Evidence
suggests GOP wave
Election
experts are in overdrive debating whether or not the forthcoming
election will be a “wave election,” one in which the Republican
Party makes major gains and takes control of the Senate. For example,
the Cook Political Report recently opined that the GOP is on track to
pick up four to six Senate seats. If they are correct, that would
certainly not constitute a wave election. In order to take control of
the Senate the Republicans need to gain at least six seats. Picking
up four to six seats would amount to a humiliating defeat or winning
by a whisker.
On
the other hand, Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report
said recently, “I am now expecting a substantial Republican Senate
wave in November with a net gain of at least seven seats. But I
wouldn’t be shocked with a larger gain.”
And
Nate Silver’s 538 Senate Model stated recently, “our model
regards a true Republican wave as possible: It gives the party almost
a 25 percent chance of finishing with 54 or more seats.” But,
hedging his bets, Silver also says, “A large number of states
remain competitive and Democrats could easily retain the Senate”.
So
there you have it, the experts aren’t sure. We can either wait
until November 4 or try to anticipate what’s coming. Let’s try.
The
website Real Clear Politics (RCP), among many other things, provides
updated polling on all of the contested Senate races. Of particular
importance is its polling in the closely contested battleground
states of North Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alaska, Iowa,
Colorado, Georgia and Kentucky. How well or poorly the GOP fares in
these states will determine whether the Republicans regain the Senate
and whether they will be swept to power by a wave or not.
In
North Carolina, for example, the RCP average of all polls shows that
Republican Thom Tillis leads Democrat Kay Hagan by less than 1
percent, 43.3 percent to 42.5 percent. The seven other battleground
states follow the same pattern. The leader, whether a Republican (in
five of those states) or a Democrat (in two of those states), has a
very small lead. Hence the uncertainty in the collective minds of the
experts.
But
look more closely at the North Carolina numbers. They only add to
85.8 percent. The winner on election night almost certainly will be
the candidate who wins most of the missing 14 percent. And this same
pattern of missing votes exists in all of the battleground state
polls. So how will those folks cast their ballots? If we know that,
we can know whether a wave is coming or not.
To
a very large degree Americans vote their pocketbooks. It is also the
case that congressional elections at the sixth year of a president’s
term in office are a referendum on the president. And on both
measures there are data that point in a clear direction.
Writing
in the Washington Post on September 3, Ed Rogers cites economic data
that are chilling. He references an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll
showing that almost half of Americans believe that we are still in a
recession. 76 percent of respondents in that poll said they do not
believe that their children will fare as well as they have fared.
Rogers also referenced a report from Sentier Research showing that
household income is down 4.8 percent from December 2007, and down 3.1
percent since the recession ended in 2009. In addition, the Pew
Charitable Trust recently reported that from 2007 to 2014 no state
reported employment rate gains for 25-54 year-old persons, and 29
states, including all of our eight battleground states except Iowa
and Alaska, had statistically significant declines.
A
recent poll by the Washington Post and ABC News reports that by a
margin of 52 percent to 42 percent, Americans believe President Obama
has been a failure. Only 38 percent approve of his handling of
foreign affairs, only 31 percent approve of his handling of
immigration, and only 43 percent call the president a strong leader.
Some
69 percent of Americans believe the economy is in bad shape and 65
percent say the country is on the wrong track. By a 17 percent margin
the American people believe that President Obama has done more to
divide the country than unite it.
These
data run in the same direction, and it is a direction that forecasts
a wave that will engulf the Senate on November 4. If it’s really
big, it could also sink Democrats in states like Michigan, New
Hampshire, and/or Minnesota. We’ll know soon enough.
LeRoy Goldman worked on Capitol Hill and at the National Institutes of Health and has been predicting elections since 1948. He has retired to Flat Rock and can be reached at : EmailMe
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