I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Virginians start voting in the congressional midterms next month.
On the calendar, it’s still August, a time for beach trips and back-to-school. On the old election calendar, it’s what used to be late September or early October. We just had primary elections Tuesday, which still aren’t even official yet as we wait on post-election mail ballots to trickle in and the formal process of certification. For practical purposes, though, we now have the starting lineups for the general election, for which voting will start in six weeks and one day.
In the words of the late Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, we have some known knowns, some known unknowns and, as always, the unknown unknowns. Let’s start with the former: These are congressional midterm elections, which historically cut against the party in power. With a Republican president and a Republican-controlled Senate, that sets up this year to be a Democratic year. The known unknown is how big of a Democratic year? The unknown unknown is everything else that’s about to happen.
With that setup, let’s look at some of the questions hanging over this election — the answers to which will help determine who wins in November.
1. How much of a drag will President Donald Trump be on Republican candidates?
Trump’s approval ratings have fallen to record lows — 32% in the latest Quinnipiac University poll. When you average in some other recent and reputable polls, he pulls up a mite to 33%. There’s a technical term for this: not good. Well, at least for Republicans. Only Richard Nixon hit a lower low, and that was just before he resigned.
Trump is going to be a deadweight for Republican candidates. In some districts, that won’t matter because they’re so solidly Republican (and for other reasons we’ll soon get to). In other districts, Trump’s unpopularity may make the difference.
This is why Democrats are likely to name-drop Trump at every opportunity; it would be political malpractice not to. This is also why Republicans are sure to want to talk about other things. These are completely standard dynamics. During the 2022 midterms, it was Republicans who wanted to name-drop Joe Biden and Democrats who tried to find other issues. The difference here is that Trump isn’t just unpopular — he’s historically unpopular. This would normally set the stage for not just a blue wave but a blue tsunami, except for one thing:
2. How much of a drag will the Democratic brand be on Democratic candidates?
As much as the above data discomforts Republicans, this next section will make Democrats squirm: While voters don’t like Trump, they also don’t trust Democrats. The data-crunching journalist G. Elliot Morris — author of the book “Strength in Numbers” and now a newsletter with the same name — recently looked at polling numbers on which party voters felt was most out of touch with them. Nationally, he found that in 235 congressional districts voters ranked Republicans as the most out of touch, in 200 others it was Democrats. That’s an advantage for Democrats obviously, but let’s look at what happened when Morris applied that data to Virginia: Of the state’s five Republican districts — the 1st (Rob Wittman), the 2nd (Jen Kiggans), the 5th (John McGuire), the 6th (Ben Cline) and the 9th (Morgan Griffith) — Republicans still ranked as the most trusted party in four of the five. The 2nd was the only exception, where neither party seemed to have an advantage — not a surprise in a district that’s historically swung back and forth between parties.
Here’s what this data means: Even with a historically unpopular president to run against, Democrats still find that voters feel they are the ones who are out of touch. That would seem to suggest that in these Republican districts, Democrats may need to distance themselves from their own party — never an easy thing to do (or a popular thing to do with the party’s base). Both parties face challenges between appealing to the party base at the same time they’re reaching out to general election voters. For Democrats, the challenge this year is that the party’s activist base is moving left while the nature of the districts at play (or potentially at play) in Virginia require more moderate-sounding candidates.
In the shortest possible explanation, that means Democrats are going to shout “Trump!” while Republicans are going to shout “Democrat!” Republicans will also likely shout “socialist!” a lot; the apparent Democratic nomination of Abdul El-Sayed for a Senate seat in Michigan and the likely nomination of Francesca Hong for the governorship of Wisconsin won’t help Democrats in Virginia (and maybe not Democrats in those states). Every Republican looking to score some easy points ought to be asking their opponent if they want to abolish Thanksgiving, as Hong once advocated. Even if that doesn’t win over any undecided voters, it might help juice up the Republican base. It would be almost political malpractice not to do this.
Of course, there’s another scenario: Democrats persuade voters that they really are the ones who are most in touch. We can’t rule out that happening: Public opinion does change over time. All we can say for certain now is that this is where we start from today.
