Another Red State Is Becoming A Battleground

 Fresh on the heels of news that two red states, Georgia and Iowa, are dead heats in the presidential election comes another indication that Joe Biden is taking the fight to states that are typically considered safe for Republicans. This time the alarm bells are ringing in Texas, a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976.

The extent of Republican concerns for the Lone Star State is shown by a Politico report that Texas is among several battleground states that received million dollar cash infusions from the Republican National Committee. The $1.3 million payment is the largest-ever grant from the RNC to the Texas State GOP.

Underscoring the problem is a new poll from the Tyson Group that shows President Trump trailing Joe Biden by a 44-48 margin with five percent undecided. The poll also found that Trump’s approval in the state was underwater by four points at 45 percent.

Senator John Cornyn is also struggling in his re-election bid. At 35 percent approval, Cornyn holds a two-point lead over MJ Hegar, his Democratic challenger, with 11 percent undecided.

As with the Georgia and Iowa polls, the new Texas poll is not an outlier. FiveThirtyEight‘s list of state polls shows a race that has tightened dramatically since the beginning of August when Trump had a seven-point advantage in a YouGov survey. The polling average now shows the president with a lead of less than one point.

Texas is generally considered to be one of the reddest of the red states, but recent elections there have told a different story. Notably, Ted Cruz won a very narrow victory against Beto O’Rourke in 2018 by less than three points. That year Republicans lost two congressional seats in Texas as well as 12 seats in the Texas House and two in the state Senate.

But those statistics don’t tell the whole story. That same year, Gov. Gregg Abbott was re-elected in a 13-point landslide. The real story in Texas goes deeper than just assuming that Democrats are making across-the-board gains.

As any Texan will tell you, Texas is unique. The state makes up about seven percent of the land area of the United States and about 8.6 percent of the US population. Texas contains tiny frontier towns and huge urban metropolises as well as a long international border with Mexico.

Even though the perception of Texas as a conservative bastion, Texas’s major cities are deep blue as is much of the border area (which undercuts the Republican theories about illegal immigrant crime waves). In fact, political patterns in Texas resemble those in the nation at large. Sparsely populated rural areas tend red while the cities and the border go blue. In the age of Trump, suburbs are increasingly trending Democrat as well, which helps to account for the loss of Republican seats in 2018.

One area where Texas is different is in its racial demographics. Hispanics make up 40 percent of the population of Texas. In 2018, about 70 percent of Texas Hispanic voters supported O’Rourke in the senatorial election. This is a significant increase from the 63 percent that voted for Obama in 2008 or the 61 percent that voted Clinton in 2016. An obvious conclusion is that Trump’s racial rhetoric has pushed more Hispanics toward the Democrats.

On the other side of the scale are the Texas transplants, many of whom immigrated to the state from blue states such as California. A CNN exit poll from 2018 found that Texas natives preferred Beto O’Rourke while newcomers supported Ted Cruz. This new blood likely saved Cruz’s seat.

In 2016, Donald Trump won the state by nine points, which seems respectable until you look at Texas’s electoral history. Mitt Romney’s margin of victory in 2012 was 16 points and John McCain won the state by 12 points. Native son George W. Bush took Texas by an astounding 23 points in 2004.

The lesson here may be that good Republican candidates do well in Texas while weak candidates have a hard time. And by most measures, Donald Trump is a historically weak incumbent who is struggling, not only in Texas but in a growing number of red states.

Even though Trump will likely eke out a victory in the Lone Star State, a close race has other bad implications for the GOP. Money being spent by Republicans to shore up Texas cannot be spent in other battleground states, and, as I pointed out this morning, Biden already has a cash advantage over the Trump campaign. A close race also means that Republicans may lose additional congressional seats this year even if Trump carries the state.

“If Trump barely wins Texas, we lose Texas-22, Texas-24 and possibly Texas-21,” a Texas Republican consultant told Politico. “Democrats probably take the state House in that scenario, too.”

Such a scenario would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

The worst-case scenario would be that the hemorrhaging continues and that President Trump loses Texas on November 3. Without the 38 Lone Star electoral votes, Trump would lose even if no other states flipped from the 2016 results. Realistically, however, if Texas is lost, most of the other battlegrounds will be turning blue as well.

