House Flipped In 2022 Because Too Many Dems Stayed Home

 

This chart is from the Pew Research Center. It shows why the House flipped in the 2022 election -- more Democrats stayed home and didn't vote than Republicans. This must change in 2024!

Many Polls Were Very Accurate In 2021 And 2022 Elections

Right after the last election, I heard a lot about how the polls had gotten it wrong. That's just not true. While some polls were wrong, most of the more respected polls were very accurate.

The respected polling analysts at FiveThirtyEight.com looked at all of the many polls. They gave the following 21 polls an A rating for their very accurate predictions:

SurveyUSA..........A+

Public Policy Polling..........A-

Mason-Dixon Polling..........A-

Emerson College..........A-

Quinnipiac University..........A-

Marist College..........A

Monmouth University..........A

Suffolk University..........A-

New York Times / Siena College..........A+

ABC News / Washington Post..........A

CBS News / New York Times..........A-

Siena College..........A

Beacon Research..........A

Selzer & Co...........A+

Research and Polling, Inc...........A+

Landmark Communications..........A

Cygnal..........A

Muhlenburg College..........A

University of Massachusetts..........A-

TIPP Insights..........A-

AtlasIntel..........A

More Say Trump Hurt GOP In Midterms Than Helped Them

The chart above reflects the results of the Yahoo News / YouGov Poll -- done between December 1st and 5th of a nationwide sample of 1,635 adults, with about a 3 point margin of error.

Abortion Rights Win Because That's What The Public Wants

Abortion rights mattered in this election. It mattered because the American people support the right to an abortion, and oppose the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade. Many on the right thought the fight over abortion was over after the Supreme Court decision. They were wrong. The fight is just beginning, and it will not be a fight that favors rights-denying Republicans.

The following op-ed is by Emma Gray at MSNBC.com:

Republicans can’t say they weren’t warned.

During this week’s midterm elections, Americans decisively affirmed their support for abortion rights. A slew of notable anti-abortion candidates were defeated (cough, Dr. Oz, cough), and voters chose reproductive rights in five separate state ballot measures. 

On Thursday, Montana’s “Born Alive” legislative referendumofficially failed. The measure would have imposed criminal penalties, including up to $50,000 in fines and up to 20 years in prison, for any individuals who failed to take “medically appropriate and reasonable actions” to save the life of an infant — defined as a legal person who breathes, has a heartbeat or has voluntary muscle movement — who is born prematurely or survived an attempted abortion. (The latter is extremely rare, as fetuses cannot survive outside of the womb before 22 weeks, and infanticide is already a crime.) 

This meant that Montana’s voters joined Vermonters, Michiganders, Californians and even voters in deep-red Kentucky in protecting abortion rights. Vermont, Michigan and California enshrined reproductive freedom in their state Constitutions, and in Kentucky, voters struck down a proposed constitutional amendment that would have explicitly stated that there is no right to abortion in the state.

Turns out, people really enjoy having bodily autonomy. And none of this is surprising. 

“If you’re the anti-abortion movement and you can’t win a vote like that in Kentucky, the question is, can you win a vote like that anywhere?” Mary Ziegler, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law, told Time magazine’s Charlotte Alter.

It seems unlikely when you look at the numbers. 

According to the NBC News Exit Poll, abortion ranked just below inflation in terms of voter importance. In Pennsylvania and Michigan, where Democrats scored major victories, led by women, people of color and young people, exit polls showed that abortion topped inflation as voters' No. 1 issue.  

Despite the fact that the religious right has used anti-abortion activism as a cynical way to motivate white, Evangelical voters since the late 1970s, support for legal abortion has remained quite high. According to Pew Research, 61 percent of Americans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Where other political issues engender stark divides based on race, gender, age group and education level, abortion does not. Since 1995, support for legal abortion in all or most cases has only dropped below 50% once. Over the last year, support has only risen, punctuated by the Supreme Court’s June decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, the seminal 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationally.

The court’s decision highlighted just how high the stakes are on a state level for pregnant people and their health care providers. Although Republicans tried to reframe abortion rights as a question of morality, the reality is that access to such care is first and foremost a public health issue. When abortion is restricted — which has been happening for decades in red states — dire health consequencesfollow. When abortion access is expanded, the opposite occurs. In 1971, one year after abortion was decriminalized in New York, the maternal mortality rate in the state dropped by 45%.

(It is also, as evidenced by the actions of voters in conservative states like Kentucky, a personal freedom issue. The GOP champions autonomy on issues like assault weapons, and yet asked voters to take away abortion rights that have existed for decades. The ethical dissonance there is jarring.)

