McClatchy: At RNC meeting, fears of midterm wipeout

[GeorgiaModerate]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article149829784.html

[Beet]

Luckily, the Senate is stacked in their favor, and thanks to gerrymandering, they can lose the popular vote by an absurd percentage and still keep the House.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Luckily, the Senate is stacked in their favor, and thanks to gerrymandering, they can lose the popular vote by an absurd percentage and still keep the House.

Dems winning the two party house vote 55-45 would probably be enough to flip it, and that's definitely possible. (2012 was only 51-49 D)

[Hindsight was 2020]

Seriously I know it's early but how can anyone who has been watching politics the past 20-30 odd years and somehow think the GOP is not going to have a ugly 2018? The base have no motivation to vote, the dems are more fired up now then I have ever seen them, they are bungling healthcare which on general has been the source of big midterm backlashes, and Trump is nearing Bush 06 approval levels an we are just out of his 100 days

[Yank2133]

Luckily, the Senate is stacked in their favor, and thanks to gerrymandering, they can lose the popular vote by an absurd percentage and still keep the House.

Gerrymandering won't save them if this is truly a wave election.

[Beet]

Luckily, the Senate is stacked in their favor, and thanks to gerrymandering, they can lose the popular vote by an absurd percentage and still keep the House.

Dems winning the two party house vote 55-45 would probably be enough to flip it, and that's definitely possible. (2012 was only 51-49 D)

There is no such thing as a 55-45 two party house vote. Even the biggest waves in history (1994, 2006, and 2010) were only 7-8 points. The Republicans are virtually guaranteed control of Congress in 2019.

[Virginiá]

There is no such thing as a 55-45 two party house vote. Even the biggest waves in history (1994, 2006, and 2010) were only 7-8 points. The Republicans are virtually guaranteed control of Congress in 2019.

Depending on how you want to classify a wave, those aren't the biggest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1958
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1960
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1964
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1974
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1976
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1982
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2008

Those were all bigger in terms of popular vote, and some in terms of PV/seat change. 1974 was something like 16 points. And while I don't have the popular vote numbers for the New Deal waves, I'm sure they were just as massive. All things considered, I'd hardly say Republicans are guaranteed control. They do have a decent advantage, though.

[Beet]

In the elections from 1958 to 1982, the Democrats had a structural advantage in the House and massive Party ID structural advantage, so their margins there are not the result of a "wave", but structural factors unique to that era which no longer exist. There is no reason to think a 10% margin is anywhere within the realm of possibility.

[Virginiá]

I'm sorry Beet I accidentally hit modify instead of quote on your post and for some reason didn't realize it when I was doing my post!


There are tons of elections in between those dates that were much closer in the PV. You can't honestly call a 16, almost 17 point win the simple result of a structural advantage, not to mention some of those other elections. Those were all waves in the popular vote, and a number of times they didn't add much to Democrats' seat count as the PV would imply because they already had so many seats.

Like I said, it depends how you want to classify a wave. 1976, Democrats still had a wave in the popular vote, but gained only 1 seat because they were already at 291 seats prior to the election.

[Duke of York]

Luckily, the Senate is stacked in their favor, and thanks to gerrymandering, they can lose the popular vote by an absurd percentage and still keep the House.

Dems winning the two party house vote 55-45 would probably be enough to flip it, and that's definitely possible. (2012 was only 51-49 D)

There is no such thing as a 55-45 two party house vote. Even the biggest waves in history (1994, 2006, and 2010) were only 7-8 points. The Republicans are virtually guaranteed control of Congress in 2019.

they are not guaranteed control. You get a popular vote win of 8 points nationwide for the House it is impossible for them to keep a majority.

[Mr. Morden]

Luckily, the Senate is stacked in their favor, and thanks to gerrymandering, they can lose the popular vote by an absurd percentage and still keep the House.

Dems winning the two party house vote 55-45 would probably be enough to flip it, and that's definitely possible. (2012 was only 51-49 D)

There is no such thing as a 55-45 two party house vote. Even the biggest waves in history (1994, 2006, and 2010) were only 7-8 points. The Republicans are virtually guaranteed control of Congress in 2019.

they are not guaranteed control. You get a popular vote win of 8 points nationwide for the House it is impossible for them to keep a majority.

