6 Things to Know With 6 Days to Go
6 Things to Know With 6 Days to Go
My roundup of interesting nuggets from the House, Senate, and presidential contests + links to must read pieces.
I wouldn't want to be Texas Senator Ted Cruz. We’ve gotten three polls of Texas this week, which show Donald Trump up 5, 10, and 11 points. Meanwhile they show Cruz up 2, 5, and 4 points respectively.
Trump won Texas by 5.6 points in 2020, and I’ve long thought that Harris would probably need to cut that deficit to roughly three points for Representative Colin Allred to score an upset over Cruz. These polls, however, indicate a bigger crossover vote than one might’ve expected in Texas. The gap between Trump and Cruz in two of them is large enough that if Harris just slices the deficit in Texas by a point or so, it might be enough to topple the polarizing Cruz. That’s especially true given that undecideds should break toward the lesser known Allred.
That isn’t to say Cruz will lose — it’s possible Harris loses Texas by more than Joe Biden did, either because of inroads Trump makes with Latino voters, or because of conservatives moving to Texas during covid. It’s also possible that Cruz keeps the crossover vote low enough to win unless Harris dramatically cuts the Democratic deficit in the state. Yet, Cruz will certainly face a nervous week and the odds of him losing are greater than they seemed even a month ago.
The conventional wisdom is that whichever side wins the House, the margin will be narrow. As Jake Sherman and Melanie Zanona wrote in Punchbowl on Tuesday morning, “Key players in both parties say the election is on a knife’s edge, with dozens of races currently polling within the margin of error. Whichever party takes control of the chamber will likely only enjoy a narrow majority. That makes every single seat critical.”
Yet, there is often a tendency for close races to all break in the same direction as undecided voters come to similar conclusions and one party executes a better turnout operation. As Cook Political’s Amy Walter wrote in 2022, “In looking back over the last twelve election cycles, the races rated as Toss Ups in the House and Senate have split anywhere from 54 percent to 100 percent to one party.” This tendency — while far from ironclad as Walter’s data indicates — leads me to think that if dozens of races are inside of the margin of error, whichever party wins the House may end up with a larger majority than expected.
We haven’t gotten a ton of House polling, but what polling we’ve gotten has largely been good for Democrats. That means it’s within the realm of possibility that Democrats end up with a 10-15 seat majority in the House — hardly a massive margin, but far larger than the current four seat Republican majority.
For the third time in the last month, we’ve gotten a poll from a crucial swing congressional district in Pennsylvania and for the third time, it’s looked remarkably good for Democrats. In the 8th Congressional District, which Donald Trump won by three points in 2020 even as he lost the state, Democratic Representative Matt Cartwright is up seven on his challenger, and Trump is up three on Kamala Harris.
Given that “Scranton Joe” Biden hailed from the district, and routinely touted his roots, it seemed likely that the district might move toward Trump with Biden off the ballot. More broadly, it has swung from rock-ribbed Democratic territory to increasingly Republican territory. Yet, if Harris keeps her deficit roughly equal to Biden’s, it becomes harder for Trump to win the state — especially given the good polling data for Democrats from other districts. Obviously, with one off polls, any or all of them could be wrong. Yet, the fact that all three look good for Democrats is a reason for cautious optimism.
Polling on Monday and Tuesday raised questions about whether Democrats have made gains in the Midwest and Plains states. On Monday, a Kansas poll showed Trump only up five in a state he won by 15 points. Additionally, New York Times polling showed Trump winning Nebraska by 14/15 (depending on if other candidates were included) in a state he won by 19 points in 2020, and independent Dan Osborn only trailing Republican Senator Deb Fischer by two points.
Then on Tuesday, conservative pollster Trafalgar — whose methodology I’m skeptical of, but who usually has results that tilt toward Republicans — only found Trump up 6.1 points in Ohio, where he won by 8 points in both 2016 and 2020, and Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown ahead of his Republican challenger. And late Tuesday night, we got a YouGov/Economist poll of Nebraska that found Fischer up a more comfortable seven points, but also only found Trump up 15.
None of these numbers mean particularly much in terms of the outcome of the presidential race. But they point to a better environment for Democrats that could boost them in the contest for the House and theoretically should bode well for Harris in the crucial states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
In some elections, one party has a great night across the board. This might not be one of them. In 2022, we saw regional variation: Democrats struggled mightily in the blue states of New York and California, which cost them the House of Representatives. We also saw a red wave that crested in the Southeast. But then we saw Democrats do pretty well in the midwest, as well as Colorado, Washington, and Pennsylvania, and decently in Arizona and Nevada. Some of that had to do with candidate quality, but some had to do with how the issue of abortion played in various places.
It’s possible that once again in 2024, we see that kind of variation. There are signs of disparities: witness the numbers I discussed above from the midwest/plains vs. the struggles of Democrats in the early vote in Nevada (though there are reasons to believe they will turn it around there). So I wouldn’t be surprised to see either regional variation or some states where individual factors play a role (the unique damage to the casino based Nevada economy due to Covid, the extremism of Republican governments in Texas and North Carolina, etc).
One of the pieces I’m linking to below by the Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik really did a nice job of capturing how I feel less than a week before Election Day. Essentially, there are global, macro level factors tied to inflation that, when combined with past polling errors that underestimated Donald Trump, make it seem like he’s in good shape.
Yet, there are also a lot of other factors that make this look like a good election for Democrats — from House polling to the Washington all party primary to the gender gap in the early vote to a potential overcorrection by pollsters. Right now, the data and evidence for the latter scenario feel slightly more compelling. But this conflicting evidence explains why this is such a hard election to predict, as well as why a wide range of outcomes remain very possible.
Today’s Election Must Reads:
Thanks for putting this together, Brian! Maybe it's my angst, but the coverage from the major media seems particularly poor this year. It's nice to encounter something that's both rational and free of "all hope is lost" vibes which really don't seem justified.