The numbers make it crystal clear: When people who can get pregnant do not have access to abortion care, their lives are in danger. And this is something that voters of all demographic groups understand.

As Kimberly Inez McGuire, the executive director of the youth-driven reproductive justice organization URGE, put it in a statement Wednesday: “Our bodies and our futures are at stake. We will continue to make our voices heard — and we’ll continue to vote — until reproductive justice is a reality.”

Fomenting extreme anti-abortion sentiment was a cynical calculus that has worked for the far-right for decades. But the bogeyman of abortion is far more effective when a national abortion ban feels like an amorphous goal, rather than a terrifyingly close reality. 

When voters directly get a say in their own individual reproductive rights, it turns out most want to keep them.

The Midterms Were Not As Bad As They Could Have Been

The following post is by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

Apart from specific issues and candidates that motivated voters on Tuesday, two contrasting parties continue to emerge in America – one, pro-democracy; the other, anti-democracy or neofascist.

The hallmarks of the neofascist party are its cruel nastiness and unwillingness to abide by election results. In other words: Trumpism. 

Both were on full display election night as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake assailed the “cheaters and crooks” whom she claimed were running elections, “BS and garbage,” “incompetent people,” “propagandists,” and “fake media.”

And as Rep. Andy Biggs joked that Nancy Pelosi was “losing the gavel but finding the hammer,” a crude reference to the attack on Pelosi’s husband that left him with a fractured skull.

Other GOP candidates and flaks hurled similar insults -- “Merrick Garland needs some new pantyhose,” “Beto [O’Rourke] is a furry,” Sen. Mark Kelly is a “little man” whose “ears don’t match,” President Biden is a “lost child” with a “very dirty diaper,” Democrats are “lunatics.”

Contrast this feculence with Tim Ryan’s graceful concession speech in the Ohio senate race (I’ve pasted the live version below).

We have too much hate, we have too much anger, there’s way too much fear, there’s way too much division, and we need more love, we need more compassion, we need more concern for each other. These are the important things. We need forgiveness, we need grace, we need reconciliation. … I have the privilege to concede this race to J.D. Vance because the way this country operates is that when you lose an election you concede and you respect the will of the people. We can’t have a system where if you win it’s a legitimate election and if you lose, someone stole it. … We need good people who are going to honor the institutions of this country…. The highest title in this land is citizen, and we have an obligation to be good citizens. 

 

Or with John Fetterman’s humble remarks after the senate race in Pennsylvania was called for him — when, wiping away tears, he told cheering supporters “I'm not really sure what to say right now, my goodness. I am so humbled, thank you so much …. This campaign has always been about fighting for anyone that ever got knocked down that got back up.” 

Fetterman had been knocked down last May with a near-fatal stroke — which invited ridicule from Trumpists such as Trump Jr., who told a Sunday-night crowd at a rally in Miami that “if you're going to be in the United States senator, you should have basic cognitive function. It doesn't seem that unreasonable to have a working brain … We're up against a Democrat party today that doesn't believe that a United States senator should not have mush for brain."

Gratuitous cruelty, derision, nastiness — they are one of a piece with authoritarianism because they feed off the same anger and fear. They also fuel the hate and paranoia that are causing Americans to distrust our electoral system and one another. And they can fuel violence. 

When I was a kid I was bullied by other kids because I was so short. I remember the ridicule and the cruelty. The worst of the bullying, I later learned, came from kids who were bullied at home, often by abusive parents.

 

So many Americans feel bullied by the system today — bullied by employers, landlords, hospitals, insurance companies, debt collectors, government bureaucracies, and the like — that they’re easy prey for Trumpism.

 

This isn’t to excuse these people, but only to explain the likely source of their rage, and how the Trumpists are channeling it. 

And why it’s so important to stop all forms of bullying in modern America — not only because such bullying is morally wrong but because its poison spreads throughout our society.

 

The results of the midterm elections could have been far worse. The extreme grotesqueries of the Trumpist right were soundly defeated — Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, Maine gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage, New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc, and Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels (who promised if elected that no Democrat could ever win Wisconsin again). Most election-denying candidates for secretary of state were defeated.

 

As of Wednesday evening, Kari Lake was trailing her Democratic rival for Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, by a hair. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (the freshman MAGA Republican from Colorado) was fighting to keep her seat, 

But Marjorie Taylor Greene was reelected, as was Andy Biggs, and many other election-deniers. And Trump himself seems intent on launching another run on the White House (and on American democracy) within the week.

