US off-year elections minus three weeks

November 2 elections in Virginia, New Jersey and two US House seats as Biden’s ratings fail to recover. And can Democrats pass their infrastructure agenda?

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is an honorary associate at the University of Melbourne. His work on electoral matters for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

Most US states hold their elections concurrently with federal elections, but a few hold theirs in November of an odd year; federal elections occur each November of an even year. State elections this November 2 include contests for the governor of Virginia and New Jersey. There are also two federal House by-elections in Ohio.

In Virginia, which Joe Biden won by 10.1% in 2020, Democrat McAuliffe is ahead of Republican Youngkin by just 2.5% in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate. Biden won New Jersey by 15.9%, and two September polls gave incumbent Democratic governor Murphy a nine to 13 point lead.

For the US House by-elections, Biden won the Ohio 11th by more than 60%, while Donald Trump won the Ohio 15th by 14% according to Daily Kos elections. While both districts are expected to be held by the incumbent party, swings from the 2020 results will be interesting.

Many expected Biden’s ratings to recover from Afghanistan, but this has not occurred. Two months since the fall of Kabul, his ratings in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate are 49.6% disapprove, 44.6% approve (net -5.0). Biden’s ratings are worse than for any past president since Harry Truman at this point in their presidencies except for Trump and Gerald Ford, who took over after Richard Nixon resigned.

I previously suggested that Biden could suffer long-term damage from Afghanistan owing to undermining his core strength of competence. Other factors are the continuing US COVID crisis and inflation in the economy. In four of the five months from April to August, real disposable personal income contracted. Biden’s RealClearPolitics net approval on the economy is -5.6.

If Biden’s ratings do not recover, they will be a problem for Democrats in the November 2022 midterm elections, in which the whole House and one-third of the Senate is up for election.

Can Democrats pass Biden’s infrastructure agenda?

In my introduction to live coverage of the German election, I covered key US Congress votes on infrastructure, the budget and the debt limit. Congress has procrastinated both the budget and debt limit fights until at least December. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell came to a deal that would raise the debt limit enough that the US will not default until at least December.

Democrats control the House by 220-212 and the Senate 50-50 with Harris’ casting vote. But it takes 60 votes for most legislation to pass the Senate as this is needed to shut down filibusters (get “cloture”). Despite McConnell’s support for the debt limit increase, the cloture vote was 61-38, just one above the required threshold. Republicans were opposed by 38-11, so McConnell’s leadership could be under threat if he makes further concessions.

Democrats want to pass both a bipartisan infrastructure bill (BIB) that previously passed the Senate with a filibuster-proof majority and a Democratic infrastructure bill (DIB) that would rely on a special process called “reconciliation” to circumvent the filibuster.

The problem is that House progressives won’t vote for the BIB before the DIB has passed the Senate. And two Democratic senators, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, are resisting the DIB. Manchin has the excuse that WV voted for Trump by 39% in 2020, but Biden won Arizona by 0.3%, and it has been trending Democratic.

A major problem for Democrats is the Senate, where there are two senators per state. The US has become far more polarized along rural/urban lines in recent times. Analyst Nate Silver said that 52% of the US overall population is in a big city, suburbs or small city, while 48% is either rural or in a small town or exurban. However, the average state’s population is 61-39 towards rural, exurban and small town areas.

Late counting updates

With counting final for the September 14 California recall election, Democratic governor Gavin Newsom defeated Recall by a 61.9-38.1 margin, down from 63.9-36.1 after election night. The Newsom margin is the same as in the 2018 regular election, but down from Biden’s 29-point margin in California.

The Liberals won an additional seat at the September 20 Canadian election, after a Quebec Bloc win by 286 votes in one seat became a Liberal win by 12 votes after a recount. The Liberals won 160 of the 338 seats, ten short of the 170 required for a majority.

38 comments on “US off-year elections minus three weeks”

  1. “Democratic governor Gavin Newsom defeated Recall by a 61.9-38.1 margin, down from 63.9-36.1 after election night”
    Check for bamboo paper! Midnight ballot deliveries!

