year will be women. While the state has already had 3 women governors—its most recent pair currently make up its delegation in the Senate—before this year, it had not hosted a gubernatorial race that featured two women nominees.
According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, New Hampshire’s 2024 contest will only be the 10th such case. Table 2 gives the 9 previous instances:
Table 2: Woman-vs-woman gubernatorial elections before 2024
Last cycle, 2022, represented something of a breakout year on Table 2, as it accounted for a majority of the historical instances.
There are 18 states (according again to the CAWP) that have never had a woman serve as governor. Virginia is one of those states.
Though it is still a bit off on the horizon, our home state’s 2025 gubernatorial election has already been developing for some time—and it could also eventually end up on Table 2. Shortly after the 2023 legislative elections, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D, VA-7) announced her plans to run for governor. At this point, it would be a massive surprise if she does not win the Democratic nomination. More recently, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R) also got into the race to replace term-limited Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). Unlike Spanberger, Earle-Sears, while a formidable contender, may not become a prohibitive favorite for her party’s nomination, as state Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) is another prominent potential candidate.