Democrats Are Likely To Win Full Control Of Congress

With the 2020 General Election just a few days away, Democrats command convincing 9 point leads in both the generic ballot and Presidential opinion polling. Although Republicans have structural advantages in the House, Senate, and Electoral College, the size of the Democratic lead results in a grim outlook for the GOP this cycle.

Our probabilistic forecasts for the House, Senate, and Presidential races are complete and have been tracking the changing national environment over time. Since the first Presidential debate and Trump’s subsequent coronavirus diagnosis, the President lost the small gains he achieved following the Republican National Convention. This article explores our current forecasts for the House and the Senate. Although these might not be the most high profile contests this year, they are absolutely pivotal in determining whether the winner of the Presidential race will be able to govern effectively, or will simply be a placeholder keeping the next President’s seat warm for four years.

The House of Representatives

Following their blue wave in 2018, Democrats go into this year’s House elections with 232 representatives, a comfortable majority. To regain control, Republicans need to make extensive gains in an environment even more favourable to Democrats than the 8.5 point lead they enjoyed in 2018. Additionally, Democrats now have the advantage of incumbency in almost every swing seat, having won them off Republican incumbents 2 years ago. As a result, our model gives Democrats a 98% chance of maintaining control of the House, and actually expects them to expand their majority, winning 240 seats on average.

The Senate

In a chamber where California gets the same number of representatives as Wyoming, Democrats are always going to struggle. The Republican structural advantage in the Senate is immense, such that even in 2018 Republicans were able to expand their majority, and now occupy 53 out of the 100 seats. However, in 2018 Democrats had very high exposure in the Senate, with the vast majority of the seats up for election that year occupied by Democrats. This gave the GOP plenty of chances to pick off some of the less secure Democrats in red states they’d won courtesy of excellent years for Democrats in 2006 and 2012. In 2020, the tables are turned as the GOP seeks to hold onto the gains it made in 2014. Now Republicans have high exposure, and could suffer significant losses in this very blue national environment.

12 Democratic and 23 Republican seats are up for election this year, including many Republican held seats in moderately red states. To win control Democrats need to make a net gain of 3 or 4, depending on whether Kamala Harris or Mike Pence is elected to the Vice Presidency, which breaks ties in the Senate. The GOP stands to make a fairly easy gain unseating Doug Jones in Alabama. Following his victory in one of the reddest states in the country as a result of facing an exceptionally unpopular opponent in Roy Moore, Jones has been voting consistently with the Democratic mainstream. It appears he decided that even if he voted as a conservative Democrat in a similar manner to Joe Manchin in deep red West Virginia, Jones would still lose his re-election campaign, so has simply been voting with his party. The only other Republican target is Michigan, where Democrat Gary Peters is facing a small threat to his re-election campaign, but will probably pull through given that Peters and Biden are both consistently leading polls in the state.

Given Biden’s lead in national polling, it’s reasonable to assume that Democrats therefore need to make approximately 4 gains to win control of the Senate. Colorado is an obvious target, Biden is leading there by 14 points and incumbent Cory Gardener has made little effort to appeal to moderates in the state, and trails in polls by a significant margin. If Democrats can’t win this one, they can’t win.

Arizona presents a second strong target for Democrats. This swing state is currently leaning towards Biden, and the Republican incumbent Martha McSally is only an appointed incumbent, not an elected one, and is therefore not expected to command a significant incumbent advantage. Interestingly, in 2018 McSally lost Republican Jeff Flake’s old Senate seat to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, so if McSally loses again this year she will have been responsible for the GOP losing both Arizona Senate seats in the space of 2 years!

Beyond these 2 targets, Democrats have to work harder to make gains. Maine is a slightly blue state, but incumbent Republican Susan Collins has a moderate reputation, putting her in a much stronger political position than Gardener or McSally. However, since voting in favour of confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, voters in Maine are increasingly questioning her moderate reputation. She trails slightly in polling, but this is a race that could easily go either way.

Iowa and North Carolina are each somewhat red states with Republican incumbents, so the fact that Democratic challengers have small leads in each of these states is a reflection on the national political situation being very favourable toward Democrats. Additionally, Democrats are only slightly behind in Montana, Kansas, Arkansas, South Carolina, and both races in Georgia. All of these are red states with Republican incumbents, the fact that Democrats are even in contention here must be alarming for the GOP.