  2. I found this an interesting counterpoint to “Biden’s approval has slipped”.

    Those of you who insisted the Quinnipiac poll was an outlier (Biden job approval 38%) have a stronger case. New CBS poll (50% approval) and Ipsos (48% approval) suggest Biden either was never at 38% or has recovered lost ground.— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) October 11, 2021

  3. The Virginia numbers are a worry. McAullife was a competent if slightly unspectacular governor.

    I’d also have hoped the fact the Republican Party no longer believes in democracy would have been enough to motivate the democratic base to get out and vote.

  4. “Biden’s ratings are worse than for any past president since Harry Truman at this point in their presidencies except for Trump”….

    Trump still hanging around is a guarantee of victory for Biden and the Democrats….
    But if Trump is “eliminated” by the Republicans the result would be an electoral disaster for the party…

    It looks like no matter what Biden does, the Republicans are in a lose-lose situation… all thanks to Trump.

  5. Shocker! 😆 Let’s hope Republicans follow his advice to stay home rather than participate in what Trump has said are fraudulent elections.

    Trump has also been endorsing candidates who are not exactly of the highest caliber. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports: “Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker canceled a fundraiser with a conservative film producer who until Wednesday used a rendering of a swastika as her Twitter profile picture.” Walker’s campaign tried denying the swastika was a swastika, but when a candidate has to argue about such things, they reveal that they might not be the strongest contender.

    McConnell felt compelled last month to embrace this already problematic candidate because that is what members of a cult-like party do when their cult leader demands it. He did so despite accusations that, as the Associated Press reports, Walker “repeatedly threatened his ex-wife’s life, exaggerated claims of financial success and alarmed business associates with unpredictable behavior.” Walker has since denied claims that he threatened his ex-wife. We’ll find out whether McConnell sticks with Trump’s disastrous pick.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/14/republicans-have-some-big-problems-their-own/

  6. The AUKUS deal says more about US plans to take on China than Biden will admit

    https://www-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.businessinsider.com/aukus-says-more-about-us-china-plans-than-biden-admits-2021-10?amp=&amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a6&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16342450329653&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Faukus-says-more-about-us-china-plans-than-biden-admits-2021-10


    Combined with the apparent lack of consultation over the US exit from Afghanistan, it demonstrates there is more continuity between the Biden administration and its predecessor on the role of Europe in American foreign policy than Biden officials would likely care to publicly admit.

  7. My bigger concern about 2024 is the laws passed by Republican controlled states essentially allowing them to disregard votes of presidential elections if they don’t like the outcome. Further, the Republican electoral officials that prevented Trump from stealing the 2020 election are likely to have been replaced by trump supporting candidates who have made it clear they would have acted differently last year.

    I don’t see how democrats can really win presidential elections in such circumstances.

  8. If Biden’s ratings do not recover, they will be a problem for Democrats in the November 2022 midterm elections, in which the whole House and one-third of the Senate is up for election.

    Cause or effect though? How will Biden’s net popularity in late 2022 influence voting patterns in late 2022? Or is Biden’s net popularity a measure of net D-R voting? In the Senate, which senators are up for re-election in 2022? How many of those are D and how many R? And how many of those are in swing states? The House is a whole other nest. The D have to overcome voter suppression and gerrymandering, which undermines the D vote. The R have to overcome Trump revulsion (incl. Jan 6), which they show no signs of mitigating, and which both undermines their vote and boosts the D vote. As far as anyone can tell this far out, I think it’s going to be close. And then there are the Governorships to consider…

  9. Marty:

    My bigger concern about 2024 is the laws passed by Republican controlled states essentially allowing them to disregard votes of presidential elections if they don’t like the outcome. Further, the Republican electoral officials that prevented Trump from stealing the 2020 election are likely to have been replaced by trump supporting candidates who have made it clear they would have acted differently last year.

    I don’t see how democrats can really win presidential elections in such circumstances.

    I think, if the Presidential election is turned by a state or states disregarding their votes and sending a different slate of electors, those still in favour of democracy have to be ready to call a General Strike.

  10. Cat, I totally agree. But it’s been incredibly depressing how many on the right are perfectly happy to overturn free and fair elections rather than acknowledge their side lost.

    I’m not sure how democracy in a 2 party system can be sustained when 1 of the parties no longer cares about respecting the will of the people. Even more so when that country has partisan electoral officials.

    I’ve read a lot about how a repeat of 2020 would now play out differently and there seems no way to stop it.

  11. A General Strike is the only way. Close the schools, the shops, the offices, the universities, the ports, the buses, airports and trains. COVID-19 has given everyone practice at staying home.

