As we assessed the political tea leaves ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, we tracked the results of off-year elections and special elections as potentially informative barometers of public sentiment. Our final conclusion was that there was probably a growing tide of opposition to Trump, with energy and enthusiasm shooting through the roof on the left. The Kavanaugh fiasco clearly helped enhance conservative intensity and was almost certainly a major factor in the Senate GOP’s success. Overall, we predicted that November of last year would be a very good night for Democrats. We estimate that the opposition party will win about 40 seats in the House of Representatives and a half-dozen governorships, while Republicans will hold on to the Senate. All these guesses turned out to be correct.
Now that all eyes have turned to 2020, what should we be looking for? The president’s work permit numbers are mediocre, although his approach to the economy is a clear and key vivid spot. The Democrats’ radicalism on some issues appears to have generated some backlash, but drawing any conclusions at this early stage is foolish. Huge X-factors regarding the president’s re-election chances, such as the Democratic nomination and the future state of the U.S. economy, cannot be determined at this stage. Perhaps we’ll learn more about voter sentiment when Virginia’s legislative elections take place this fall (will state leadership racism scandals, alleged sexual assaults and abortion extremism assist Republicans in this increasingly blue-tinted battleground , or will anti-Trumpism carry the day again?), but for now we only have bread crumbs. And a few breadcrumbs from 2019 suggest the partisan pendulum may be swinging toward the GOP in some places. Here message from Kentucky, where Democrats again plan to spend massive to defeat Mitch McConnell next year:
Another massive victory for state legislative Republicans tonight. Senator-elect Wheeler flipped the former Democratic minority leader’s seat and @KentuckySRCCC now has the largest Republican Senate majority in state history! https://t.co/yZJ2FoofGb
— Republican State Leadership Committee (@RSLC) March 6, 2019
Sure, it happened in a deep red state, but as the tweet notes, it wasn’t just a long-held Democratic district – it was a seat held by a member of Democratic leadership. The GOP is currently at an all-time high in the state’s upper house, along with Democrats down to single digits in a 38-person corps. And as a Republican agent emphasizesThe 2019 event profits weren’t restricted to Kentucky:
This is the fourth state legislative seat that Republicans have flipped since the beginning of the year, including in purple (MN), blue (CT) and red (KY) states. https://t.co/1WCi094bar
— David Kanevsky (@davidkanevsky) March 6, 2019
Let’s look at the remaining gains. Last month in Minnesota, a conservative Republican won a seat as an open state senator According to Minneapolis, this position has been held by Democrats “for decades.” Star Tribune:
Republican Jason Rarick won a hotly contested special election for a Senate seat in the east-central state of Minnesota on Tuesday. flipping a district long controlled by Democrats Volto give his party more power in the state legislature. Rarick, a state representative from Pine City, defeated Democrat Stu Lourey 52% to 46% in the 11th Senate District. John Birrenbach of the Legal Marijuana Now party won about 2 percent of the vote. Rarick replaces former state Sen. Tony Lourey, D-Kerrick, who resigned to become Gov. Tim Walz’s commissioner of human services…The victory means Republicans will enhance their slim majority in the state Senate by one vote. The up-to-date 35-32 split could make it more tough for Walz and Democrats who control the state House to pass proposals this session that are key to their agenda, including bills on guns, health care and the gas tax. Late Tuesday, Republicans celebrated the change of power.
And in deep blue Connecticut, the Republican Party won some special election victoriesflipping two Democrat-controlled seats – including one in a district that Hillary Clinton won in a landslide in the last presidential term:
Republican Party candidates in Connecticut flipped two state legislative seats in a five-race special election on Tuesday. The biggest surprise of the evening came from Gennaro Bizzarro. According to the CT Mirror, he defeated Democratic Republican Rick Lopes in the 6th District Senate race with 53 percent of the vote. The seat became vacant after the newly elected administration of Democratic Governor Ned Lamont appointed an incumbent to a state position…Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won by more than 23 percent in the 2016 presidential election in the same New Britain district that Bizzarro flipped. After the election, Bizzarro told supporters that the race was a “referendum on taxes and tolls.”
Despite an undeniable “blue wave” at the federal and gubernatorial levels last year (the Senate map and terms were uniquely tailored to assist protect and build McConnell’s majority), the Republican State Leadership Committee noted that Democratic gains in state legislatures were actually quite restricted . This is especially true compared to 2010, when voters crushed President Obama’s party in the polls:
“After two years of inflated projections by a newly formed constellation of progressive groups that have pledged to spend hundreds of millions, Democrats only managed to flip a net five houses – all of them in blue states that Hillary Clinton won. The GOP’s red legislative barrage remained sturdy in battleground states such as Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Far outstripped by former President Obama, former AG holder, and billionaire megadonors like Soros, Steyer and others, the RSLC helped preserve almost all of the historic gains of the last decade, protect critical majorities, and even flipped nearly 100 Democratic seats to Republicans (and counting )…Democratic net seat gains in the 2018 election are a miniature fraction of what the RSLC RedMap program achieved in the 2010 election and are well below any comparable wave measurements. Compared to the 21 chambers that Republicans flipped in 2010 – the last comparable midterm – Democrats squandered the opportunity to make significant gains to regain the nearly 1,000 seats they have lost since then.“
Democrats scored just over 300 places in 2018, which is nothing to sneeze at. But as a point of reference, Republicans won 724 seats in Obama’s first midterm cycle, flipping control of 21 houses in one fell swoop. It would be foolish to read too much into the four flipped state legislative seats in a low-turnout special election, and any restoration of a sense of security among Republicans would be foolishly premature. But tracking this data is at least fascinating, especially if more evidence emerges that voters will reverse their overwhelmingly Democratic bias from last year. Even if this pattern continues over the next year and a half, it’s tough to say how it might impact a highly attended and intense presidential race in which the left will undoubtedly be extremely motivated to defeat the incumbent president.
A parting thought: Do you think this episode may have swayed some voters in Kentucky this week?