Republicans have little choice but to pour resources into Texas to defend a must-win state. That necessity will thin their assets in other battleground states and make it even harder for Donald Trump to overcome Joe Biden’s ubiquitous advantage in the closing days of the campaign.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Texas Is Officially A Battleground State

Gen. George Patton famously told his soldiers in World War II, “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” A corollary for presidential elections might be “The object of elections is not to fight on home turf but to carry the fight the fight to the other guy’s base.” In the election of 2020, Joe Biden seems to be having all the success at turning Trump states into battlegrounds. The latest polling shows that even Texas is in danger of turning blue.

Both new polls were released Sunday and both should send shivers up the spines of Republicans. The good news for Republicans is that a CBS/YouGov poll shows the president with a bare, one-point lead in the Lone Star State. The bad news is that a Dallas Morning News poll shows Biden with a five-point lead, which is outside the margin of error.

Bad polling for the president always brings out the people who rhetorically ask, “What about the polling in 2016?” so I’ll acknowledge that polls are imperfect snapshots of a point in time. They are not predictive, but they do show trends, especially if you follow the polling average over time. Incidentally, the Real Clear Politics polling average for Texas shows that Biden and Trump are tied. That’s bad news for Republicans any way you slice it.

Even if Trump doesn’t end up losing Texas to Biden, the close nature of the race there means that the Trump campaign will have to divert resources there to stem the bleeding, just as they recently had to do in Georgia. And resources are becoming relatively scarce with the Biden campaign raking in more contributions than Team Trump.

The details of both polls are public which allows us to tinker under the hood to find out what the problem(s) is (are) for Team Trump. I’m going to concentrate on the Dallas Morning News poll, which has a larger sample size and is made up of likely voters instead of the registered voters sampled by CBS. These factors imply that it is a better sample.

The first sign of a problem is that Trump’s approval is underwater. Texans disapprove of the president’s job performance by a 50-44 margin. This is despite the fact that the state’s governor and lieutenant governor have positive net approvals. Gov. Abbott’s numbers are 49 percent favorable to 40 percent unfavorable. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is less popular but still positive with 40 percent favorable and 38 unfavorable.

Trump also fares worse than Sen. John Cornyn, who is up for re-election. Cornyn, the incumbent Republican, outpolls his probable Democratic challenger, M.J. Hegar, 42-29 percent.

Clearly, the problem is with Donald Trump rather than the Republican Party as a whole. But what is the specific problem?

We have a YUGE clue in the fact that Texas voters disapprove of Mr. Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus pandemic by 51-41 percent. Another shocker is that 43 percent of respondents had a favorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement. This is a higher favorability than for either the Tea Party or the NRA, both of which scored 35 percent favorable. In Texas.

Further, 37 percent of the likely voters say that the federal government’s response to Coronavirus and the protests has influenced their vote for president. It’s a fair assumption that most of these voters moved away from Trump.

Lest you think that the poll was confined to progressive neighborhoods of Austin, only 15 percent favored socialism while 51 percent disapproved.

Demographic data shows that the poll’s sample looks like Texas. Racially, it was 61 percent white, 20 percent Hispanic, and 14 percent black. Ideologically the group was 51 percent conservative, 26 percent moderate, and 31 percent liberal. Forty-two percent were Republican, 39 percent Democrat, and 19 percent were neither. Most of these categories are very close to 2016 exit polling. The exception is an increase in Democrats which could easily be explained by moderates aligning with the Democratic Party over the past four years.

The CBS poll adds some additional data to our troubleshooting. By almost a two-to-one margin (63-37 percent), voters dislike how Trump handles himself personally while Biden breaks almost even on the question (48-52 percent).

Seventy-three percent said that things in the country were going badly versus 27 percent who thought they were going well. Among those who were unhappy with the direction of the country, 49 percent said that the most important way to address the problems were to have “competent leadership that manages crises.”

