As the big day dawns (if that’s the right way to put it, taking time differences into account), here is a thread for discussion of the US mid-terms – and a piece I wrote for Crikey yesterday that proved surplus to their requirements. I will possibly supplement this post with live coverage tomorrow, depending on how I go. Also find at the bottom of the post a guide to when polls close, repasted from Adrian Beaumont’s previous post.
On the eve of America’s mid-term elections, all signs point to a dramatic upsurge in turnout compared with four years ago – something that would ordinarily be seen as a sign of robust democratic good health. However, the last few years of American politics have made a mockery of the word “ordinarily”, and this circumstance is no exception.
The high pitch of interest can instead be seen as a symptom of the dangerous polarisation that increasingly defines American society – one effect of which has been to raise the stakes as Republicans and Democrats vie for control of Congress. Unhappily for liberal America, the dice are loaded against the Democrats tomorrow, for reasons fair and foul.
Among the latter are the efforts of state Republicans to test the limits of what courts will allow in limiting the franchise and placing obstacles before pro-Democratic constituencies in the name of fighting “voter fraud”.
Other problems for the Democrats are more intractable – such as the allocation of two Senate seats per state, an incontrovertible constitutional reality that privileges conservative rural and small town America over the liberal metropolises. This is illustrated by two of the states with seats up for election tomorrow: Wyoming, the least populous in the union (less than 580,000), and a Republican lock; and California, the most populous (nearly 40 million), and a similarly sure bet for the Democrats.
The other difficulty for the Democrats in the Senate is that the seats up for election, accounting for around a third of the total, are mostly those whose six-year terms began in 2012. That was the year of Barack Obama’s re-election, and thus of strong performance by the Democrats, in contrast to the drafts of Senators elected in the 2014 mid-terms and in 2016. This leaves the Democrats and their independent allies defending 26 seats against just nine held by Republicans, from which they need a net gain of two to boost their representation from 49 to a bare working majority of 51.
In the House of Representatives, the Democrats are handicapped by dramatically unfavourable boundaries, owing to a combination of bad luck and bad design. The first of these refers to over-concentration of Democratic support in big cities, where its members enjoy wastefully large majorities. The second involves the distinctively American blight of gerrymandering, of which there has been an outbreak since Republicans seized state legislatures as part of their mid-term sweep in 2010.
Such are the challenges the Democrats face tomorrow, at elections in which they are sure to do well by normal standards – but in which normal standards are not the ones by which they will be judged.
Democratic Senate incumbents are favoured in the states where presidential elections are usually decided, including the mid-west rust belt states that famously tipped the balance to Trump: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. However, they must repeat seemingly unlikely victories from 2012 merely to break even, in such unpromising states as West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota, Missouri and Indiana.
If a path to a Democratic majority exists, it most likely runs through the tricky terrain of Tennessee and Texas – the later presenting the most intriguing contest of the election, with Republican heavyweight Ted Cruz only slightly favoured to hold out against Democratic upstart Beto O’Rourke.
The House, being freshly elected in its entirety every two years, is greatly more promising for them, despite a consensus that their national vote will need to be fully 7% higher than the Republicans if they are to score a majority. Forecasting models suggest they are more likely to make it than not, partly reflecting the decisiveness of suburbia and the city fringes – places where the Republicans are vulnerable to the allergic reaction to Trump among better educated voters, female ones in particular.
As ever, everything depends on the demographic balance of turnout, and here the Democrats are encouraged by signs that the younger generation is at last shaking off its apathy. However, they will also know from bitter experience how elusive pre-election portents can prove when the scores start to go on the board.
Poll closing times
All times listed here are Wednesday November 7 AEDT. Some states straddle two time zones. In this case, networks will not call a state, and exit polls will not be officially released, until all polls in the state are closed. I will concentrate on poll closing times for the key Senate races below. Source: The Green Papers.
