Underneath the weirdness, this midterm is playing to type

Don't fall for talk of vibes and waves.

Some political aficionados like to “ride the vibe.” That’s the electoral-prognostication equivalent of licking a finger and sticking it up in the air in an attempt to gauge the political winds. I have gone to great lengths this election cycle to avoid using that four-letter word beginning with “W,” which has been greatly overused during the last three election cycles. The narrowness of the House and Senate battlefields and deeply entrenched partisanship now make real political waves all but impossible. And this from the guy who popularized the wave metaphor in 1994. (To be specific, I invoked the term “tsunami” that I borrowed from a resort restaurant in Hawaii three years earlier.)

The broad dynamics that have caused the party holding the White House to lose U.S. House seats in 18 of the 20 midterm elections since the end of World War II are very much in play again. The familiar pattern of the president’s voters displaying considerable lethargy and disappointment is reappearing on schedule, this time turbocharged by stratospheric gasoline and diesel prices that are particularly unwelcome for a party with an abundance of members who drive their cars and trucks long distances. Ironically, the economy had been the most buoyant aspect of President Trump’s first term, helping him greatly when other things went sour.

In this era of hyper-partisanship, disenchantment among a party base rarely translates into defections, but it can and usually does depress turnout among the party faithful. That is the fear of Republican strategists, and most historians would nod in agreement.

The other traditional contributing factor in midterm elections is buyer’s remorse among independents, particularly that very narrow but decisive slice of true independent voters who make up less than a tenth of all voters but the lion’s share of swing voters. They place their confidence in one party, putting that party into power, only to quickly become disappointed. Their grievances toward the party they voted out two years prior are often forgotten, if not forgiven.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s approval ratings among Democrats are in the radioactive single digits. And among all independents, Trump’s numbers are in the still-quite-toxic 30s. Only among his fellow Republicans are Trump’s numbers strong, in the 80s, down some from a year ago but not nearly as steeply as many of his critics and ill-wishers claim. Taken together, Trump’s standing likely translates into an apocalyptic situation for any GOP candidates in blue, Democrat-leaning states and districts, and an extremely harsh environment in the relatively few swing purple states and districts, but it is much less of a problem in red, GOP-tilting states and districts—the very places where Democrats must score strong gains if they are to win big in the Senate and House.

So where does the fight for Congress stand today?

If the number of hotly contested states and districts corresponded to typical midterm elections before 2000, the party of a president in this predicament could be expected to sustain losses of at least the average 26-seat net loss for all 20 midterms over the last 80 years. Thirty-five or 40 seats might have been quite plausible. But the number of competitive House districts (even before this mid-decade remapping) makes the map just a fraction of what it used to be. In other words, for a party playing offense, this is not a target-rich environment. The country is very evenly divided, and the House increasingly is as well.

The current House ratings by The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter show just 18 House seats in the Toss Up column—four held by Democrats, 14 by Republicans. Adding in the 12 seats in the Lean Democrat column (10 held by Democrats, two by Republicans) and the five seats in the Lean Republican column (three Democratic, two Republican), that means that just 35 House seats are currently competitive (17 currently in the hands of Democrats, 18 for Republicans). Even adding in the not-currently-competitive categories of Likely Democrat (11) and Likely Republican (17), the universe of competitive and potentially competitive seats is just 63 seats. In other words, fewer than 70 seats are not buried in cement, with 30 already in Democratic hands. A party cannot lose a seat it doesn’t have.

The narrowness of the battlefield of competitive and potentially competitive seats, where they are, and who holds them means that things were never remotely as promising for Democrats as those proponents of the “blue wave” dreamt. Nor is the current situation as dark as they seem to believe. Democrats were favorites to win a House majority before the last two weeks and they still are, only their margin is likely to be somewhat smaller than it otherwise would have been. Too much reliance on the vibe can lead to grave disappointment.

While the average Senate outcome in the postwar era is a net loss of 3.5 seats—Democrats need four to capture a majority—the turnover there is considerably less predictable than in the House. The president’s party has lost seats in 65 percent of postwar midterms, broken even in two, and actually gained seats in five.

With only a third of the Senate up every two years, and generally only about a half dozen races hotly contested, the results are more idiosyncratic, very sensitive to the circumstances that exist in any particular midterm and the state of individual races. With only a handful of seats truly in play, the success and failures in getting just the right nominee become life-and-death matters. Look at Georgia, where Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is seeking reelection, and North Carolina, where Republican Sen. Thom Tillis decided not to seek reelection. Had outgoing Republican Gov. Brian Kemp decided to challenge Ossoff, the latter’s reelection prospects would be at best 50-50 and very likely less. But Kemp opted not to run and Ossoff is now a strong favorite. In North Carolina, had Democrats been unsuccessful in convincing former Gov. Roy Cooper to run, their chances of capturing that seat would be relatively low.

For Democrats, taking over the Senate was always a tough challenge, and they were never 50-50 on that proposition. Those who assume that the House and Senate behave in tandem should consider that they went opposite directions in each of the last four elections, with one party picking up seats in the lower chamber while the other party picked up seats in the upper chamber.

Avoid the vibe and don’t fall for the wave.