Again, the pandemic raises the largest red flags. Seventy-seven percent consider it a crisis or serious problem and 61 percent say that handling of the outbreak is going badly for Texas. Another 61 percent say that they state moved too quickly in reopening and most (63 percent) say it was because of pressure from the Trump Administration.

Slightly more think that Donald Trump’s economic policies are helping than hurting the country (47-42 percent). Voters were evenly split on Trump’s handling of the protests with rough thirds saying that they were more likely to vote for him (30 percent), less likely (33 percent), and no difference (37 percent). Slightly more voters turned against Biden over the protests than turned towards him (32-27 percent).

There are many warning signs for the Trump campaign but none is flashing more vibrantly than the possibility that Texas could go blue. The factor most pushing Texas voters towards Joe Biden is Donald Trump’s poor handling of the Coronavirus pandemic.

If the Trump Administration wants to have any hope of salvaging the election, they need to reverse course and acknowledge the severity of the pandemic. Pretending that the virus isn’t serious and pushing the nation to reopen is not making the concerns of most voters go away. The only way to resolve the crisis favorably is to rise to the occasion, tell people the truth (which they already know), and lead them in the mitigation strategies that will bring the virus under control.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Republican Governors Gamble On Reopening Early

The pandemic has become somewhat of a partisan issue. Many Republican states are reopening early while Democratic states are playing it cautious. The resulting differences in both the impact of the Coronavirus and the local economies are likely to play into this year’s elections.

Several weeks ago, the White House put forth a proposed plan for reopening the country. Triggers for the plan included a 14-day downward trajectory of cases reporting influenza and COVID-like symptoms, a 14-day downward trajectory of confirmed COVID cases or positive tests, the ability of hospitals to treat all patients with crisis care, and having a robust testing program in place. I’m not sure that any state meets these benchmarks, particularly the call for robust testing.

There are fundamental, nonpolitical differences between the majority of red and blue states. Blue states, which are congregated along the coasts, have higher population densities and more urban. This may be why, as Axios points out, blue states have so far had higher rates of both infection and death from COVID-19.

That doesn’t mean that red states are out of the woods yet, however. In the last half of April red states saw higher percentage increases. Statistically this makes sense because an increase of the same number of cases will yield a higher percentage increase where the total number of cases was lower. For example, the addition of 10 cases would be a 10 percent increase in a state that had 100 cases previously, but it would be a one percent increase where there were 1,000 old cases.

Red states, which tend to be more rural and sparsely populated, are more difficult territory for Coronavirus to spread through. That doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. When rural people congregate, the virus can spread rapidly if it is present. Here in Georgia, some of the worst outbreaks outside of Atlanta were spread through religious services.

Where COVID-19 takes hold in red states, it can be deadly. Residents of nonmetro areas tend to be both older and have more underlying health problems than city dwellers. Often age and health problems go hand-in-hand. Both categories are high-risk for COVID-19. Further, demographic data from many southern states show that blacks are far more at-risk for negative outcomes from COVID-19 than whites.

When it comes to reopening, new cases are a more useful metric than deaths. Because COVID-19 takes about three weeks to kill on average, deaths are more of a form of historical data, hinting at the number of infections several weeks ago. New confirmed cases are more useful in determining how fast the virus is currently spreading.

Despite the bad press regarding Georgia’s reopening, Gov. Brian Kemp has handled the situation relatively well. Although the state did not meet the recommended 14-days of decreasing numbers when it reopened, Georgia’s seven-day moving average of Coronavirus cases has now been sharply trending down since April 22. On May 4, Georgia reported only 44 new cases. This is a positive sign that the state has seen the worst of the first wave of cases.

The downside is that many Georgians seem to be no longer following social distancing guidelines. Gov. Kemp lifted the general shelter-in-place order but encouraged Georgians to stay home when possible, but social distancing guidelines and shelter-in-place for “medically fragile” and elderly Georgia residents are still the order of the day. However, many residents seem to think that social distancing and mask recommendations are yesterday’s news. On my recent trips to town, I’ve noted that people congregating more closely and fewer are wearing masks.

