2018 Congressional Recruitment/Fundraising/Ratings Megathread

[Virginiá]

Conflating Trump disapproval with being pro-Democrat is a dangerous mistake.

Part of what I quoted were separate questions which showed 18-29 year olds preferred Democrats for Congress by a 2:1 margin - same as 2008, more or less. See the quotation box. The approval image was different from that.

[Virginiá]

I don't know if this is an actual trend, but I swear I've seen a few polls now (including above Q poll) showing Democrats posting better numbers among 65+ than 50-64, which in some ways would make sense as Democrats have generally performed better with a small sliver of voters that recently moved into the 65+ age bracket. If 2018 did have Democrats doing better than usual among those voters, it would go a ways when combined with their growing advantage among white college grads. Both demos are/were a big reason the GOP has such an advantage in lower turnout elections.

[Virginiá]

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Granted, millennials are 22-37 at this point, so not quite the same age group you referred to.

That's not too surprising, especially after 2016. Millennials have mostly grown up watching nothing get done, and have had to watch the old guard in the Democratic Party waffle around with no clear direction.

This is where the idea of a realignment fits in. Millennials will probably remain dissatisfied with the party until a charismatic leader takes control and shifts the political landscape while also delivering results. The party is still the party of Millennials, but someone needs to step up and fix the brand, because people like Schumer and Pelosi sure as hell aren't going to do it. The can't.

[Virginiá]

Both of these polls were done before tax reform was even finished. Stop pooping your pants over every little thing. You can't have that many fresh underwear to replace your soiled drawers.

LL is always suspiciously silent when Democrats surge ahead into double digits in the generic poll averages, but johnny-on-the-spot with the doom and glooming when the polling sugar high wears off.

[Virginiá]

Monmouth, Dec 10-12, 806 adults

D 51
R 36

Trump approval: 32/56

Double digit polling leads in the generic ballot are becoming more and more numerous. I said it before and I'll say it again - this looks very similar to the 2005-2006 time period.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2018_generic_congressional_vote-6185.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2006_generic_congressional_vote-2174.html

[Virginiá]

Doug Jones victory motivating people to run:

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Excellent news!

I just hope people are running for a diverse set of offices straight down the ballot, instead of piling into ever-growing clown car Congressional primaries. There are a slew of House races that already have a big slate of candidates, and any more could actually hurt in various parts of California and maybe Washington. At-risk incumbents like Rohrabacher would benefit from a baker's dozen of Democrats splitting the vote and enabling an RvR general election.

[Virginiá]

Realistically, what does the generic ballot need to be at for the Dems to take the House?

Democrats tend to over-poll due to the demographic change of the electorate from presidential to midterm. Older, wealthier, more educated and white people are overrepresented compared to presidential elections. In 2006, the final RCP average for the GCB polls was 11.5 margin and Democrats ended up with an 8 point margin. However, one thing to keep in mind is that there has been a big shift of white college graduates to Democrats since then, and that demographic has also grown more, so it could make the gap smaller. This is compounded for Republicans as their party has shifted more towards a base of white working class voters, who have notably worse turnout rates than college grads.

I'd say, maybe to be safe, subtract 2.5 points from their GCB average. It could be larger, but I'm not convinced yet it will be the same as 2006.

Democrats need around 7 - 8 to win the House, so the GCB polling average will probably need to settle at 10 points or so.

[Virginiá]

CNN generic ballot:

Democratic 56%
Republican 38%

For is the first time I really believe McCaskill is going to win on the fundamentals, instead of hoping and praying it's going to happen but not being sure how it adds up.

If there was any environment where Democrats could hold 26 Senate seats, including 5 or so in bigly Trump state states, this is it. I'm favoring that scenario if the House PV is 7 points or more.

I think 7/8 is the widely-agreed upon magic number for the House. What do you think about the Senate generic ballot though, or is that too many unique races with individually strong senators to accurately be gauged by the GCB? I would guess that incumbent senators (from both parties) would tend to do at least a little bit better than the GCB numbers for their party would suggest, unless a Senator is just horribly despised.

I don't think that number is very good to go by. The House PV is reasonably accurate because there are 435 races (with at least 1 in every state) as opposed to just 33 for the Senate. Looking at the margins from 2014 to 2016, they are pretty close to each other yet Republicans won way more seats in '14 than Democrats did in '16.

Maybe if you applied some fancy math to it you could derive more meaning, but from a cursory glance it doesn't seem worth investing attention into.

