Welcome!
Thank you for visiting my website! I’m a specialist in US politics with a background in advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence. My general research area is political polarization through technology (such as social media), and how this interacts with US politics. My approach angle is therefore driven primarily by data (polls) and system dynamics(gerrymandering etc).
State of the Midterms
As the United States faces one of the most important midterms in its history, its worth considering the profound moment of political disunity the United States is currently experiencing.
Not since the Civil War have we seen this level of polarization, with large swaths of voters seeing their political opponents as a threat to society.
We will delve into exactly how polarization is manifesting but it is imperative to underline the moment of truly existential danger the United States is in right now.
The political violence seen in the January 6th Storming of the US Capitol has accelerated, with 20% of Republicans and 13% of Democrats believing that political violence is justified.
The overall health of US democracy is a much broader issues that I will deal with in the future. For now I will focus on the immediate political calculus around the midterms .
7 observations on the 2022 midterm elections
As it currently stands the Democrats hold razor thin majorities in both the house (+7) and the Senate (+0). Together with the presidency this means that the Democrats are in control of all levers of power. Conventional wisdom is that the first midterm of a sitting president is always terrible for the party in power. On average the party in power has lost 22 House Seats and 2 Senate seats in the first midterm. The only midterms where the ruling party has not lost votes are 1934 under FDR and 2002 under George W. Bush.
Normally speaking the midterms is a referendum on the sitting president, and often there is some level of disillusion as a president fails to follow up on campaign promises.
This is not a normal midterm
Republicans up at halftime…
One thing that has made this election year deviant is a series of events over the summer has essentially generated an entirely different political landscape, much to the detriment of Republicans.
To illustrate this we first take a detour to sketch what the optimal Republican political strategy would have been.
Make the election a referendum on Biden, especially through high inflation
Push culture war issues like school curriculum, transgender rights, and religious freedom
Continue underlining the Democrats inability to get anything done despite having control over both chambers of congress and the presidency
This combination of issues would have been terrific for Republicans, as high inflation and economic woes would help with moderates and independents who are primarily concerned with practicalities instead of ideology. Culture wars feed the Republican base and especially school curriculum energizes suburban women that overwhelmingly voted Democrat to come back to the GOP. Emphasizing the lack of legislation by the Democrats saps enthusiasm under the Democratic progressive wing who were unhappy voting for Biden in the first place and are feeling disillusioned and unsatisfied. This brings is to the next observation.
…then things fell apart for the GOP
Summer has been politically horrendous for the Republicans.
Several events occured that have effectively kicked the strategic legs out from under the Republicans. I will name each one and then go into further detail below.
The FBI raid and subsequent spotlight on former President Trump’s egregious behavior
The overturning of Roe v Wade
Multiple legislative victories for Democrats and good economic news
Each event could not have been tailored more effectively at countering each of the optimal Republican talking points.
2. Until roughly June the Republicans were very effective at executing their strategy and seemed poised to sweep into power in both chambers.
Mar-a-Lago-gate
The FBI raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on the 8th of August has sent shockwaves through the political landscape. As with many things Trump, it is without historical precedent. No former president has ever been criminally prosecuted or even investigated, let alone raided. The only thing that even vaguely comes close is when sitting president Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding his horse and buggy.
While pundits were intially quick to spin this as a victory for Trump and that it would guarantee him the 2024 nomination, increasingly damning information came out concerning the case, culminating with the Washington Post reporting that Trump had stolen nuclear secrets. Recent polling shows that a majority of voters feel the FBI search was justified and that half of Americans thought Trump should be prosecuted for his handling of classified documents.
Whatever may happen, Trump is firmly back in the spotlight, much to the chagrin of Republican strategists. One overlooked dynamic within the GOP is that since Trump has been banned from twitter, it has become much easier to maintain a coherent message. Every time Trump would tweet something, Republicans were forced to publicly comment, and every minute they spend responding to Trump is a minute they are not attacking Biden on economic policy.
From Biden’s perspective his problem had always been that many Independents, Democrats, and even Republicans were willing to vote for him because he was the anti-Trump. But once Trump was out of the spotlight there was little positive left to say about Biden himself. With the media attention squarely back on Trump, Biden feels empowered to return to his original campaign theme, The battle for the soul of our Nation and directly identify Trump and MAGA as anti-democratic. The return of Trump to the spotlight has reignited the dynamic of 2020, where the midterm become a referendum on Trump instead of Biden, a proven strategy to lose.
The broader subject of Trump’s viability as a political candidate is a whole different topic that I will deal with in the future, for now lets focus on the midterms specifically.
All put together we have the third observation.
3. The situation around Mar-a-Lago is preventing Republicans from messaging and has recast the midterms as a referendum on Trump
Roe v Wade and abortion rights
The Dobbs decision repealing the right to abortion has been a profound shock to US politics. In addition to being the first time in US history that an acquired civil right is rolled back, it has also brough about a wholesale shift in the political calculus. Unfortunately for the Republicans their party has been strongly identified with repealing abortion, and it has proven to be incredibly unpopular.
We have seen the first indications of this already in the Kansas abortion referendum and the New York 19th special election, where the issues of abortion right was salient enough to let Democrats exceed expectations. We have also seen an uptick in female voter registration, as especially women and young voters have been energized by the issue.
There is a certain amount of historic irony about this all. For decades the GOP has had issue ownership on abortion, using it as a reliable way to turn out evangelical voters. The GOP is uniform in its opposition to abortion, just as the Democrats are near uniform in their defense. Now that the Republicans have achieved their long term goal they find themselves in a severely weakened position.