In Florida, another hot-button state, cases peaked in late March but have trended down slowly. Per the Florida Department of Health, the Sunshine State is still recording 4,512 new cases per week, more than 600 per day. Yet, Florida began its phase one of reopening on Monday, as it recorded 819 new cases in one day.

The difference between the two states likely reflects a different strategy on reopening. There are at least two schools of thought on when to reopen. One is to move the IHME trend line down to the point where hospitals can cope with the surge of cases. The second is to move the trend line down even further to the point where transmission of the virus is drastically reduced and a secondary flareup is unlikely, at least in the short term. In Florida’s case, the state has achieved the first goal per the current IHME modeling for the state. It is possible that Georgia has achieved the second.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas is also taking an aggressive approach. Texas State Health Services reports a stable level of new cases, which increased slightly in late April and early May. Unsurprisingly, the highest levels of Texas cases are in Houston’s Harris County and Dallas County. KHOU reported that there were hundreds of complaints in the days following reopening that Houston businesses were not following the social distancing guidelines established by the governor’s office.

At least two other red states have taken a more conservative approach. In Mississippi, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves delayed the state’s reopening last week after a spike in new cases. The state’s Department of Health website shows a downward trend but notes that recent data may not be complete. Yesterday, Gov. Reeves amended his emergency order to allow some restaurants and businesses to reopen on May 7 if they follow strict social distancing and sanitary guidelines.

In Ohio, the Department of Health reports a 21-day average which has been declining since May 1. At 560 on May 4, the state is far off of its April 19 peak of 1,380 new cases. As a result, Gov. Mike Dewine, a Republican, plans to open about 90 percent of the state by next week.

Governors of both parties are walking a tightrope between rekindling the pandemic and mitigating economic damage. The situation is made all the more difficult by a vocal minority of citizens who are demanding that states be reopened immediately. Recent polling shows that a large majority of Americans, including most Republicans, support social distancing, however, and are more concerned about reopening too quickly than too late.

The rush to reopen states paired with a growing abandonment of social distancing measures at the grassroots level has led to an uptick in projected Coronavirus deaths. In early April, forecasted deaths were revised down to 60,000 following the implementation of the mitigation strategy. The US hit the 60,000 mark last week, however, and, as mitigation strategies are jettisoned, death estimates have more than doubled to 134,000.

To put that number in perspective, it would be more than the number of American soldiers killed in World War I, a number which incidentally included a large number of casualties from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. This year the US has had to relearn many lessons of past pandemics such as the Spanish flu. One of those lessons is that reopening too early leads to more loss of life.

“One clear lesson of the 1918 pandemic is to be wary of that kind of thinking,” said James Leloudis, a history professor at the University of North Carolina. “Letting down the guard, in that case, turned out to be disastrous. It’s the same situation we are in now.”

In the midst of the emergency, it is difficult to see what the correct moves are because we don’t have all the information. We don’t know how many people are infected and not tested. We don’t know if there will be additional waves of infections. We don’t know if or when effective treatments and vaccines will be discovered. We don’t even know how many asymptomatic carriers are spreading the disease. What we do know is that reopening earlier will cost an unknown number of lives.

Republican governors are gambling that the disease has largely run its course and that the loss of life from reopening will be minimal enough to be acceptable to the majority of their state’s voters. We won’t know for some time, possibly years, whether these gambles were correct. In November, voters will begin to rule on whether those gambles a good bet.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Beto Outraises Bernie Despite Missteps

In the four days since Beto O’Rourke announced his candidacy for president, his campaign has become embroiled in several controversies that may doom his chances even before he leaves the starting gate. Nevertheless, the level of donations that the campaign has received in its early hours indicate a high level of interest in the Texas candidate. It would be a mistake to write off the millennial presidential hopeful despite his campaign’s problems.

Beto’s campaign immediately suffered from a series of missteps as well as revelations about his past. One of the most shocking items is news of an article that he wrote as a teenager in which he fantasized about running over children with his car. The article was posted online for the Cult of the Dead Cow, a hacking group to which the candidate belonged.

“I'm mortified to read it now, incredibly embarrassed, but I have to take ownership of my words,” O’Rourke said of his teen writing in the Chicago Tribune. “Whatever my intention was as a teenager doesn't matter, I have to look long and hard at my actions, at the language I have used, and I have to constantly try to do better.”

