VoteWiser

Dems have momentum, but it might not be enough to keep the House.

Slate · August 24, 2022

Last night’s special election for an open House seat in upstate New York was closely watched, though not because it greatly matters who serves out the final four months of the congressional term Antonio Delgado vacated to serve as lieutenant governor. It was viewed as the closest thing to a bellwether special election we’ve had since the Dobbs decision eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion earlier this summer.

New York’s 19th district voted for Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016, and most recently Joe Biden by 1.5 points in 2020. Delgado flipped it in 2018 and won reelection in 2020. Both Democrats and Republicans put up strong candidates in county executives Pat Ryan and Marc Molinaro, respectively. Ryan ran on abortion. Molinaro ran on anything but.

Ryan won. It’s the latest confirmation that Democrats’ electoral outlook has improved since the Dobbs decision, and that Republicans can’t take the expectation of a red midterm wave under an unpopular Democratic incumbent for granted.

All signs in last November’s off-year elections were pointing to wave-like conditions for the GOP. New Jersey Democratic governor Phil Murphy only won reelection by 3 points in a state Joe Biden won by 16 in 2020. Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s race by 2 points in a state Joe Biden won by 10 in 2020. Democrats lost the Virginia House of Delegates and other bellwether local races across Long Island. The same old, same old midterm dynamic was settling in: The party that took power also took ownership of the nation’s problems, while the out-party, still fuming about having lost the previous election (to the extent they accepted it), would walk across hot coals to vote against any Democrat, anywhere. And while the president’s party doesn’t always go down in a wave, it does almost always lose seats.

There have been anomalies. Democrats picked up seats in 1998 under a popular second-term President Bill Clinton, successfully managing a soaring economy, as Republicans’ pursuit of impeachment backfired. Republicans picked up seats in 2002 following 9/11, in the immediate aftermath of which George W. Bush’s approval ratings hit 90 percent and held strong from there.

Would the Jan. 6 insurrection be enough to confine Republicans to another one of these anomalous midterm switcheroos? That Democrats got smoked in 2021’s off-year elections, and were looking at terrible polling for much of 2022, suggested nope. The average voter feels that both Jan. 6 and Trump are bad, but declining real earnings are more immediately bad. What Jan. 6, and Trump’s dogmatic insistence on election denialism as a GOP party plank, have done is to ensure that Republicans produce bozo nominees in various critical state and federal races. That choice does seem to have helped Democrats.

But what really helped them take advantage of Republicans’ spree of nominating bozos seems to have come mostly from Dobbs. Consider some elections that have been held since, in addition to Tuesday’s in New York’s 19th:

• In the late June special election in Nebraska’s 1st District, Republican Mike Flood beat Democrat Patty Pansing Brooks by 6 points. Trump won this district by 11 in 2020.

• In the August 10 special election in Minnesota’s 1st District, Republican Brad Finstad beat Democrat Jeff Ettinger by 4 points. Trump won this district by 9 in 2020.

• Pro-choicers comfortably won a Kansas referendum to preserve state abortion rights in early August.

• And in another New York special election Tuesday night, Republican Joe Sempolinksi beat Democrat Max Della Pia by 7 points. Trump won this district by 11 in 2020.

Special elections aren’t perfect replications of Election Day conditions. But back in 2018 when Democrats were en route to their 40-seat midterm House pickup, they were significantly overperforming the partisan leans of the districts in special elections. Republicans were, too, in special elections—before Dobbs.

Democrats’ improved fortunes are showing up where you’d expect them to in other useful data, too. They’ve risen in the generic congressional ballot. They’re closing the enthusiasm gap, a critical measure ahead of midterm elections when turnout isn’t nearly as high as it is presidential elections. It’s not just polling data. Democrats’ boost in enthusiasm was pretty evident in Pat Ryan’s victory.

So, does the Dobbs boost—plus extreme Republican candidates, plus falling gas prices, plus a string of recent Biden accomplishments—put control of the House in play? Let’s say: It’s more in play than it was before Dobbs, when it was considered completely gone for Democrats! But Republicans are still comfortably favored to win it.

We might be having a different conversation if Democrats had won a dozen seats in 2020, as they were expecting to, instead of losing a dozen seats. Then they’d have a buffer to work with. But they didn’t. Now, Republicans only need a handful of pickups to take back control of the House. And for all their problems, the face of the Democratic Party is still a president whose job approval ratings, while improving, are in the low 40s. Maybe they rise further and can near 50 percent! Or maybe, after a streak of a few good weeks, they settle or even decline. All we can do is keep watching gas prices.

We also might be having a different conversation if the tail end of the redistricting cycle hadn’t been so calamitous for Democrats. There was a moment when Democrats looked like they might wipe away a few Republican seats with their New York gerrymander alone. Florida legislators were pursuing a less-than-aggressive new map, Ohio courts were rejecting the state’s Republican gerrymanders, and Democrats looked like they could gain a second majority-minority district in Alabama (and potentially Louisiana and South Carolina) through the courts. Had those breaks gone their way, Democrats could’ve end up netting seats in this redistricting cycle.

But those breaks did not go their way. New York courts struck down Democrats’ gerrymander, creating all sorts of havoc. Ron DeSantis bullied Florida’s legislature into passing an aggressive map that seems like it could violate state and federal law, but Republicans get to use it in 2022 anyway. Ohio Republicans, similarly, pushed through a gerrymander they’ll be able to use for at least this cycle. SCOTUS rejected the Voting Rights Act challenge for additional majority minority districts in Alabama, and are preparing to take another swat at the VRA when they get around to it. The final Cook Political Report redistricting scorecard gave Republicans an overall gain of 3 seats in this round of redistricting.

It’s undeniable that Democrats, since Dobbs, are having a real and measurable improvement in their fortunes. That, combined with creepy Republican candidates in just about every battleground state, having given them a real chance not just to keep their Senate majority, but to grow it. But retaining the House has always been a tougher challenge for Democrats, and they’re still underdogs. That we’re even entertaining the question, though—and calling them “underdogs” instead of “scientifically dead”—shows how much things have changed.

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New York — 19th District

Josh Riley

Dems have momentum, but it might not be enough to keep the House.