All in all, Democrats have 2 easy opportunities to make gains, and 9 highly competitive races which could go either way. If Democrats win even just a couple of those, they win the Senate. That’s why our model gives Democrats an 81% chance of taking control of the upper chamber. An important note is that the margin could also be extremely important here. If Democrats have only 50 Senators, they would be reliant on conservative Democrat Joe Manchin, whose vote could not be counted on for any liberal policies. If Democrats have 52 seats things are very different, and if Biden were President he could probably pass mainstream Democratic reform through Congress easily. With 55 seats or more, Democrats could run rampant passing whatever progressive policies they so choose, so truly every single competitive race could have an immense impact on politics going forward.

Whilst this piece has focused on the more likely scenario of Democratic victory, it’s worth emphasising the fact that the 2% and 19% chances of Republicans winning the House and Senate respectively are real and should not be ignored. But to hold on even in just the upper chamber, the GOP has a lot of ground to make up. Aside from Susan Collins, Republicans in key races show very limited interest in using moderate rhetoric and policy positions to persuade Independent voters, leading Independents to overwhelmingly back Democrats. While passionate conservative messaging does encourage Republican turnout, it also fires up Democratic turnout, such that Republicans find themselves having to play defence deep within their own territory. If the GOP does indeed suffer a severe defeat this year, they may have to re-examine this strategy.

Introducing RedvBlue’s House Model

With little more than three weeks until election day, the races for the Senate and the House are intensifying. And after much data collection and programming, the RedvBlue model for the House of Representatives is up and running. Broadly speaking, this works in a similar way to the Senate model, with a few minor additions and alterations such as an increased incumbency advantage that is more uniform for each district, unlike incumbency advantages for Senate seats, which vary significantly depending on the population of the state. The main new feature for the House model is the incorporation of trickle down effects. This is modelling the fact that voters tend to be more motivated to turnout to vote for higher level positions, such as Governor or Senator, than lower ones such as Representative in the House. Therefore if, for example, a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Texas is boosting Democratic enthusiasm in the state and getting left leaning voters to turnout on election day, it’s likely that those voters will also vote for their Democratic House candidate as they happen to be in the polling booth anyway, so Democrats across Texas get a boost.

Without further ado, here are our predictions for 10/14/2018:

Democrats chances in the House are looking very good. There’s certainly a reasonable chance that Republicans hold on to a majority in the House, and that shouldn’t be ignored, but the most likely scenario is that Democrats gain somewhere in the region of 40 seats overall, a fully-fledged blue wave, providing them with a solid majority in the lower chamber of Congress. What’s more, there’s a slim but significant probability that Democrats gain more like 50 or 60 seats overall, which would probably be a sufficiently resounding victory to consolidate the embattled House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s position at the forefront of the party, and would certainly be a worrying sign for Donald Trump. That said, in 2010, the Obama Administration’s first midterm, the Republicans achieved a net gain of 63 seats. Yet Obama went on to win re-election fairly smoothly despite approval ratings only a little higher than Trump’s, so a big blue wave should not be interpreted as too bad a sign for the Trump Administration. The truly remarkable thing for Democrats is that even in the worst case scenario for them that has a reasonable chance of occurring, they actually make a small net gain of around 10 seats. This is simply because Republicans made such huge gains in 2010 and 2014, and held on to almost all of them in 2012 and 2016, that almost all the remaining Democratic seats are in deep blue districts, so Republicans have very few opportunities to make gains, and need to defend some quite blue districts of their own.

By stark contrast, the Senate is looking fantastic for Republicans. Not only have they pulled ahead into comfortable leads in Texas and Tennessee, likely as polls come out showing these red states react to the Kavanaugh confirmation battle, but Nevada and Arizona appear to have turned into much closer races, each now being an almost perfect toss up. But how are these two forecasts so different?

Firstly, it’s worth reiterating just how good the Senate map is for Republicans is this year. Their only really vulnerable seats are in Nevada and Arizona, and they have a wide selection of red state Democratic incumbents to target. Add to that the fact that popular former Governor of Florida Rick Scott is bringing his considerable political weight to bear in the state’s Senate race, posing a serious problem to Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson, and Republican chances end up looking very good despite a left leaning national environment. This overall environment is what is giving Democrats such good odds in the House, where of course all 435 seats are up for election, as opposed to just 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate.