O’Rourke also had a lesson on the easily-offended nature of modern Democrats with a seemingly innocuous joke in which he said that his wife, Amy, was raising their three children “sometimes with my help.” Politico notes that the joke disappeared from later speeches after it was pointed out that the reference could reinforce gender stereotypes and O’Rourke apologized, saying that he would be “much more thoughtful going forward in the way that I talk about our marriage, and also the way in which I acknowledge the truth of the criticism that I have enjoyed white privilege.”

The new candidate also faced down the media for what he called a misrepresentation of a statement to Vanity Fair. After telling the magazine that he was “just born to be in it,” Beto criticized the headline that quoted him as saying, “I’m just born to do this” and attempted to distance himself from the idea that he thinks he was born to be president.

“I saw the cover with that quote, ‘Born to run,’ or ‘Born to do this,’ and I was like, ‘Man, I hope I didn’t say that,’” O’Rourke told reporters in Wisconsin on Sunday. “I think the context of that, which makes sense, is the way that I feel, is that I’m born to serve, I’m born to try to help bring people together.”

He continued, “I don’t know that anyone is born for an office or a position, and I certainly am not. But I do think that I find my purpose and function in life in doing this kind of work.”

Aside from the gaffes and skeletons in the closet, the Beto campaign seems to rely more on style than substance. Just prior to his presidential announcement, O’Rourke apologized to a prominent Iowa Democrat for his lack of organization in the crucial early state and his campaign website rolled out with a complete inventory of Beto campaign gear but little in the way of policy positions.

“For all the fanfare, the band was playing a pretty flat tune,” Dave Nagle, Iowa state Democratic Party chairman and a former congressman, told Politico. “There’s just no substance to it.”

O’Rourke still does not have a campaign manager, but he does have experienced advisors. Norm Sterzenbach, a former executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party, and Paul Tewes, who ran Barack Obama’s 2008 effort in Iowa, are helping O’Rourke organize in the Hawkeye state.

“So [O’Rourke] made some missteps,” said another Democratic strategist. “What really matters is when are you putting people on the ground and giving Norm some money to go hire them.”

Despite the missteps, the O’Rourke campaign brought in $6.1 million in its first 24 hours. Beto’s haul eclipses the $5.9 million raised by Bernie Sanders after his announcement and dwarfs the contributions received by other Democrats. For example, Kamala Harris received only $1.5 million following her announcement.

Beto is off to a rocky start but don’t count him out yet. The Texan’s rock star image generated more than $80 million in the 2018 election cycle per the FEC. His ability to generate huge contributions almost cost Ted Cruz his Senate seat. With President Trump’s approval in Texas underwater, an O’Rourke candidacy could put the Lone Star State in play for the first time since 1976.

In many ways, O’Rourke is reminiscent of Barack Obama in 2008, a relatively blank slate with rock star popularity. To capitalize on that popularity, however, Beto must get his campaign organized and show backers that he has the depth to mount a serious national campaign. Against Donald Trump, who also has a reputation as a candidate with a shallow understanding of policy and who is not popular with young or minority voters, Beto could be a formidable candidate.

At this point, the greatest threat to Beto is a Joe Biden candidacy. The former vice president, who has consistently led polling, has hinted that he will soon enter the race. Without Biden in the race, the non-Bernie vote will splinter between the numerous other candidates and O’Rourke has a chance to come out on top. If Biden does decide to run, however, he will be the odds-on favorite for the nomination. In that case, Beto, with his Texas roots and youthful charisma, would be a logical vice-presidential pick.