8 points isn't necessarily enough for the Dems to get a majority.  Look at the House margins last year.  You can't count up to 24 seats that the Republicans won by single digits.  The tipping point seat was actually Mia Love's district, which she won by a 12.5% margin, while the GOP won nationally by 1%.

Now, obviously there isn't going to be a uniform swing.  But just crudely shifting the 2016 margins of every district by 9 percentage points towards the Democrats gives a Dem. national victory margin of 8 points, yet they still fall short of a majority.  So it's certainly possible that 8 points won't be enough.  If you look back at the House margins in the 2000s, you'll see that the Dems now have a somewhat bigger structural disadvantage than they did under the district lines of that decade.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

In the elections from 1958 to 1982, the Democrats had a structural advantage in the House and massive Party ID structural advantage, so their margins there are not the result of a "wave", but structural factors unique to that era which no longer exist. There is no reason to think a 10% margin is anywhere within the realm of possibility.

Virginia also provided '08 as an example, which was D+10. Why can't '18 be '08 redux?

[Terry the Fat Shark]

In the elections from 1958 to 1982, the Democrats had a structural advantage in the House and massive Party ID structural advantage, so their margins there are not the result of a "wave", but structural factors unique to that era which no longer exist. There is no reason to think a 10% margin is anywhere within the realm of possibility.

Virginia also provided '08 as an example, which was D+10. Why can't '18 be '08 redux?

because Barack Obama isn't running for President

[Virginiá]

because Barack Obama isn't running for President

He certainly gave that election quite a shot of energy but Democrats also came a little shy of 10% in 2006. Putting aside 2010-2014, where Obama being president or being on the ballot didn't come close to wave-like numbers in the House, Democrats don't need to have Obama to have a wave.

Democrats are probably getting overconfident about 2018 (myself included), but I also think Republicans are are underestimating (often significantly) the chances of them getting wiped out next year. It doesn't take a veteran strategist to see all the warning signs popping up.

[Terry the Fat Shark]

because Barack Obama isn't running for President

He certainly gave that election quite a shot of energy but Democrats also came a little shy of 10% in 2006. Putting aside 2010-2014, where Obama being president or being on the ballot didn't come close to wave-like numbers in the House, Democrats don't need to have Obama to have a wave.

Democrats are probably getting overconfident about 2018 (myself included), but I also think Republicans are are underestimating (often significantly) the chances of them getting wiped out next year. It doesn't take a veteran strategist to see all the warning signs popping up.

I don't doubt that we will lose seats, but I'm gonna wait to see what things are like in Summer 2018 or so before worrying about any wipeout.

[Beet]

Luckily, the Senate is stacked in their favor, and thanks to gerrymandering, they can lose the popular vote by an absurd percentage and still keep the House.

Dems winning the two party house vote 55-45 would probably be enough to flip it, and that's definitely possible. (2012 was only 51-49 D)

There is no such thing as a 55-45 two party house vote. Even the biggest waves in history (1994, 2006, and 2010) were only 7-8 points. The Republicans are virtually guaranteed control of Congress in 2019.

they are not guaranteed control. You get a popular vote win of 8 points nationwide for the House it is impossible for them to keep a majority.

8 points isn't necessarily enough for the Dems to get a majority.  Look at the House margins last year.  You can't count up to 24 seats that the Republicans won by single digits.  The tipping point seat was actually Mia Love's district, which she won by a 12.5% margin, while the GOP won nationally by 1%.

Now, obviously there isn't going to be a uniform swing.  But just crudely shifting the 2016 margins of every district by 9 percentage points towards the Democrats gives a Dem. national victory margin of 8 points, yet they still fall short of a majority.  So it's certainly possible that 8 points won't be enough.  If you look back at the House margins in the 2000s, you'll see that the Dems now have a somewhat bigger structural disadvantage than they did under the district lines of that decade.

By god it's even worse than I thought. It would take an 11.5% margin. At this point, the Dems have to put electoral reform much higher on the agenda.

[Mr. Morden]

Luckily, the Senate is stacked in their favor, and thanks to gerrymandering, they can lose the popular vote by an absurd percentage and still keep the House.