[Virginiá]

How many more House retirements (or pols resigning to run for something else) can we expect before the deadlines are all up in 2018? Other than some surprise resignations from naughty Congressmen, things have slowed down a good bit, no? How many usually resign/retire the year of the election?

[Virginiá]

Thanks Oryxslayer!

[Virginiá]

Here is a comprehensive list of retirements along with presidential results for the district:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12RhR9oZZpyKKceyLO3C5am84abKzu2XqLWjP2LnQDgI/edit#gid=0

It'll be updated by DKE as the seats open up. I'll also put the link in the first post of this thread.

For the first time in 25 years, Democrats are running in all of Texas 36 congressional districts.

Yea I saw this a bit ago. The numbers are pretty impressive, and reflects the environment pretty well. Although I disagree with this Jones guy on this:

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I don't really think his approvals need to decline much further to wipe out 2-3 seats in Texas. He is already hovering around 36 - 38% nationally and somewhere around -8 to -10 in Texas, and while there is a reasonable chance they could go lower, I doubt it is necessary for a couple TX Republicans to lose. In that environment, Hurd is gone. Culberson is a toss-up, especially considering his inability to get his act together / ramp up a campaign he never thought he'd have to run, and at least 1 or 2 others are probably only Leans R right now.

[Virginiá]

I question the Democrats' ability to keep enthusiasm high for another 11 months. I doubt it can remain at the levels immediately post Trump, especially if Mueller clears Trump and Congress passes infrastructure spending.

I think you are really under-appreciating the effect Trump has had on the left. Also, it's not that hard for the party that doesn't control the White House to keep its enthusiasm advantage over the "in party." Not to mention Democrats have done it before in Bush's 2nd term.

[Virginiá]

D+7 could easily be enough to take the House, don't be stupid. It's just not a guarantee like double digits would be.

Not like the poll matters anyway since Reuters is junk, there's far too many undecideds, and it's still 11 months before the election.

Kind of an indictment of the way we elect public officials when people actually worry whether D+7 is enough to claw back even a bare majority.

[Virginiá]

Royce retiring in CA-39 (thread)


* obviously already been discussed but just putting it here to be thorough

[Virginiá]

Yikes. That alone means all Clinton districts in California fall and probably a few surprises too.

Oh man, with a D+17 House PV, we'd be way past talking about Clinton districts. That margin would probably get Democrats awfully close to a veto-proof majority in the chamber. Not that I personally think that result is actually possible, though. This kind of poll does remind me of RCP's 2006/2008 listings - there were tons of polls showing mid-high teens for Democrats, but it eventually settled at a lower margin.

[Virginiá]

FWIW I did post a WaPo article (iirc) that said some GOP strategists were seeing signs of a potential Hispanic voter surge in their polling. Probably something to do with enthusiasm measurements.

[Virginiá]

Do you guys think the potential government shutdown will hurt or help the Democrats?

To the extent that it would have any effect, which is probably not much, it would be more likely to help the Democrats.  It's hard to argue against the Republicans owning it when they control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

Having said that, I think a shutdown is unlikely.

I agree more or less, but I also think it depends on exactly what causes the shutdown and which party best sells their side of the argument. However because Republicans control the entire federal government, the onus is on them to convince the public why it isn't their fault. This is not an easy feat, given that Republicans have something of a reputation for being bad at governing, particularly given their history of shutdowns and Congressional obstruction and their inability to get much of anything done in 2017.

[Virginiá]

Even as Democrats celebrate special elections in the Midwest, they're generic ballot advantage continues to to collapse. Only 1 of the last 11 generic ballot polls have Ds up +10 or more, a far cry from mid-December where polls showed them consistently in the +10-15 range. Coupled with Donald Trump's rising approval rating, confident predictions of a blue wave should not be as certain.

I'm confused - Winning by 8-9 points as opposed to a tsunami of 11 - 13 points is not a wave? This is another example of shifting goalposts. Democrats were in wave territory before December, but now that everyone got excited about double digit polls, anything less than that is suddenly a "collapse" and uncertain of a wave?

Sheesh. Come on LimoLiberal.

[Virginiá]

Oh, I think the generic congressional ballot may well have tightened.

However, "trends" are meaningless. I don't think you can extrapolate out from here. The numbers could easily go back out again or stagnate as tighten up further. Because Trump isn't going to change, I expect the risk is things get worse for him.

Fivethirtyeight is showing a much bigger move from D to undecided then an uptick in R.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-generic-ballot-polls/

To add to this, I think it's a bit unrealistic to expect the polls to never tighten for Democrats after the December surge to +13 / +14 territory. I hardly expected the trend to surge to +13 and then stay there for all of 2018. The most likely result is that it oscillates over a period of months. I don't expect things to ultimately be better for Republicans in November, but that doesn't mean the polls can't swing back and forth in between then.