3. How much difference will money make?
First, you have to endure my usual lecture about how campaign money is often overrated. Yes, it’s always better to have more than the other side but the key thing is whether you have enough to get your message out — and then does that message resonate with voters? If voters aren’t buying the message, it doesn’t matter how much money you have.
The fall campaign begins with some unusual dynamics: In the two districts Democrats consider most flippable, the 1st and the 2nd, the Republican incumbents have the most money. Maybe no surprise. However, in two more solidly Republican districts, the 5th and the 6th, it’s the Democrats who have the most money: Tom Perriello has more than three times as much cash as John McGuire, Beth Macy has a smaller advantage over Ben Cline but still an advantage.
This suggests that neither Perriello nor Macy will have trouble getting their message out; the question is whether there are enough voters in those districts who are amenable to it (we’ll get to this point in the next section). However, nationally, it’s Republicans who have the most money. Through June, the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee had $92.7 million, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee $79 million.
This sets up a scenario where a Republican incumbent who gets outspent by a Democratic challenger — and then finds themselves in trouble — might be in line for a cash infusion from Washington.
4. What will happen that we don’t expect?
These are the true unknown unknowns. Scandals break. News breaks. Economic reports come out that are unfavorable to one side or another. We used to call these things an “October Surprise,” although the trend toward early voting lessens the impact of a surprise that really does happen in October. One wild card this year is Iran. Iran in 1979-80 didn’t just hold American diplomats hostage, it politically held President Jimmy Carter hostage to some degree. There was no way the Iranians were going to release the hostages while Carter was in office; they wanted to humiliate him in every way possible. Trump faces the same predicament. Iran would no doubt be delighted to see Republicans lose, just as in Carter’s day they were delighted to see Democrats lose — they just thrill at tormenting an American president. If that’s part of Iranian calculations, they have no incentive to reach a deal. On the contrary, they’d love to see Americans squirm from higher oil prices. Trump as Jimmy Carter 2.0 isn’t something I had on my bingo card. That may not be how you see it, but that’s likely how the Iranians see it and they get a vote, too, so to speak.
5. What will the electorate look like?
We often talk about turnout going up and down, and the number of people who vote is certainly important. However, what’s just as important is who votes. The composition of the electorate changes every election — sometimes certain groups are up, some are down. For instance, in the 2021 governor’s race, rural turnout was up, sometimes by double-digit margins, over what it had been four years prior. Since rural voters favor Republicans by large margins, this big uptick in rural voters helped Glenn Youngkin win the governorship.
We used to think that off-year elections such as this one benefited Republicans because younger voters (who tend to vote Democratic) typically skip these elections. Now we have other dynamics. Voter turnout varies by education. Once Republicans ran strongest with those with college degrees, now Democrats do, while Republicans have picked up a majority of voters without college degrees. In practical terms, that means they have traded some high-frequency voters for low-frequency ones. That surrenders part of whatever structural advantage Republicans have in midterms. Their challenge is to motivate a group of voters who recent history has shown tend not to show up much when Trump isn’t on the ballot — or, conversely, find other voters to replace them. The latest polling shows Trump losing support with independents; that places more urgency on the need for Republicans to fire up their base, which helps explain why we’re seeing Republicans such as John McGuire employ over-the-top language to accuse their opponents of being “communists.” No serious person believes that, but it’s a good red flag to wave for the base.
Even without Trump on the ballot, he remains the wild card in this election, and not just because we don’t know what he might do. Since 2000, turnout in congressional midterms in Virginia has ranged from 31.6% (2002) to 52.7% (2006) with just one exception. That was in the midterms for Trump’s first term, when it spiked to 59.5%. In Joe Biden’s midterm, turnout sank back to 49.28%. Will voters unhappy with Trump drive up turnout again this fall or will it stay at more historically normal levels? We don’t know.
Here’s the worst-case scenario for Republicans — and the best-case scenario for Democrats: Republican base voters are lethargic, Democratic base voters are energized and other voters are so dissatisfied with the economy (or whatever else is on their minds) that they are willing to vote for a Democrat. That has the potential to tilt some Republican-held districts into the Democratic column. The next six weeks will be about Democrats trying to make that happen and Republicans trying to prevent it.
We have more politics every Friday in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter. This week I’ll dig deeper into this week’s primary results, squeezing every statistical drop of blood I can find out of this week’s turnip of an election.
