Whether at home in Maine, where we now live, or in hotel rooms around the country, watching the public debate, news coverage, and campaign advertising is somewhat like being in a hall of mirrors at an amusement park. Nothing is ever quite what it seems; some features are grossly exaggerated, others diminished to the point of being overlooked. The common thread is that appearances can be deceptive. Here are a few examples:
Disaffection doesn’t mean defection. After months of sky-high fuel costs following President Trump’s attack on Iran, on top of broader affordability challenges that many link to Trump’s trade wars and tariffs, GOP enthusiasm buckled; see the September plunge in consumer confidence among Republicans in the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment, as well as the polling on GOP candidates up and down the ballot and from coast to coast.
In many respects, those living on farms and small towns and cities have been disproportionately hurt over the last 18 months. These voters, who had in recent years become the bedrock for the GOP, expect Democrats to ignore or be indifferent to their problems; they didn’t expect a Republican president, specifically this president, to screw them. At best, Republicans are lethargic; at worst they are deeply disappointed.
There is little question that this is going to be a big night for Democrats, but it is impossible to know just how big. That’s largely because pollsters can’t ascertain which disaffected Republicans will hold their noses and vote for their team, which will stay home, and which may take the relatively drastic step of actually casting a ballot for the opposite party. Many of these Republicans still haven’t decided themselves, let alone feel ready to articulate it to pollsters.
The generic ballot is much closer in swing districts. Conversely, Democrats are loaded for bear; they cannot wait to go out and vote and do their best to reverse what happened in the last election. They are on fire right now.
National polls measuring voter intention on the generic congressional ballot test, which attempts to ascertain the national popular vote for the House, are showing a huge night for Democrats.
But the national popular House vote isn’t particularly relevant, especially now, when the footprint of competitive House races is smaller than ever and hardly representative of the country as a whole. I have often told the joke about the guy with one foot in a pot of boiling water and the other in a bucket of ice. On average, he was quite comfortable. National polls can be akin to averaging the temperature of both feet; it’s less than illuminating. The RealClearPolitics average of national polls measuring the generic ballot test shows a lead for Democrats of 8 points, 50 to 42 percent; Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin, which is somewhat more discriminating in the polls it includes and weights some of the worst offenders down, has Democrats ahead by 9 points, 50 to 41 percent.
Yet the competitive House races, which will determine Democrats’ fortunes, are fewer than they’ve ever been, and anything but representative of the nation as a whole. Most also aren’t even classic purple swing districts. Instead, they are in various shades of red and thus behave quite differently.
Two high-quality polls were conducted in recent weeks, interviewing only in districts that The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rated as “Toss Up,” “Lean Democrat,” or “Lean Republican.” The first, conducted by the Democratic polling firm New River Strategies and the Republican firm GS Strategy Group, taken Sept. 8-11, surveyed 1,052 likely voters in 37 competitive districts then rated as Toss Up or Lean. It put Democrats ahead by 2 points, 49 to 47 percent.
A more recent survey, taken Oct. 1-5 by the Democratic firm Impact Research and the GOP firm Fabrizio-Ward for AARP, polled 1,368 voters in 43 districts deemed competitive by the Cook Report. Likely voters preferred the Democrats by 3 points, 49 to 46 percent.
In short, excluding interviews in districts that are slam dunks for one side or the other indicates a more competitive situation, albeit still with Democrats ahead.
Dems have candidate problems of their own. Much ink has been spilled on the poor (Ken Paxton in Texas) or simply lackluster (Michael Watley in North Carolina, Mike Collins in Georgia) candidates the GOP has fielded in key Senate races. But Democrats’ choices in certain states could end up costing them the Senate as well.
Will there be a “progressive penalty”—that is, will more conventional, centrist-oriented Democratic gubernatorial nominees run ahead of more progressive, polarizing Senate candidates?
In the Michigan open Senate seat contest, how far behind the centrist Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, does the aggressively progressive former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed run?
In Maine, how far behind Democratic gubernatorial nominee Hannah Pingree does the more unabashedly liberal former state Senate President Troy Jackson, the Democratic Senate nominee, run against Sen. Susan Collins?
What about the more-liberal Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who bested a more-centrist candidate in the Democratic primary? How far does she run behind Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the gubernatorial nominee?
And while I don’t consider the Florida Senate race to actually be competitive, how far behind former Rep. David Jolly, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, does state Rep. Angie Nixon, who has ties to the Democratic Socialists of America, run?
It’s one thing if Democratic primary voters choose an uber-liberal to run in Massachusetts, or in college towns such as Ann Arbor, Austin, Berkeley, or Madison. But nominating a more ideological candidate in a purple, swing state can cost a party seats, as Republicans painfully found in 2022, when they underperformed not because of the Dobbs decision but because they nominated MAGA-style candidates in non-MAGA-oriented states and districts.
Late money is worth less than early money. One of the most frequent questions I get is about the massive influx of money coming into various political entities. One of the greatest canards in politics is that money determines elections. The reality is that money is important in politics—it is always better to have it than not—but what matters most is who is spending their money smarter.
When it started, the reproductive-rights political group EMILY’s List played on the idea that “early money is like yeast” (EMILY), in that it can help campaigns grow. The corollary is “LMIWL,” “late money is worth less.” In top-tier Senate and House races, where saturation advertising has been running since mid-summer, additional spending is of little consequence. Furthermore, when the tide is running strongly against a party, spending moves the needle less than one might imagine. Republican pollster Neil Newhouse recently said, “Money is an amplifier, not a magic wand,” adding that ad volume “can’t change a hostile climate.”
Campaign spending itself has contributed to a hostile climate, as my friend of over 40 years John Ellis wrote in his Political News Items Substack last week: “Over the course of at least two decades, powered by tens of billions of dollars of negative advertising, political campaigns have told the electorate that elected officials (or those seeking public office) are horrible, lying, thieving miscreants. After a while, people might get the idea that elected officials are horrible, lying, thieving miscreants.
“Put another way, American political campaigns, every two years (and a bit more in between), spend vast amounts of money doing everything possible to destroy the electorate’s faith in American politics.”