Not only have they lost one of their most salient energizing issue, they have also boosted pro-abortion voters. In an effort to keep the evangelical base the GOP has been forced to raise new culture war issues such as transgender rights, gay marriage, and even interracial marriage. These issues are much less animating than abortion and instead have given Democrats an opportunity to unexpectedly codify the right to gay/interracial marriage into law, handing Democrats a legislative win. Even more worrying for the GOP, several Republicans voted in favor, sensing the profound unpopularity of opposing gay marriage.
Our fourth observation then, is as follows.
4. Republicans have put themselves on the wrong side of a culture war issue and are seeing abortion being weaponized against them
Biden turns out to be the most legislatively significant president since LBJ
Whereas early on in the Biden administration the comment was made that Senator Joe Machin was the real President, things have changed dramatically. Having learned from the Obama Era, Democrats have shown a remarkable degree of unity and discipline in passing legislation. For example in managing the aftermath of COVID-19 through the stimulus checks (which may now be contributing to inflation).
After multiple very public deaths of Biden’s signature Build Back Better legislation it seemed like the Democrats were consigned to executive action until the midterms. This naturally deepened the frustration and resentment among progressives who held their noses and voted for Biden in 2020.
This point is worth stressing because Biden is very unusual for a Democratic president. The old adage that Republicans fall in line but Democrats want to fall in love rings true. Biden is a compromise candidate who was acceptable to the progessive wing by virtue of his opponent, not on his own merits. Frustration among that same progressive wing who were expecting New Deal levels of legislation were starting to boil over.
Yet a couple months later Biden’s legislative achievements look entirely different, passing the Inflation Reduction Act, the US Chips and Science Act, Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and student loan forgiveness all within a couple of weeks of each other.
Whereas previously progressives and independents were rumbling about how the Democrats couldn’t get anything done despite controlling all the levers of power, Biden has made some of the most sweeping changes to American life in decades.
Democratic impotence has turned into an a slogan: Imagine what we can achieve if we have a solid majority in both houses, vote Democrat! Aiding Biden in all this has been a continuing stream of positive economic news, with the feared recession still not taking root, inflation cooling a bit and gas prices dropping significantly, leading to the observation that:
5. Democrats have shown they are able get things done and managed to overcome Republican legislative obstructionism
National versus local dynamics
Although all of the trends above have been in favor Democrats, there are still dynamics specific to the House and the Senate that need to be considered. Generally speaking the Senate track closer national trends, this is because Senate races are statewide, meaning that we don’t have to factor in things like gerrymandering. It is also worth noting that gains in the Senate during the first midterm are not that uncommon.
House races are much more idiosyncratic because they let lawmakers ‘pick’ their voters through gerrymandering. Currently out of the 435 House races around 85 seats, or 20%, are considered competitive. Redistricting is generally much more egregious in red states, as most blue states have put in place non-partisan committees.
It is worth noting that gerrymandering is incredibly unpopular and often cited as a reason why Americans have little faith in US democracy. I personally was redistricted in 2020, going from district that was +3 Republican to a district that is +17 Democratic. The Democrats refusal to gerrymander in their own favor is morally correct and the right thing. It also means that Democrats have put themselves at an intrinsic disadvantage in the House, which may very well cost them their majority.
This makes up the next observation.
6. Democrats are at a systemic disadvantage in the House because of gerrymandering
The coming months and weeks
The consensus right now is that Democrats are likely to defend or even expand their majority in the Senate. This is in part due to some poor strategic choices by the Republicans, such as nominating inexperience candidates and some very questionable campaign financing. Worse still, GOP online fundraising has dried up, in part because Trump has exhausted the donorbase with his incredible frequent fundraising emails.
But a day can be a long time in politics and there is still a lot that could happen before November 8th. There are three specific aspects that I would keep an eye on as they might drive the outcome of the midterms.
Does Trump announce his 2024 presidential run?
We have covered how Trump being in the spotlight is not strategically useful for the GOP. As much as they might deny this publicly, we know that GOP strategists have asked Trump to wait with announcing his 2024 campaign until after the midterms. Trump might not wait however, as he may want to announce his campaign early to make it more difficult for the FBI and DOJ to continue their investigation. Should he decide to announce he will become subject to campaign finance regulation, and of course completely cannibalize all the media attention and fundraising that especially GOP Senate candidate desperately need.
2. Climate Change and (natural) disasters
Most natural disasters occur between August and February, especially hurricanes, wild fires, and blizzards. We have already seen record temperatures across the globe, and there is little evidence that the coming fall will be any different. Large scale natural disasters should be expected as the consequences of climate change are becoming increasingly obvious, and could very well drive behavior among some segment of voters. Given the anti-scientific and climate skeptic attitude of the GOP any coverage of climate change and sustainability would not be favorable to Republican goals. Even more cynical is the impact of school shootings. These events underline gun safety as an issue and tend to be unfavorable for the GOP. They also highlight egregious moral failures on the end of lawmakers to allow these events to occur at all.
3. Will there be political violence?
The state of democracy in the United States is dire. The political climate is increadibly antagonistic, with sitting senators alluding to political violence if Trump is prosecuted. American society right now is a tinderbox, and it would not take much to bring long simmering tensions to the surface. It is critical that the anti-democratic and often outright fascists elements in US society not gain public office. Yet an enormous amount of election deniers are running for office and some fraction of them will win. Even if Democrats defend their House and Senate majorities many of the Trumpiest candidates are unlikely to simply accept the results if they lose.
7. A lot can change, but voter intention is starting to lock in. The coming weeks will be critical in the fight to preserve majoritarian rule and American democracy writ large.
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