  12. Check out the Democratic gerrymander of Illinois’ Congressional Districts. Dems in Illinois hold the trifecta of gov and both chambers of the legislature, and there’s no independent redistricting authority. But Dave Wasserman says that three Dem seats (3, 14 and 17) in this gerrymander could be toss-ups if Republicans have a wave election in 2022. Dems could have gerrymandered more effectively.

    https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1449166187133382658

    Here’s Wasserman’s proposed more effective gerrymander, with no Dem seats that could be lost in a midterm wave election.

  13. AB, you’re being subtle there. 😉

    But you got me thinking. Do you know if anyone has done an analysis, say of the 2020 election, using “fair” redistricting and how that might have changed outcomes across the board? I guess what I’m wondering is whether or not gerrymandering is overblown as net positive for R and net negative for D.

  14. Marty @ #10 Friday, October 15th, 2021 – 11:56 am

    …snip… the Republican electoral officials that prevented Trump from stealing the 2020 election are likely to have been replaced by trump supporting candidates who have made it clear they would have acted differently last year. …snip…

    Is this the type of thing you’re commenting on?

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/14/michigan-republicans-election-officials-fight-to-vote
    In Macomb county, which includes the Detroit suburbs, Republicans nominated just one person, Nancy Tiseo, for an opening on the board of canvassers. Tiseo urged Trump last year to “suspend” the meeting of the Electoral College and set up “military tribunals” to investigate the election.

    If you fervently believe in “stop the steal”, I guess one tactic is to get in first.


  15. Late Risersays:
    Saturday, October 16, 2021 at 1:46 pm
    AB, you’re being subtle there.

    But you got me thinking. Do you know if anyone has done an analysis, say of the 2020 election, using “fair” redistricting and how that might have changed outcomes across the board? I guess what I’m wondering is whether or not gerrymandering is overblown as net positive for R and net negative for D.

    gerrymandering is a net positive for R and net negative for D due to 2 things. Without gerrymandering
    1. Cities will have more seats and that will advantage Ds because more Democratic party demographic live there.
    2. Blue states will have more seats because they have more population than Red states.
    3. Look at the percentage differential Dems need to win HOR. About 8%.
    So without gerrymandering Dems win more seats.

  16. Gerrymandering doesn’t affect the number of seats each state has; that’s determined on the basis of a state’s population.

    It doesn’t really affect the number of seats in cities either. What it allows is one party to create vote “sinks” that the other party will win with 70%+, and then create seats that they will win by around 10%.

  17. AB,
    Thanks re the gerrymandering. You hear the Reps doing it, but not so much the Dems. So it got me thinking what the overall result would be with “fair” boundaries. It’s the sort of thing someone with data, time, inclination and computer resources could program up, even automating the redistricting process using GIS. It might make an interesting counterpoint to the general opinions that get reported. It’s the sort of thing fivethirtyeight might have done.
    https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/?cid=rrpromo

    Also
    https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/viewer?mid=1RUsWYu70oa2Ku617OcJupS0c-vGFulCW&ll=40.1769945221014%2C-89.720926&z=7
    Zoom in to Chicago and check out Cicero.

  18. LR, the Reps had more opportunity to gerrymander after winning the trifecta in many populous states in 2010, the last Census year. But Dems have had gerrymanders in Illinois and Maryland. Censuses are conducted every ten years, so there was one last year.

    Dems can’t gerrymander California as it has had an independent commission since Schwarzenegger’s governorship. In 2010, Dems weren’t able to gerrymander New York as the Reps still controlled the state senate, but now Dems have full control, and are likely to gerrymander.

  19. Biden just needs a win.

    At the moment he’s suffering the exact same problem as Obama at the same point of his presidency: implacable obstruction from a Republican Party which would rather see America burn to the ground under a Democrat than that Democrat have any success, and a divided Democratic Party which can’t put aside their personal goals for the sake of party unity (sadly, the one thing the Republicans are good at now is insisting everyone toe the party line or be ostracised and primaried).

    Biden faces a more difficult scenario than Obama, but there’s no help for it – he must persuade the Democrats to get on the same train and do it more quickly than it took Obama with Obamacare. It took the Affordable Care Act until March 2010 to pass, well into the midterm election year. If Biden hasn’t passed the infrastructure bill or some other big signature policy by the end of the year I’d suggest the Democrats will be cooked for the midterms, which means it becomes even harder for Biden in the rest of his term.