10am: Indiana Senate, eastern zone. Most of Indiana is in this zone, while a small part closes at 11am.
11am: Florida Senate, eastern, and Virginia. The part of Florida that closes at 11am is relatively Democratic-friendly. The deeply conservative “panhandle” closes at noon, and will assist Republicans. Several House races in both Virginia and Florida are contested.
11:30am: West Virginia Senate, where Democrat Joe Manchin is expected to win in a state that vote for Trump by a crushing 42 points.
12noon: Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan (eastern) and Tennessee, Missouri and Texas (eastern) Senate. New Jersey, Illinois, Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania have many contested House seats. Most of Michigan and Texas are in the eastern zone. Republicans are a long shot in New Jersey Senate, and Democrats are a long shot in Tennessee and Texas Senate. Missouri Senate is expected to be close.
1pm: New York, Minnesota, Colorado, Wisconsin and Arizona Senate; many House races are contested in these states, and the Arizona Senate is close.
2pm: Nevada and North Dakota (eastern) Senate. Republicans are favoured to gain North Dakota, while Nevada is expected to be close. Polls in the trailing part of North Dakota close at 3pm.
3pm: California and Washington State, where many House seats are contested.
C@t – re KY-6 District
The Repub, Barr, won by 22 points in 2016
Watching http://www.livenewson.com , which has Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN etc.
MSNBC now has a former Republican strategist unloading on Trump. Saying that his stump speeches in the last few weeks have f*cked Republican candidates’ chances, rather then improved them.
MSNBC now calling its second GOP-to-Dem house flip.
Donnelly’s going to need a miracle to hold onto his Senate seat in Indiana.
It’s because each state gets to decide what whacky shit they want.
What we really need is a projection based on booths/counties. I hear that Indiana senate count is mostly GOP areas.
Ray (UK) @ #102 Wednesday, November 7th, 2018 – 12:00 pm
Yep. Just read this:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/06/us/elections/results-kentucky-elections.html
They’re both on 49.4% atm!
Looks like overall vote is down about 10% in Indiana senate republican held republican seats that are 100% reported
538 has dipped to 81% chance in the House. 🙁
The lack of useful information on swings coupled with rampant Republican gerrymandering coupled with the highly fragmented nature of the U.S. electorate makes these results incredibly hard to follow.
cnn quite good
Shades of 2016?
S K
Now down to 72%.
Argh!
I bet Trump is cooking up some sort of insult to throw at Amy McGrath, should she succeed in Kentucky.
Oh, you got to be fucking kidding me.
The New York Time’s’s’s world-famous needle still hasn’t gone live. What are they waiting for?
538- now 67percent chance in House…..
67%
It is early days and we shouldnt be getting too concerned just yet.
Whiskey anyone?
S K,
68%
At least it stopped plummeting.
Spoke too soon
52%
oh dear. 52%
39%
Oh dear
39%
I. Give. Up.
Russians appear to have hacked the FiveThirtyEight blog.
The chances are going mental, but doesn’t seem to reflect any of the called results
Looks to me like the House is a very , very likely Dem win. No movement really in the other direction, though Amy McGrath has fallen behind in Kentucky 6th.
Still a lot of votes to count in Indiana Senate , but not looking great at present. Huge variations between “precincts” in parts of the US though. Florida is tight in the Senate, too. But Cruz is down in Texas, on the VERY early count.
57%
Yay!
This is doing my nerves no good at all 🙂
Back up to 57%
I’m gonna stop following this and get back to work
I think FiveThirtyEight’s model is just too sensitive. It’s bouncing all over the place. Now it’s swinging right back the other way.
What the heck is going on? The odds drop like a stone and they don’t write a single blog post to explain why? Antony Green is truly a national treasure…
I suspect FiveThirtyEight is just feeding in data from random hick counties reporting early that are pro-Trump and the model is incorrectly giving them far too much weight.
calumniousfox
They did
“You may have noticed that our real-time forecast has moved toward Republicans in the House. It’s being too aggressive, in my opinion. The model sees that a bunch of “likely Republican” districts (particularly in Florida) are now 100 percent likely to go red. But there hasn’t been the chance for Democrats to clinch many equivalent likely Democratic districts.”