 

Not as bad as it could have been, but deeply concerning nonetheless.

 

We are still on the brink.

Some Thoughts About Last Tuesday's Midterm Election

 

I don't know the compleat results from the election, but I do have some thoughts.

There was no red wave (Maybe just a pink trickle)

This election set tradition on its head. In a midterm election, the party occupying the White House normally loses seats. And with low approval numbers for President Biden, coupled with high inflation, many pundits (including many Republicans leaders expected a "red wave". They thought it might resemble past years when the ruling party lost dozens of seats in the House, and control of one (or both) houses of Congress. That simply did not happen.

The polls were right

A lot of pundits were criticizing the election polls. And some of that criticism was justified, since many of them were wrong in 2016 and 2020. But they had adjusted their samples, and this time they were right on target. They told us that this would be a close election, and they were right.

Control of Congress

Control of both houses are still not official, but it looks like the Republicans may squeak out a small majority in the House of Representatives. If so, it will be due to some gerrymandering in red states (especially in Florida). In the Senate, it looks like Democrats could maintain control by a tiny margin.

Currently it stands at 48 senators for each party. Alaska is using ranked-choice voting to decide between two Republicans, so that gives the Republicans 49. Kelly has a significant lead in Arizona, and is likely to win there -- giving the Democrats 49. Nevada is a dead heat with many votes still could be counted. And Georgia will have a run-off between Warnock and Walker in about 4 weeks. It could easily finish in a tie of 50 senators for each party (as is the current situation).

Abortion mattered more than people thought

Pundits were starting to discount the effect abortion would have on the election, saying that inflation would matter more to voters. But while inflation mattered to many voters (especially Republicans), the abortion issue brought extra voters to the polls (young people voting for the first time and "sometime" voters who don't normally participate in a midterm election). That evened things up.

Republicans ran a lot of bad candidates

Another thing that helped Democrats was the quality of Republican candidates. The GOP ran a lot of MAGA, election-denying, conspiracy-believing candidates -- and the public didn't like them. Some of them won, but many didn't -- and it helped the GOP to blow their golden opportunity.

Gridlock may rule the next two years in Washington

If the Republicans are able to squeak out a majority in the House (and that is likely), it is very unlikely that they will compromise with the Senate and the President on anything at ll. Their are too many MAGA nuts among them. They will try to investigate and impeach the president (which won't succeed), and they will try to cut Social Security and Medicare. They've already said they would do that, but Democrats are not going to allow it. But they won't compromise. The next two years will have much arguing, but nothing new will get done.

There is likely to be more election-denying (and possibly more insurrection) in future

While many election-deniers lost, many won -- especially at a state level. They may try to steal the next presidential election since more of them will be in a better position to do it. Our democracy is still at risk.

Nothing has been solved and our democracy is still at risk.

Texas Is Still A Bright Red State

Democrats were hoping to make some inroads in Texas on Election Night, but it didn't happen. Note that Republicans won every statewide race by a significant margin -- and they won most districts for the U.S. House and the Texas Legislature. It is obvious that Texas is still a bright red state.

I still believe change will come. Whites are already a minority in Texas schools, and will soon be in the population as a whole. But it may take another couple of decades for this to start showing up in elections.

Most Important Thing In This Election Is Saving Democracy

Television pundits are constantly arguing over which issue is most important for voters in these midterm election. They are all wrong. The most important thing is saving our democracy. Here's how former Labor Secretary Robert Reich puts it:

Coming into the home stretch before the 2022 midterm elections, I feel different than I’ve felt in the days before every election I’ve witnessed or participated in over the last three-quarters of a century.

Before, I’ve worried about Republicans taking over and implementing their policy preferences — against political rights in the dark days of Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt in the early 1950s, against civil rights in the late 1950s and early 1960s, against Medicare in the mid-1960s, for smaller government in the 1970s, for tax cuts for the rich in the 1980s, for a balanced budget in the early 1990s, against universal health care in the late 1990s and early 2000s, against LGBTQ rights in the 2010s.

Today I’m not worried about Republicans’ policy preferences. Today I’m worried about the survival of our democracy.

I’m worried that a majority of Republican candidates are telling voters, without any basis in fact, that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

I’m worried that if elected, many of these Republicans will make it harder to conduct elections, allow or encourage endless audits of election results, and even refuse to sign off on them.

I’m worried that Republicans have been spending millions to recruit partisan poll workers and watchers who could disrupt the counting process or raise false claims about it. (Michigan Republican secretary of state nominee Kristina Karamo rose to prominence as a Detroit poll watcher who made false claims about election fraud.)

