Marquette, Alaska, And Stretch Democratic Targets
Can Democrats Start To Dream Of 52?
At what point do we have to have a conversation about Democrats winning Wisconsin?
I never, or at least before today, thought I’d be writing about Democratic chances in the stretch targets again this cycle – in 2021, I wrote about a few of them back when I was in the full fledged Dem House hopium addiction, but for most of the cycle, I’ve been avoiding them, mostly because I didn’t think there was much hope for any of them. I wrote about Florida yesterday, and I stand by every word – it’s not a stretch target, it’s a delusion.
There are three semi-plausible ones at this point – Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Ohio, all to varying degrees – in addition to the core four Democratic seats that, if they all broke for them, would give them 51 votes. It’s often said that Democrats are another term of a Democratic House and 2 more Senators away from passing Voting Rights expansions, having a much easier path to a child care deal through reconciliation, and maybe even a minimum wage increase and DC statehood. The problems with holding the House are for another article (although it’s certainly the case that the House would be close in an election held today), but the other problem is this Senate map has a fairly easy to articulate path to 51, and a murkier one to 52.
Easy to articulate doesn’t mean easy, but let’s take a look at my first run Senate model – which, as I tweeted, is explicitly NOT a projection about November. It’s a projection of an election held today, because guessing Generic Ballot movements is a fool’s game and it’s just easier to do a nowcast. That all caveated, this is actually a very useful exercise, because it tells us basically what the Democratic high point looks like, unless we actually get a more Democratic environment than this, which I’m not really letting myself believe.
I’m not sure I think Georgia will be this close, and I know others will think Nevada is too high, but there Laxalt isn’t raising a ton of media and CCM’s cash advantage should go pretty far in such a small state with centralized media markets. For Arizona and Pennsylvania, I don’t think Democrats will win by that much, but that’s why this is a nowcast, not a November projection – I assume the state polls will tighten between now and then, and then the model will move accordingly.
The others are what’s much more interesting – even just plugging in the Barnes +7 Marquette poll today doesn’t give him a lead in Wisconsin, because the environment, trends, and fundraising aren’t giving him much of a boost, and he’s running against an incumbent. Yes, an unpopular one, but the polls should be working that in, and it seems they are. In North Carolina, the model is even more skeptical of Cheri Beasley, mostly because the 538 average has Budd ahead narrowly.
The model (correctly, in my eyes) thinks Tim Ryan is fucked, and that’s one of the signs that I’ve built something that might be able to pass some form of muster this year – because frankly, he’s not winning, and the hopes of so many are deluded by bad polls and an assessment of his chances stuck in the early 2010s. I didn’t bother modelling Florida, but I suspect it would be in the Ryan ballpark if I did – it’s not competitive, and pretending otherwise is insanity.
The best thing for Democrats is that there are only two more competitive seats for them to fight in, and they have non-terrible chances of winning both of them if the environment doesn’t change, and they just need one. The problem for Democrats is that it’s really hard to see either of them getting to a position where they can do better than “lose non-pathetically” – unless the Alaska and Minnesota and Nebraska results are real.
In the three electoral contests since Dobbs, Democrats have outperformed Presidential partisanship in the first two, and look on track to hit a threshold of solid performance in the third (Alaska) when all the votes are counted, and therefore we have to start thinking about the prospect of the environment not just falling back to the GOP lead of pre-Dobbs, but of the environment getting better. GOP pollsters having big leads for Fetterman and Shapiro in Pennsylvania and Marquette having Barnes up 7 are, even adjusted for historical misses, congruent with the idea of a better than 2020 environment for Democrats, even if some of the polls aren’t there yet.
None of this is to say that Democrats will get the better than a D+0.5 environment that the specials are pointing to, but it is worth mentioning that the special elections and some of the polls are pointing to an environment where 2020 is roughly in play. The Washington primary results point to a neutral-ish environment – Democrats got 58.1% of the Senate primary vote in (D+8) 2018 and 55.3% this year, which would be a ~6% swing on margin and a D+2 environment this year, extrapolated out. None of these things in a vacuum is particularly meaningful, but in combination, the chances of a D+2 environment is rising, and that’s probably what it takes for 52 Senate seats.
Right now, Democrats would win 51 Senate seats and lose the House narrowly. If the environment gets worse for them – a perfectly possible, and if you believe the historical trends, modal, outcome – then they can say goodbye to dreams of 52 and the House and worry about holding 50 Senate seats. If it gets better for them, 52 is in play, with either Beasley boosting Black turnout to win North Carolina or Barnes actually doing the thing in Wisconsin.
52 is in play, but don’t conflate in play with anything other than a very steep hill to climb from here. But at least it’s theoretically doable, which for months it wasn’t.