Originally published on The Resurgent

No, There Were Not 58,000 Noncitizen Voters In Texas

Over the weekend a story from Texas hit the internet that there 58,000 noncitizens had voted in Texas elections. The story originated with the Texas Secretary of State and said that a total of 95,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in Texas. The story quickly hit the conservative media and was even picked up by President Trump, who said in a tweet, “These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant.” The only problem was that the story as reported by many outlets was not true.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1089513936435716096

The story of tens of thousands of illegal votes should have raised suspicions from the outset. Texas has a strict voter ID law that requires photo identification for most voters unless they cannot reasonably obtain one. The most common form of photo identification, a Texas driver’s license, requires proof of US citizenship or legal immigration status. The first question on the Texas voter registration application is “Are you a US citizen?” As recently as 2018 courts have ruled that states cannot require proof of citizenship to vote, but voting if you know that you are ineligible is second-class felony in Texas. The heavily Republican Lone Star State, would be an unlikely place to allow hordes of noncitizens to fraudulently vote.

The story originated with a statement by the office of Texas Secretary of State David Whitley that was described by the Dallas Morning News on Friday. The News article, which led with the statement, “About 58,000 non-U.S. citizens who were legally in the country voted in one or more elections over a 22-year period,” also included the caveat that critics called the statistic questionable, but the nuances of the story were quickly lost on many readers and some media outlets.

In his statement, Whitley said, “Approximately 95,000 individuals identified by [the Department of Public Safety] have a matching voter registration record in Texas, approximately 58,000 of whom have voted in one or more Texas elections.”

“DPS has documents on file for all these individuals indicating that they are currently not U.S. citizens,” the statement said. “All of these [95,000] had some sort of proof of lawful presence on file, but are not full citizens.”

Despite the language of the DPS statement, an advisory to election administrators and voter registrars sent the same day, the Texas director of elections said that the 95,000 name matches between legal immigrants and voter rolls should be considered “WEAK.” The capitalization of the word was used in the advisory for emphasis.

The original statement by the Secretary of State did not specify the time period over which the 58,000 immigrants allegedly voted, but Sam Taylor, a spokesman for Whitley, told reporters, “The dates in which the [58,000] voted range from 1996-2018,” a period of 22 years.

Taylor also said, “We didn't perform any analysis other than the number registered and the number who had voting history.”

The flaw in the DPS report is that there was no effort to determine whether the voters who had records indicating that they were noncitizens were still noncitizens at the time they voted. Critics of the report point out that the voters could have been naturalized before they registered to vote.

“Texas has one of the largest rates of naturalization in the U.S., with about 50,000 Texas residents becoming naturalized citizens each year,” Beth Stevens of the Texas Civil Rights Project said in a statement which warned that the report and “the subsequent fanning of the flames by the @TXAG… threaten to remove thousands of potentially eligible voters from the roles [sic].”

https://twitter.com/TXCivilRights/status/1088921740431032320

Chad Dunn, a Houston elections lawyer and general counsel to the Texas Democratic Party noted that there is no list of US citizens that could be cross-checked by DPS and said that testimony from a lawsuit over the state’s voter ID law showed that election “databases are such a mess that they couldn't tell anything meaningful from them.”

Keith Ingram, the Texas director of elections, seems to agree that the data produced by DPS was not definitive proof of illegal voting. “The goal was to produce actionable information voter registrars could use to assist in their list maintenance responsibilities,” Ingram said in the advisory to elections officials. He added that local elections officials could choose to investigate voters flagged by DPS or “take no action on the voter record if the voter registrar determines that there is no reason to believe the voter is ineligible.”

Stevens added in her statement, “The secretary’s actions threaten to result in tens of thousands of eligible voters being removed from the roles, including those with the least resources to comply with the demand to show papers.”

The threat of stripping legal voters from the rolls also appears to be overblown, however. The advisory notice stipulates, “Counties are not permitted, under current Texas law, to immediately cancel the voter as a result of any non-U.S. Citizen matching information provided.” Voters can be canceled if they respond to that they are not citizens or if they do not respond to a proof of citizenship request from the state.

A statement by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in response to the DPS statement noted, “From 2005-2017, the attorney general’s office prosecuted 97 defendants for numerous voter fraud violations.” This is far short of the 58,000 voters alleged to have voted illegally.

The bottom line is that Texas has identified tens of thousands of people who were noncitizens and who are now registered to vote. There is no evidence, however, that these voters were still noncitizens at the time that they registered to vote. Even assuming a worst-case scenario in which all of the noncitizens voted illegally, the numbers represent a 22-year period rather than a large number of fraudulent votes in one election. The fact that registrars are free to take no action at all with respect to the matched names is further evidence of the DPS claims’ lack of substance.