Secondly, the key races in the battles for the House and Senate are happening in very different parts of the country. The most important Senate races are in deep red states like North Dakota, Texas, and Tennessee. Hyper-partisanship means that it’s very difficult for a Democrat to win any of these in 2018. Meanwhile, the most important House races this year seem to largely be in the rural parts of California, New York, and New Jersey. These districts tend to be 5 or 6 percent more Republican leaning than the nation as a whole, but with a national environment leaning towards the Democrats by about 8 points, it’s perfectly plausible that these could change hands. It’s also worth noting the aforementioned trickle down effects in these states. All 3 have Senate races this year, with a Democratic nominee strongly favoured to win. In California, some Republican voters may stay home, as due to the “top two” primary system in California there isn’t even a Republican candidate for Senate on the ballot paper.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that Congress is really, really unpopular, with about a 17% approval rating. This means that incumbency is not actually very powerful this year. This works against Democrats in the Senate, as they are totally reliant upon strong Democratic incumbents in red states holding on for dear life. But in the House, it actually works in their favour. Almost none of their incumbents there are in any kind of danger as they are all in very blue districts, and the key races are being fought over seats currently held by Republicans. All things considered, 2018 is shaping up to be a rough year for incumbents, especially Republicans in the House, which is probably why a full 26 of them retired this year without seeking to run for higher office.

The big picture then, is that the most likely outcome is that of a split Congress, with Democrats controlling the House and Republicans the Senate. This would be very interesting indeed in the polarised politics of the modern day, as politicians may be forced to actually compromise with the other side of the aisle in order to get anything done.

Do Democrats Really Have A Chance In Tennessee and Texas?

Predictions as of 10/1/2018:

Tennessee has not had a Democratic Senator since Jim Sasser left office in 1995 having lost his re-election campaign by 14.3 percentage points, a huge defeat for an incumbent. The state hasn’t voted for a Democratic nominee for the presidency since 1996, and in 2016 Trump won in Tennessee by a full 26 points. Sure, it’s an open race, so Republicans don’t have the advantage of incumbency, but even so, any state-wide election in Tennessee should surely be an open goal for the GOP. And yet our model is giving Republican Marsha Blackburn only a 58.5% chance of winning its Senate race this year, why?

Firstly, Phil Bredesen is no normal Democratic candidate in a red state. He is a former Governor of Tennessee, and a successful one at that, winning re-election in 2006 with 69% of the vote, winning every county and more votes than any gubernatorial candidate in the history of the state, which stretches back to 1796. His reputation as a moderate Democrat makes him far more palatable amongst independents and moderate Republicans in Tennessee than a typical Democrat, and his political experience is practically unrivalled in the state. In 1991 he defeated Councilwoman Betty Nixon with 72% of the vote to become Mayor of Nashville, a position he used to invest heavily in education, building and renovating 75 schools throughout the city. In 1995, no one even ran against his campaign for re-election. His two terms as Mayor built him a formidable base in Nashville, which is incredibly significant given that Nashville’s metro area contains 1.9 million of Tennessee’s 6.7 million inhabitants (about 28%). Since his governorship, he’s been viewed as a potential Democratic presidential candidate, and was vetted for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Obama Administration. He is a political giant in only a modestly sized state.

Secondly, the national environment is leaning heavily to the left, with Democrats leading the generic congressional ballot by approximately 8.5 points. Tennessee tends to lean about 14 points to the right, taking away 8.5 from 14 leaves only a 5.5 point lead for the Republicans, which is significant, but by no means insurmountable. Add on to this Trump’s poor approval ratings and Tennessee, along with many other red states, looks a lot more competitive.

The national environment is of course also relevant in Texas (much to the distress of millions of pro-secession Texans), but intuitively speaking the state should be even more hostile to a Democratic Senate candidate than Tennessee. Texas hasn’t had a Democratic Senator since 1993 after incumbent Bob Krueger lost his re-election campaign by an impressively abysmal 34.7 points in what the Houston Chronicle called the worst campaign in the state’s modern political history. Texas hasn’t voted for a Democratic nominee for the presidency since narrowly supporting Jimmy Carter in 1976. Furthermore, the Senate seat up for election this year is guarded by none other than well known incumbent and 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz, armed with a net worth of over $3 million and a comfortable win in his previous election of 16.1 points, even though it occurred in a Democratic leaning national environment as it coincided with Obama’s re-election campaign. So far Cruz has raised a whopping $24 million, and is extremely keen to hold on to his seat as at the age of only 47, practically a child compared to much of the Senate, he could easily use his position as Senator to set himself up for running for President in 2024.

So how do the Democrats compete with a (comparatively) young man with a net worth of over $3 million? It’s simple, an ever so slightly younger man with a net worth of $9 million, and a proven track record of winning the unwinnable races in politics. In 2005, Beto O’Rourke defeated 2 term incumbent Anthony Cobos to win a seat on the El Paso City Council. In 2012, he ran for the Democratic nomination for the deeply left leaning 16th congressional district in Texas, facing off against 8 term Democratic incumbent Silvestre Reyes, who was endorsed by then President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton. Somehow, O’Rourke won the seat, and is now hoping to pull off a third extraordinary victory, seizing onto the key opportunity presented to him in 2018, with Cruz’s approval ratings as Senator going negative, Trump’s approval in Texas surprisingly low, and a heavily left-leaning national environment. Like Cruz, he’s raised $24 million, and he is swiftly fighting to gain the name-recognition he needs to compete with the now famous Cruz with talk show appearances and a campaign with an active social media presence.