    This is especially so because the whole point of Biden is he is meant to be the guy who can work with everyone, the compromise candidate, the guy with all the likeability and experience who knows all the players. If he can’t bridge the divide between the Blue Dogs and the Squad, what use is he?

  20. Midterms are a year off. But for what it’s worth here is my list of states where a senator is being elected. I’ve shown those retiring with an asterisk*. (I realize it’s more complicated than that, for example it’s not clear if Murkowski will run. I’m just assuming she is.)

    Colour State Senator
    red Alabama Shelby*(R)
    red Alaska Murkowski(R)
    purple Arizona Sinema(D)
    red Arkansas Boozman(R)
    blue California Padilla(D)
    purple Colorado Bennet(D)
    blue Connecticut Blumenthal(D)
    red Florida Rubio(R)
    purple Georgia Warnock(D)
    blue Hawaii Hirono(D)
    red Idaho Crapo(R)
    blue Illinois Duckworth(D)
    red Indiana Young(R)
    purple Iowa Grassley(R)
    red Kansas Moran(R)
    red Kentucky Paul(R)
    red Louisiana Kennedy(R)
    blue Maryland Van Hollen(D)
    red Missouri Blunt*(R)
    purple Nevada Masto(D)
    purple New Hampshire Hassan(D)
    blue New York Schumer(D)
    purple North Carolina Burr*(R)
    red North Dakota Hoeven(R)
    purple Ohio Portman*(R)
    red Oklahoma Lankford(R)
    blue Oregon Wyden(D)
    purple Pennsylvania Toomey*(R)
    red South Carolina Scott(R)
    red South Dakota Thune(R)
    red Utah Lee(R)
    blue Vermont Leahy(D)
    blue Washington Murray(D)
    purple Wisconsin Johnson(R)

    By my count that’s 14 Dems (including 5 in purple states, none retiring) and 20 Reps (including 5 purple states and 3 of those are retiring). The strategy for Dems might be to target purple states with retiring Reps, the idea being to make Manchin and Sinema far less relevant.

  21. The trucking issue with California LA ports, ie the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB), is that all semi tractors have to be current with new California emissions standards. As a consequence, that mean trucks cannot be older than 3 years if they are to pick up or deliver containers at those ports. This issue wipes out approximately half of the fleet trucks used to move containers in/out of the port. Operating the port 24/7 will not cure the issue, because all it does is pile up more containers that sit idle as they await a limited number of trucks to pick them up.

    In effect, what this 2020 determination and settlement created was an inability of half the nation’s truckers from picking up anything from the Port of LA or Port of Long Beach. Virtually all private owner operator trucks and half of the fleet trucks that are used for moving containers across the nation were shut out.

    Yesterday, in an effort to obfuscate and actually hide the epicenter of the issue, the White House put on a performance to provide political cover. In a grand pantomime, Joe Biden met with the heads of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (Gene Seroka and Mario Cordero, respectively), and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

    The publicized meeting and White House conference was sold as Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg showing actions they are taking to address delays and congestion across the transportation supply chain in Southern California.

    As a result of the meeting, the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) announced that it will join the Port of Long Beach (POLB) in expanding to 24/7 operations. POLA will add new off-peak nighttime shifts and weekend hours, nearly doubling its hours of operation. The ILWU said its members are willing to work those extra shifts to add needed labor capacity.

    That publicly promoted action event was a complete political farce. No amount of extra productivity in working the docks to off-load ships will solve the issue of trucks that cannot pick up the containers and distribute them toward manufacturing or warehouses.

    Ships from China and SE Asia being diverted from California into the Gulf of Mexico or East coast have to go through the Panama Canal. It takes twice as long and costs twice as much, if not more. Hence, massive shipping price increases:

  22. Watching Friday’s Planet America, I saw a grab of ‘progressives’ harassing and pursuing Sinema in her everyday activities, including filming her going to the dunny. I doubt if these tactics will work well. She does have a harassed look about her and you would have to question her mental wellbeing. Her perfidy is undoubted and she has harmed her chance of winning another primary after her own Nevada Dems have condemned her behaviour. She’s ‘progressed’ from a greenie to a DINO supposedly in receipt of large amounts of corporate donations. However, surely taming her is preferred to shaming her, so how do you solve a problem called Kyrsten? Dunno…

  23. The Illinois maps above are for a 14-3 Dem congressional map. Dems had a 13-5 lead in Illinois’ congressional delegation in 2020, but Illinois lost one seat in the 2020 Census. So Dems are gerrymandering out two Rep seats.