 

I’m worried that thousands of Trump supporters have been calling their local election offices requesting all kinds of public records, often using suspiciously similar wording, leading election officials to believe this is a coordinated effort to prevent them from holding an election.

I’m worried that violent thugs are on the prowl, and that Republican leaders — starting with Trump — have been quietly encouraging them. (Speaking on a conservative radio talk show on Tuesday, Trump amplified a conspiracy theory about the grisly attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, saying “Weird things going on in that household in the last couple of weeks.” Other Republican candidates are joining in this cruel, baseless, disgusting taunt.

 

Most of all, I’m worried that Americans are losing the trust that a democracy needs in order to function — trust that even though we may not like the outcomes of particular elections, we feel bound by them because we trust the democratic process.

The biggest question hanging over the 2022 midterm election is not a policy. It’s not even an issue.

It is analogous to the question we as a nation faced in 1860, as we slid into a tragic Civil War. 

It is whether our democracy can endure.

The extraordinary, abominable challenge we now face — one that I frankly never imagined we would face — is that the Republican Party and its enablers in the media and among the monied interests appear not to want American democracy to endure.

As Joe Biden said last night, “Democracy itself” is at stake in the upcoming election, and he appealed “to all Americans, regardless of party, to meet this moment of national and generational importance.”

Indeed. 

My friends, we owe it to generations before us who fought and died for democracy and the rule of law, and to generations after us who will live with the legacy we leave them — to get out the vote next Tuesday, to vote out the traitors and liars, to renounce the party that has forsaken the precious ideal of self-government, and to vote in people who are dedicated to making our democracy stronger and better.

Most Voters Consider This A Very Important Election

These charts are from the NBC News / Hart Research / Public Opinion Strategies Poll -- done between October 14th and 18th of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

New Poll Has Abbott Leading O'Rourke By Only 2 Points

The chart reflects the results of the Beacon Research Poll -- done between October 15th and 19th of 1,125 Texas voters who say they will definitely vote. The margin of error is 2.8 points.
 

Poll Of Likely Voters Gives Abbott A Big Lead In Texas

This chart reflects the results of the Texas Politics Project at University of Texas Poll -- done between October 7th and 17th of 883 likely Texas voters, with a 3.3 point margin of error.

The poll only considers likely voters (those voting in every election the last 2-3 years). With a large turnout (containing many new voters and random voters) the result could be very different.

Will Voters Choose Economics Or Democracy?

The following is just part of an excellent op-ed by Charles M. Blow in The New York Times:

I have seen repeatedly how people abandon their principles — whether they be voting rights, transgender issues, gun control, police reform, civil rights, climate change or the protection of our democracy itself — when their pocketbooks suffer. There is a core group of people who will feel singularly passionate about each of these problems, but the rest of the public adjusts itself to the outrage and the trauma, shuffling each issue back into the deck. They still care about these problems as issues in the world, but they don’t necessarily see them as urgent or imminent.

In a New York Times/Siena College poll released this week, voters were asked “What do you think is the MOST important problem facing the country today?”

A plurality, 26 percent, said the economy, and 18 percent said inflation or the cost of living. Just seven percent said the state of democracy, and four percent said abortion.

After the Supreme Court struck down Roe, Democrats saw a measurable shift in their direction, as voters began to say that they were leaning toward the Democrats in the midterm elections. The anger among many voters was palpable; the offense was fresh. But now, that momentum has stalled, and some see a swing back toward Republicans as we get further out from the ruling and worrisome economic news retakes the headlines.

I still believe that anger over abortion will be felt in the midterms. I believe that taking away such a fundamental right feels like a betrayal that must be avenged. I believe that many parents of daughters are incensed at the idea of those girls inheriting an America where they will have less say over their bodies than their mothers had.

But I also know that energy attrition in the electorate is real. I know that historical trends are on the side of Republicans going into the midterms, and even a minor stalling of momentum and erosion of energy could make the already slim chance that Democrats would hold the House of Representatives an impossibly long shot.

In the closing days of this campaign cycle, Republicans are driving home perennial issues: the economy and crime. Democrats are arguing big issues of policy: abortion and protecting democracy. In this battle of pocketbooks and principles, which will win out?

For those with any sense of political vision and history, the policy side must take precedence. Economic issues are cyclical. They’ll always present themselves. But grand issues like bodily autonomy can define generations. And protecting democracy can define empires.

What is the point of a cheaper tank of gas, if it must be had in a failed democracy that polices people’s most intimate choices about their own bodies?