Dems winning the two party house vote 55-45 would probably be enough to flip it, and that's definitely possible. (2012 was only 51-49 D)

There is no such thing as a 55-45 two party house vote. Even the biggest waves in history (1994, 2006, and 2010) were only 7-8 points. The Republicans are virtually guaranteed control of Congress in 2019.

they are not guaranteed control. You get a popular vote win of 8 points nationwide for the House it is impossible for them to keep a majority.

8 points isn't necessarily enough for the Dems to get a majority.  Look at the House margins last year.  You can't count up to 24 seats that the Republicans won by single digits.  The tipping point seat was actually Mia Love's district, which she won by a 12.5% margin, while the GOP won nationally by 1%.

Now, obviously there isn't going to be a uniform swing.  But just crudely shifting the 2016 margins of every district by 9 percentage points towards the Democrats gives a Dem. national victory margin of 8 points, yet they still fall short of a majority.  So it's certainly possible that 8 points won't be enough.  If you look back at the House margins in the 2000s, you'll see that the Dems now have a somewhat bigger structural disadvantage than they did under the district lines of that decade.

By god it's even worse than I thought. It would take an 11.5% margin.

That's if there was a completely uniform swing, but there's reason to think that the "swing seats" are more elastic than the safe seats.  E.g., if you were to do the same calculation back in 2005 based off of the 2004 House margins, you would predict that the Dems needed a 7.7 point margin to win the House in 2006.  That was at least something of an overestimate of what they actually needed, though I haven't run the numbers on 2006 to see how badly that overshoots their required victory margin in the popular vote.

[Figueira]

Luckily, the Senate is stacked in their favor, and thanks to gerrymandering, they can lose the popular vote by an absurd percentage and still keep the House.

Dems winning the two party house vote 55-45 would probably be enough to flip it, and that's definitely possible. (2012 was only 51-49 D)

There is no such thing as a 55-45 two party house vote. Even the biggest waves in history (1994, 2006, and 2010) were only 7-8 points. The Republicans are virtually guaranteed control of Congress in 2019.

they are not guaranteed control. You get a popular vote win of 8 points nationwide for the House it is impossible for them to keep a majority.

8 points isn't necessarily enough for the Dems to get a majority.  Look at the House margins last year.  You can't count up to 24 seats that the Republicans won by single digits.  The tipping point seat was actually Mia Love's district, which she won by a 12.5% margin, while the GOP won nationally by 1%.

Now, obviously there isn't going to be a uniform swing.  But just crudely shifting the 2016 margins of every district by 9 percentage points towards the Democrats gives a Dem. national victory margin of 8 points, yet they still fall short of a majority.  So it's certainly possible that 8 points won't be enough.  If you look back at the House margins in the 2000s, you'll see that the Dems now have a somewhat bigger structural disadvantage than they did under the district lines of that decade.

By god it's even worse than I thought. It would take an 11.5% margin.

That's if there was a completely uniform swing, but there's reason to think that the "swing seats" are more elastic than the safe seats.  E.g., if you were to do the same calculation back in 2005 based off of the 2004 House margins, you would predict that the Dems needed a 7.7 point margin to win the House in 2006.  That was at least something of an overestimate of what they actually needed, though I haven't run the numbers on 2006 to see how badly that overshoots their required victory margin in the popular vote.

I actually made a post about this on AH.com a while back (I also made a thread about it on Atlas, but nobody replied to it):

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So the moral of the story is, Democrats probably don't need to win the PV by like 10 points in order to win the House. What's more important is making sure the pro-Democratic swing happens in competitive districts, rather than, say, Alma Adams winning re-election by an even bigger margin.

[Mr. Morden]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So the moral of the story is, Democrats probably don't need to win the PV by like 10 points in order to win the House. What's more important is making sure the pro-Democratic swing happens in competitive districts, rather than, say, Alma Adams winning re-election by an even bigger margin.

Well yeah, if you only look at the seats that the Dems picked up, then of course those will, on average, have had larger swings than the country as a whole.  But there were also some districts that, prior to the election, one would have expected might be in play in a wave that gave the Dems 30 seats, yet that came up just short because those seats had smaller than expected swings.