Election fraud is a serious matter but the evidence for widespread fraud presented by the Texas DPS does not match the hysteria that it has generated. The name matches are not evidence of a pattern of illegal voting by immigrants, but the claim will further stoke tensions in the immigration debate. It is unfortunate that these skewed and meaningless statistics will make it more difficult to solve the immigration problem. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Senate Polls Show Possible Dem Surge

Two days before the midterm elections, there are signs that Democratic Senate candidates might be gaining on their Republican opponents. A number of polls released over the first days of November show Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Kirsten Sinema in Arizona, and Phil Bredesen gaining ground.

In Texas, a Change Research poll found O’Rourke tied with Republican Senator Ted Cruz at 49 percent after weeks of Cruz holding a solid lead. In early October, Cruz held a solid lead averaging in the high single-digits, but polling over the last two weeks showed O’Rourke narrowing the race.

The Change Research poll of 1,211 likely voters showed Cruz with near unanimous support among Republicans, but with O’Rourke leading other groups. O’Rourke has “over 99% of Clinton 2016 voters, over 90% among Jill Stein voters, and double-digit leads with 2016 non-voters and Gary Johnson voters,” the organization posted on Twitter.

In Tennessee, another race that has been trending toward the Republican candidate, Marsha Blackburn, in recent weeks, a new poll suddenly put Democrat Phil Bredesen back in the race. The Targoz poll of 480 likely voters has a small sample size and comes after three consecutive polls showing Blackburn with a lead of more than five points.

In Arizona, the polling is erratic and swings wildly from one candidate to the other. Of the two polls taken in November, one favors Republican Martha McSally by 5.6 points and the other favors Democrat Sinema by three points. The Trafalgar poll favoring Sinema has a sample size of 2,166 likely voters, which is more than three times as large as the 600 voters sampled in the Harris poll that favored McSally.   

The state of the races in Florida and Missouri are also very close. Polling in Florida varies between showing leads for incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican challenger, Rick Scott. In Missouri, Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill and Republican Josh Hawley are locked in another margin of error race. The most recent poll there has the largest sample size, 1,424 voters, had the two candidates tied at 47 percent.

A possible explanation for the shakeup is President Trump’s concentration on illegal immigration and the migrant caravan moving through Mexico. The president’s rhetoric, including a statement that soldiers would shoot members of the caravan who throw rocks, may have inspired some moderates and independents to oppose Republican candidates. President Trump’s plan to issue an Executive Order to end birthright citizenship may also have inspired opposition among swing voters in addition to exciting his base.

While the polling appears to show a slight surge for Democrats in several races, it is too early to tell whether this represents a fluke or if there is a legitimate last-minute rally. It is very possible that the polls represent outliers that do not accurately report a change in the status of the race.

​Since three of these very close races are for Republican seats, if the polling is correct, Democrat hopes for a Senate majority remain alive. To make it a reality though, Democrats would have to sweep all five states since Heidi Heitkamp‘s seat in North Dakota will go red.

With only one day left before the election, the answer is likely to be found only when the official election results come in on Tuesday night. With at least five Senate races too close to call, it will come down to which side is able to better motivate their supporters to get to the polls.

Originally published on The Resurgent   

Update On Senate Tossups

If you’ve been following the runup to the midterm elections, you know that 2018 has been a bleak year for Republican congressional prospects. While Democrats remain the odds-on favorites to control the House next year, Republicans have high hopes that the Senate will be a firewall against a total loss of Congress.

Democrats began the campaign with a difficult election map, but as recently as last month their chances of winning the Senate seemed to be improving. Of 36 senate seats that are up for election this year, only nine are held by Republicans. That means that Democrats have only nine chances to flip the two seats that they need to win a majority. However, as the year progressed, seats that had seemed safe for Republicans began to look more and more shaky.