Both of these races are looking extremely close, with O’Rourke trailing Cruz by only 3 or 4 points and Bredesen actually ahead of his opponent Marsha Blackburn by about 1 point. Needless to say, if Republicans were to lose either one of these seats, the consequences for them would be extreme. As discussed in a previous article on RedvBlue, Democratic incumbents in deep red seats are an absolute necessity to Democratic hopes of controlling the upper chamber of Congress. O’Rourke in particular is a huge threat to the GOP, if he were to win, he could potentially stay on in the Senate for a long time. He is young, he’s proving himself an adept campaigner, and with the advantage of incumbency could well hold on to the seat in Texas in future elections, especially as the state is becoming less and less Republican as time goes on. These two elections could very well determine who controls the Senate for the next two years or more, and both are extremely competitive.

The New Blue Wall

Predictions as of 9/30/2018:

The Democrats’ best path to control of the Senate is simple:

Hold all of their current seats
Win the open seat in Arizona
Unseat Republican incumbent Dean Heller in Nevada

Objectives 2 and 3 are both reasonably achievable. Arizona is 4-5 points more Republican than the nation as a whole, but with the national environment leaning 8-9 points in favour of Democrats, the seat is slightly favoured to turn blue, our model gives the Democrats a 69.3% chance of achieving this. Nevada is 1-2 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole, but the Republican incumbent makes matters more difficult for the Democrats. In fact, the advantage provided by incumbency is even greater in less populous states such as Nevada, such that even in spite of the heavily Democratic national environment, Senator Dean Heller has only a 68% chance of losing their seat.

Surprisingly, it is holding onto all of their current seats that will be most difficult for Democrats. 10 Senate seats currently held by Democrats in states which voted for Donald Trump are up for election, including the deep red states of North Dakota, Indiana, Montana, Missouri, and West Virginia. The GOP is not favoured to win any of these states individually, but overall it is unlikely that the Democrats hold on to every single one of these seats.

Since 1992, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin all voted for the Democratic nominee for the presidency in every election up to and including 2012. Together they represented an absolutely crucial block of electoral votes which the Democrats came to depend on and refer to as the “blue wall”. In 2016, the entire election hung on these states, and Donald Trump’s successful campaign to win over non college educated white voters in the Upper Midwest allowed him to tear down the blue wall, simultaneously winning the election and threatening to torpedo Democrats’ future chances in the electoral college for decades to come. If Trump’s coalitions in the Upper Midwest hold up in future elections, Democrats would struggle to reach 270 electoral votes. They need 38 more electoral votes than Clinton won in 2016. Florida provides only 29, and after that they are running out of options without the blue wall. Democratic campaigns would have to make bold attempts to win over voters in quite red states such as North Carolina and Arizona, perhaps with attempts to energise ethnic minorities into turning out in larger numbers than have ever been seen before.

The 5 Democratic Senate seats in deep red states, North Dakota, Indiana, Montana, Missouri, and West Virginia, form a similar blue wall in the Senate. They are absolutely crucial to Democratic hopes of controlling the upper chamber of Congress. There are 27 states rated as leaning significantly more Republican than the nation as a whole, compared to only 15 leaning to the left. Hence, in order to control the Senate the Democrats must be able to win over voters in red states, and this year every Democratic Senate seat in a red state is up for re-election, with the sole exception of Doug Jones’ seat in Alabama. This is extremely unfortunate for the Republicans, as the national environment being so unfavourable for the GOP this year may allow many of the strong Democratic incumbents to survive. Every single incumbent the Republicans can defeat hugely improves their prospects in the Senate over not just the next 6 years but the next two decades. Without the advantage of incumbency, Democrats would be hopeless in these deep red states, and without these crucial seats they would also be hopeless in terms of controlling the Senate as a whole.

In terms of 2018 alone, losing even one seat in this blue wall in the Senate would hugely damage Democratic chances of overall control. The only realistic opportunities for Democrats to make additional gains beyond Nevada and Arizona to make up for losing part of the blue wall are an open race in Tennessee, which leans 14 points to the right, and Texas, where strong Republican incumbent and big name Ted Cruz has $24 million and counting to defend the state, which is a full 8 points more Republican than America overall. So Democrats desperately need their incumbents to lock up key states, before they can truly entertain the possibility of control of the Senate.