Thank you Voice endeavour and Rod Hagen.
I will reboot 🙂
Yep, I was right:
“You may have noticed that our real-time forecast has moved toward Republicans in the House. It’s being too aggressive, in my opinion. The model sees that a bunch of “likely Republican” districts (particularly in Florida) are now 100 percent likely to go red. But there hasn’t been the chance for Democrats to clinch many equivalent likely Democratic districts.”
Comparing individual counties that are 100% reporting in Indiana has Democrats going backwards.
They where all strong republican anyway, but still not looking good…
You really would think the richest country in the world could organise seat and booth matched models that included turnout factors. Fucking amateurs.
bug1
I think Donnelly’s a goner – he racked up huge margins last time in 2 big urban counties – Lake (41%) and Marion (34%) but this time he’s at 34% and 28% in those two and he’s gone backwards in the rurals
Goddammit Florida
FL i think Nelson is still favoured even tho Scott is ahead… the remaining vote to be counted looks very Dem heavy. All not lost there…
Delaware county in Indiana is the biggest seat to 100% report, it was pretty close in ’16, unlike all the others that 100% reported, it has 2% swing to Democrats in senate. Which i dont think is enough even if democrat leading metro areas have a strong turnout.
Observer: “The DJIA Futures have moved Negative and falling. The ASX is following this trend
So the Money people obviously do not like what they are seeing – with tax cuts and deregulation now in the cross hairs. The trouble is that their reaction to having their gravy train apple cart questioned hurts all of us thru our superannuation accruals.”
I suspect that only the most short-term, speculative investors are going to be motivated by how an election count is going. And most of these are not acting on the basis of political opinions, but are trying as hard as they can to second guess the behaviour of other speculative investors.
There won’t be any long-term impact on superannuation balances or anything else from the ASX outcome today. The “correction” of the past few months is probably more significant, although much of this also seems to have been driven by a panic on behalf of speculative investors. It’s far from clear yet that the major institutional investors have made any substantial readjustment to their investment portfolios.
Amendment for giving voting rights to felons seem to be passing in Florida. A strategic victory for Democrats but also a good thing for the state.
Ray, yep
Two seats have already been called for the Dems and they’re leading in 21 GOP seats – CNN.
Things like this makes me glad we have independent commissions drawing boundaries in our state and federal districts.
As is always the case in the early stages of US elections, the trend is proving hard to identify.
But, so far, I don’t detect too many signs of a major national swing to the Dems. The house seat they picked up in Virginia appears to have been largely a consequence of demographic change (ie, the expansion of Washington suburbs). There appear to be some swings to the Republicans elsewhere.
There’s still some 20% of votes to come in from Miami Dade and Broward counties. So I wouldn’t write the Dems off, offsetting the votes in the handle – CNN.
Raaraa says:
Wednesday, November 7, 2018 at 12:46 pm
Things like this makes me glad we have independent commissions drawing boundaries in our state and federal districts.
And compulsory voting! Australia has a “more perfect” democracy.
Patrick Bateman @ #125 Wednesday, November 7th, 2018 – 11:27 am
Frankly I would follow the guardian live results. they are better than 538. although not predictive. However for us aussies used to Antony green we can interpret the guardian data without the aid of predictions.
Just checked KY 6 called for republicans
We will not know until California comes in but Blue Tsuanai it is not and it may even be a red trickle
The Democrats have picked up a seat in Pennsylvania (making 3 overall so far).
Indiana senate called for Republicans, Donnelly loses so Dems down 1 so far
DaretoTread the Guardian’s coverage is horrible! It seems to be lagging miles behind the actual results, and their commentary provides no context or information about the broader implications of any given post.