Also, if I remember correctly, Atlas was predicting a wave before this surge to low-mid double digits in December, and so if the average moves back to where it was before then, shouldn't that stand? Why should there be an assumption that a positive trend will continue for them? In this kind of environment, under someone as volatile, unpopular and undisciplined as Trump, that kind of prediction should be considered unlikely until proven possible.

[Virginiá]

I don't know how much of this is my personality, how much is my (mild) anxiety disorder, and how much of it is my memory of 2016, when I was VERY worried, was convinced to calm down, and then Trump won. Or that the last time we won a midterm was when I was 10.

Speaking quite frankly here, I believed 2016 had potential to be a decent-sized blowout (by modern standards) just based on Trump alone, and if the election had been held when certain scandals/drama hit, like the AH tape or the Khan stuff, that might have happened, but when you look at all the other characteristics of a wave, they just weren't there in 2016. No enthusiasm advantage. Shabby recruitment. Generic polls that barely held at mid-single digits and only very briefly spiked to low double digits at the peak of a new Trump scandal, only to recede quickly. And most of all, with a Democrat in the White House for the past 8 years, that still meant the party would pay a penalty as they usually do. Most of the signs indicated a closer election than many of us thought, and I like many others chose to ignore that because I believed Trump was just too bad of a person for America to vote in.

Contrast to 2018, with a deeply unpopular Republican president who has caused arguably the biggest surge of activism on the left in a generation or two, a massive, unprecedented surge in Democratic candidates running, huge fundraising spikes, a big enthusiasm advantage and consistently strong generic polls that often veer into double digit territory, there is every reason to believe that 2018 will be a wave year. This is all on top of 538 showing that generic polls a year out are often predictive of the final result, and more often than not, it skews even more in favor of the party that doesn't control the White House.

Even after being more cautious due to 2016's shock result, I find it impossible not to be bullish for the Democratic Party's chances in 2018. I don't care if we backslide for a couple months here and there. I'm sure that, as Trump being who he is, Democrats will surge back eventually. Trump is simply too polarizing and too offensive to do what he needs to do to actually maintain a 45-50% approval. IMO, he's probably destined to stay at <40% for most of his presidency.

[Virginiá]

Yeah I think the economy is a huge part of why Republicans are seeing a generic ballot boon.  A lot of on the fence voters are being calmed down sheerly by the state the economy is in right now. That doesn't mean things are over for Dems though. The economy is a fickle mistress and could turn on Republicans at any moment.

There is also, as Brittain33 pointed out earlier, the caveat that a big part of the change in generic ballot is going from Democrat->undecided rather than Democrat->Republican (although they have gotten a bump as well).

[Virginiá]

I mean, the election isn't for ~10 months. Look at how much the landscape changed over the past 10 months. This is an environment that is constantly pressing down on Republicans, as opposed to the Obama era, where Democrats were constantly having their hopes snuffed out by an unpopular Democratic president. Even if the next 2-3 months return the generic polls to their March-May position, there is no reason to think it will stay there. In fact, given how scandal-prone Trump is, it's more likely they will return to a generic poll average of 10 points or more. These bonus/tax reform-related good news stories won't last forever.

I'll start really worrying if we're entering July and Trump's approval ratings are nearing 50% and showing no signs of weakening. That would truly be something else, given how offensive Trump is to so many people.

[Virginiá]

Copying from a Griff post:

Worth noting that:

Year	House PV	CNN GCB (12 months out)	PV Diff from GCB
1998	R+1.1	Tie	1.1
2002	R+4.8	R+5	0.2
2006	D+8.0	D+7	1.0
2010	R+6.8	R+6	0.8
2014	R+5.7	R+2	3.7

Historically pretty accurate; 2014 was off by the most and even that is basically margin of error territory in a normal poll.

So not completely pointless to look at the ballot this far out.

Right, in which case, we might expect a House PV of D+11 or D+12.

[Virginiá]

Nevada's filing deadline isn't for a smidgen over a month and a half; is it possible he isn't going to run for reelex?

[Virginiá]

What are your thoughts on NE-2? Brad Ashford lost by a pretty narrow margin in 2016 and if there's a wave, NE-2 could be one of the first to go I think.

I wish someone else was running tbh, but with a general outlook on that district separate from the individual candidates, it should be more competitive under Trump than it was under Obama. My guess is that Bacon goes down and Republicans do not end up winning it back until at least 2022.