The last post I had on this blog was all about why I am voting for the Republicans in the 2018 midterms. This post is not that post. Instead I will be posting who I think will win control of the house and senate as a result of this election. It's still my opinion but I hope that my reasoning is as free from bias as it can get. This isn't a "get out the vote" post but "who will win" one.
The media seems to be pretty deep into the "blue wave" theory of the election. The general prediction is that though the Republicans will hold onto the senate or even gain a seat or two, the house will fall under a wave of new Democratic members of congress and that they will easily take control of the house.
I don't buy it. Why? Well for one it seems pretty clear that the media doesn't buy it either. Already they are hedging their bets saying that the GOP has a decent chance to hold onto the house. Given how embarrassed they were in 2016 I am guessing that this hedging is to make any outcome that isn't a total Democrat victory less embarrassing for them. That's why we have seen so many articles the last couple of days where they ask "what if the Republicans win?" and why Nate Sliver is backing down on his predictions. Indeed, even the "Dems win house, GOP wins Senate", narrative is a step down from the original blue wave prediction where the Democrats would win both.
So what do I think? I think that the GOP is going to pick up at least 5-6 seats in the senate and have a chance at a 60 seat super majority. In the house I think they are probably going to lose a couple of seats but won't lose control of the body. I'm not 100% confident of this outcome. If I were to put it into percentages I'd give it about a 50% shot of a minor GOP victory (keeps the house and gains senate seats) a 20% chance of a "red wave" (gains seats in the house and/or gets a supermajority in the senate) a 29% chance of losing the house to the democrats and a 1% chance of a blue wave (where the GOP loses in both the house and the senate).
I'm not as confident as I was during the 2016 presidential election. Why? Well we had history on our side for that one. It's very frequent that after a two term president that the other party gains control. But in the midterms history is against the GOP as the ruling party almost always loses seats during the midterms. In a normal election year it's almost unheard off that the ruling party wins
This isn't a normal election year though, to say the least. For one thing, in the senate, the Democrats are at a huge disadvantage. Few GOP held seats are even up for election while many Democratic ones are. And those seats tend to be in States that went for Trump in 2016. Of the Senate Democrats running in red states, only Joe Manchin seems safe, due in part for his vote for Kavanaugh and his general reputation as the last sane Democrat in the Senate (at least in the eyes of his red state voters).
President Trump's approval rating seems fairly high as well. Rasmussen's daily approval rating for him hovers around 50% and even the more biased polls have him above 40%, which is much better than it has been. Trump's approval rating among minorities has jumped as well, sometimes hitting as high as 40% among blacks. Those are probably outlier polls but even if 10% of blacks switch to the GOP it will be devastating to the Democrats.
Trump has also been working his ass off trying to get out the vote. He had held dozens of huge election rallies in critical states. The turnout for these rallies has been extraordinary. I've never seen turnout so high for midterm rallies with tens of thousands of people waiting in lines for hours to see their president promote local and federal election candidates. The Democrats election rallies, on the other hand, have been a joke with even major stars like former President Obama or Bernie Sanders only getting a few thousand people. This suggests that voter enthusiasm is on the side of the GOP.
I also don't think that the polls are very accurate. I was citing Rasmussen above but they are one of the few polling companies that got the 2016 election right. Rasmussen today says that the congressional ballot is basically tied, with the GOP having a slight one point lead. This seems more realistic than other polls that say the Democrats have a huge advantage on a general ballot.
Why do I think the other polls have it wrong? I don't think they ever learned their lessons from 2016, or they did and don't care. In those polls they always over sampled Democrats to a ridiculous degree and then adjusted their polling results based on what they thought the polls were telling them instead of just reporting the raw numbers. I consider this to be due to bias by the pollsters and the media who reports on the polls.
I also think that the regular Republicans aren't being honest with pollsters. I know I have seen many people on the right saying that not only do they lie about who they are going to vote for, but they encourage others to do so as well. Some of that is due to real fear of being attacked or otherwise harmed by crazies that hate the GOP, which is especially true in blue states. The rest is due to people just being fed up with the perceived bias of polling companies and trying to make them look even stupider than they already are. This "shy Tory" effect was well documented in the 2016 election and any poll that doesn't try to factor this in is probably underestimating GOP support by a goo 1 to 5%.
The news has been fairly good for the GOP lately as well. The economy is booming right now and I think voters realize that it is largely due to the GOP. I know that I personally received raises both due to the Republican tax cuts and the fact that there are so many job openings my company had to raise wages to compete. With wages going up and tons of new jobs people have very little reason to want to change course outside of culture war BS.
I also think that the Democrats drastically misunderstood how that Kavanaugh confirmation and the Central American caravan would play to the electorate. Time and time again I have heard how the Kavanaugh confirmation was a crossing of the Rubicon for the Democrats. People were utterly disgusted by the behavior of the Democrats during the confirmation hearings. The idea that the Democrats were perfectly willing to destroy a good man over completely unreliable and even made up accusations was a real eye opener for people. I have heard from multiple people that the Kavanaugh confirmation debacle has pushed them from being independent voters to straight ticket GOP.
The Caravan was handled poorly as well. People will tolerate immigrants but the won't tolerate people who so flagrantly violate the law. The Democrats looked like idiots when they claimed that the Caravan were a bunch of innocent women and children when the men in the Caravan were fighting with Mexican police. The Caravan is hugely unpopular and people are furious not only at them but those that are enabling them as well. Whatever you think of Trump's border moves at least he can say he is trying to do something about the Caravan. The Democrats though seem to be actively encouraging them to come here which plays horribly
The bad news for the GOP kind of fizzled as well. The fake bombing campaign by an apparent disturbed Trump supporter had very little impact. Everyone considered the fake bombs to be an absolute joke and among Republicans it was dismissed as either a false flag or a made up controversy. Everyone knew that nobody was in any real danger and that the bomber was a nutjob and not a representative of mainstream GOP thought.
The shooting at a Synagogue might have had an effect but it too disappeared from the news very quickly. Part of that is just general fatigue of mass shooting stories. People just don't care anymore. I also think that the fact that the Synagogue was involved in importing migrants erased quite a bit of sympathy from the victims during this time, as sad as it is to say. Most importantly, the fact that the attacker hated President Trump made it impossible to blame the GOP for it.
So how could I be wrong about this? I do think that voter fraud is a huge issue that hasn't been fully addressed. Voter ID laws have helped but many states still do not have them. And with news from Georgia of the Democrats being accused of hacking election databases, it's clear that the threat is real. And there are still millions of illegal aliens living in America under assumed identities who may be able to vote.
It also might depend on how motivated the Democrats' base is. Though the Democrats haven't really offered voters anything other than a giant middle finger to Trump, that could be enough. Though Trump's approval ratings have risen considerably, the people that hate him REALLY hate him, to the point of irrationality. Angry people do have a tendency to show up at the polls. I think that turnout is going to be good for both sides and we can't just assume that only the GOP is angry.
Still, with all that being said, I do think that the GOP should do well on Tuesday. I will stand by my 70/30 prediction of a GOP win. If they do lose I will be surprised but not totally shocked. But if I were a betting man I would be putting money down on the GOP to win on Tuesday.
Finally, I am not going to be able to cover the election as well as I would want. I do have to work tomorrow and Wednesday so I will not be able to do a late night post recapping the results Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. I do expect to have a recap post up Wednesday night where I will either bask in the glory of correct predictions or try and explain how I am not an idiot despite being wrong. I also expect to have a short "voting experience" post up after I hit the polls Tuesday morning and may even have another non-election post up Tuesday night if I have the time.
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