As of this writing, nine seats are considered to be tossups. Only four of these are Republican seats so Democrats remain at a disadvantage for winning control. As Resurgent reported last week, during the furor of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, the momentum in three Senate races seems to have shifted towards the GOP.

Here is a rundown on the tossup Senate races, along with links to the Real Clear Politics polls and FiveThirtyEight’s forecasting model:

Arizona – Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema are competing for incumbent Jeff Flake’s seat. Sinema has consistently outpolled McSally with the exception of two polls in early September. The Real Clear Politics average has Sinema ahead by about three points. FiveThirtyEight gives Sinema a 66 percent chance of winning.

Florida – Democrat incumbent Bill Nelson is defending his seat against Governor Rick Scott. Scott led the polls for most of the summer, giving Republicans hope of picking up the seat and causing Democrats to fret. Nelson surged in late September and has led four of the last five polls (with the fifth a tie). Nelson’s lead in most polls is within the margin of error, but his consistent lead gives him the advantage. FiveThirtyEight puts Nelson’s odds of winning at 60 percent.

Indiana – Another Democrat seat defended by incumbent Joe Donnelly against Mike Braun, a Republican state legislator. Polling has been scant and mixed. The RCP average has Donnelly up by four points, but this is due to two older polls from July and August. Nevertheless, FiveThirtyEight gives Donnelly a 77 percent chance of retaining his seat.  

Missouri – Democrat Claire McCaskill is defending her seat against Josh Hawley, the state’s Republican attorney general. Polling shows a dead heat with Hawley up by less than half a point in the RCP average. The FiveThirtyEight forecast basically shows a coin toss with McCaskill given a 58 percent of winning.

Montana – The race for Democrat Jon Tester’s seat was recently moved from “lean Democratic” to “tossup” by Cook Political Report. Matt Rosendale, the state auditor, still trails in the RCP average by three points, however. The FiveThirtyEight model gives Tester an 85 percent chance of retaining his seat.

Nevada – Dean Heller, the incumbent Republican, is facing a strong challenge from Jacky Rosen, a state legislator. Rosen has led in three of the past four polls giving her a slight edge in the RCP average that is within the margin of error. FiveThirtyEight considers this another coin toss race and gives Heller a 52 percent of winning.

North Dakota – This is yet another red state Democrat seat with the incumbent in serious trouble. Heidi Heitkamp was already trailing when she voted against Kavanaugh. Now North Dakota’s at-large congressman, Kevin Cramer, seems poised to flip the seat for Republicans. Cramer leads by double-digits in the two polls from September and FiveThirtyEight gives the GOP candidate a 68 percent chance of taking the seat.

Tennessee – Republican Bob Corker is retiring and two longtime political operatives, Republican Marsha Blackburn and Democrat Phil Bredesen are vying for his seat. Blackburn currently holds a 2.5-point advantage but has been steadily surging since the end of August. FiveThirtyEight gives Blackburn a 70 percent chance of winning, but Taylor Swift’s recent endorsement of Bredesen may upend the race. Vote.org reports that 65,000 people registered to vote in the 24 hours after Swift’s endorsement, more than 2,000 of them in Tennessee.

Texas – The election in the deep red state of Texas for the seat of Republican stalwart Ted Cruz was a surprise tossup. At the beginning of the year, few would have imagined that Cruz would be fighting for his political life. Polling was close over the summer, but no one really thought Texas would dump Cruz for Democrat Beto O’Rourke, did they? The RCP average now has Cruz up by six points. That’s closer than it should be, but FiveThirtyEight gives Cruz a 73 percent chance of hanging on.

If you’re keeping score, the current forecasts indicate that Democrats would pick up only one of the four Republican tossups and that Republicans would flip only one of the five Democrat seats at risk. When the dust settles, the balance of power in the Senate could remain unchanged. The nature of tossups is that they could go either way, however, and several of the races, particularly Nevada and Missouri are truly too close to call.

Overall, the Democrats have an uphill battle that requires them to win almost all the tossup races to win control of the Senate. FiveThirtyEight puts the odds of this at about 20 percent. These are long odds, but they are not insurmountable. In fact, it’s pretty close to the same odds that they gave Donald Trump.

Originally published on The Resurgent