What I would like to do at some point (which shouldn't take long; I just haven't gotten around to it yet) is to look at what the actual tipping point seat was in the 2006 election.  Like I said, if you looked at the 2004 numbers and assumed a uniform swing, then you would have expected that the Dems would need a 7.7 national PV margin to take the House.  I think that's an overestimate of what they ultimately needed, but I should look at the margin in the tipping point seat of 2006 to see how big of an overestimate it is.

[Mr. Morden]

What I would like to do at some point (which shouldn't take long; I just haven't gotten around to it yet) is to look at what the actual tipping point seat was in the 2006 election.  Like I said, if you looked at the 2004 numbers and assumed a uniform swing, then you would have expected that the Dems would need a 7.7 national PV margin to take the House.  I think that's an overestimate of what they ultimately needed, but I should look at the margin in the tipping point seat of 2006 to see how big of an overestimate it is.

OK, to follow up on this, I just figured out the tipping point seat for 2006.  Assuming I have the numbers right, it was Iowa-3, Leonard Boswell’s seat.  Funnily enough, not a Dem. pickup, but a Dem. hold of an endangered incumbent.  He won by 5.1 points.  Since the Dems won nationally by 8.0 points, that means they only “needed” to win by 2.9 points in order to win the House.  This contrasts with the 7.7 point lead that you would have expected them to need if you just took the 2004 numbers and assumed a uniform swing.

So the uniform swing assumption overshot what they actually needed by 4.8 points.  For 2018, the uniform swing assumption would predict that the Dems need a whopping 11.4 point national margin of victory in order to take back the House.  But if there’s a similar overshoot as there was 12 years ago (because swing seats are more elastic than safe seats), then you get 6.6 points.

So, TLDR: I guess it’s not as bad for Dems as I thought.  Because swing seats are swingier, there’s a good chance that (barely) winning a House majority "only" requires them to win the national popular vote by about 7 points.  Of course, that’s still a bigger structural disadvantage than the one they had in the 2000s.  But if in 2018 they win the popular vote nationally by the same margin they did in 2006, then there’s a decent chance that they’ll just barely eke out a House majority.

[Tartarus Sauce]

What I would like to do at some point (which shouldn't take long; I just haven't gotten around to it yet) is to look at what the actual tipping point seat was in the 2006 election.  Like I said, if you looked at the 2004 numbers and assumed a uniform swing, then you would have expected that the Dems would need a 7.7 national PV margin to take the House.  I think that's an overestimate of what they ultimately needed, but I should look at the margin in the tipping point seat of 2006 to see how big of an overestimate it is.

OK, to follow up on this, I just figured out the tipping point seat for 2006.  Assuming I have the numbers right, it was Iowa-3, Leonard Boswell’s seat.  Funnily enough, not a Dem. pickup, but a Dem. hold of an endangered incumbent.  He won by 5.1 points.  Since the Dems won nationally by 8.0 points, that means they only “needed” to win by 2.9 points in order to win the House.  This contrasts with the 7.7 point lead that you would have expected them to need if you just took the 2004 numbers and assumed a uniform swing.

So the uniform swing assumption overshot what they actually needed by 4.8 points.  For 2018, the uniform swing assumption would predict that the Dems need a whopping 11.4 point national margin of victory in order to take back the House.  But if there’s a similar overshoot as there was 12 years ago (because swing seats are more elastic than safe seats), then you get 6.6 points.

So, TLDR: I guess it’s not as bad for Dems as I thought.  Because swing seats are swingier, there’s a good chance that (barely) winning a House majority "only" requires them to win the national popular vote by about 7 points.  Of course, that’s still a bigger structural disadvantage than the one they had in the 2000s.  But if in 2018 they win the popular vote nationally by the same margin they did in 2006, then there’s a decent chance that they’ll just barely eke out a House majority.

Last I checked, the general congressional ballot was Dem +6 so they would already be close to reaching their minimum under your model's assumptions. Considering they're almost certain to gain on the general ballot as the administration progresses and the early unpopularity of the Trump administration, I'd contend the House shifting into Democratic hands is less of an uphill battle than some seem to think it is. People are slow to adjust their expectations to the historically constant midterm incumbent losses and also assume that gerrymandering is more ironclad than it really is and that low midterm turnout for Dems under Obama is the new baseline. If anything, reduced Republican turnout is a serious threat under a tumultuous and divisive presidency like Trump's.

Republican fears are well placed.