  24. Tom the first and best @ #27 Saturday, October 16th, 2021 – 8:58 pm

    https://www.pollbludger.net/2021/10/14/us-off-year-elections-minus-three-weeks/#comment-3726890

    Sinema is in until 2024, when she has a decent chance of being primaried (if she runs in the Democratic Primary). Kelly, elected in the special election in 2020 to fill the McCain vacancy, is up for re-election.

    Thanks TTFAB. I’ll have to check my data better. 🙂

    So to revise, by my count that’s 13 Dems (including 4 in purple states, none retiring) and 20 Reps (including 5 purple states and 3 of those are retiring). Can the Dems retain their 13 (4 are in purple states) and win at least two of North Carolina, Ohio, or Pennsylvania (purple & no incumbent)? If Trump keeps up his antics my hunch is that purple states will turn blue. And FWIW Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) voted to impeach Trump and his GOP replacement field is “crowded”.

  25. Drongo – you can’t ‘tame’ her. She refuses to even discuss her policy concerns with the bills she’s stonewalling. She doesn’t do interviews, she doesn’t canvass or interact with voters in any meaningful way, which is the reason you have pictures of progressives ‘harassing’ her in the bathroom- she ran in there to hide from their questions. She’s a spoiler, plain and simple.

  26. But it takes 60 votes for most legislation to pass the Senate as this is needed to shut down filibusters (get “cloture”).

    There was discussion a few months back to reverse the filibuster, rather than to remove it. The reverse would mean that it would take 2/5 votes (currently 40) to deny cloture rather than 3/5 (currently 60) to get cloture. It would switch the burden onto those not wanting to vote.

    I’ve not seen it mooted recently. Has the idea died? On the face of it, it would simply mean that senators would vote to deny cloture rather than voting to get it, so nothing is really different. But maybe there’s more to it. It would have to be an active rather than a passive response, or something.

  27. You can check out the new Texas redistricting maps.
    https://lrl.texas.gov/scanned/87ccrs/sb0006_3c.pdf#navpanes=0
    Maps start on page 225.

    More docs here: https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegSess=873&Bill=SB6

    The district map contained in Senate Bill 6 is expected to strengthen GOP numbers in the state’s delegation in Washington from the current 23-13 split in favor of Republicans to a 24-14 or 25-13 GOP advantage. Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, complained that SB 6 would increase Anglo-majority districts from 22 to 23, while districts where Hispanics make up the majority of voters would be reduced from eight to seven and the state’s lone majority Black district would disappear.
    https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/10/17/texas-house-oks-district-maps-congress-over-democratic-objections/8492266002/

  28. In reality, probably nothing at all rides on the elections in a few weeks, though political junkies will no doubt try to make something of it, even if history shows that these off-year Gubernatorial elections are not especially predictive. It seems pretty certain that Murphy will get re-elected New Jersey Governor, with polling very much in his favour in this mostly Blue state. Virginia is a bit more interesting, with McAuliffe only just ahead of the unimpressive Youngkin, though presumably the Blue tilt of the Commonwealth will be enough for him in the end. The two House special elections won’t tell us much, as the hitherto incumbent party win both easily, and even “swings” from last year will be misleading, given the huge drop in turn-out that is likely.

    Once these polls are out of the way, all eyes will turn toward the mid-terms next November. History is against the Dems, of course. They hold only the tiniest of majorities in both Houses, and as we all know it’s exceptionally rare for the party holding the White House to make gains in mid-term elections (only in 1962, 1998 & 2002 since WW2). Still, next year may tell us quite a bit about the changing US electorate. Over the last 30-40 years or so, suburbanite Republicans have been much more reliable voters in the mid-terms than the minority-dominated Democratic coalition, but the Trump era suggested that those suburban voters might be shifting Blue, while the traditional blue-collar White continue their long march the other way (this movement has been going on since the late 1960s). The other big unknown is how many Trump voters will show up when The Donald himself is not on the ballot (though his shadow will be omnipresent). The evidence so far is that Trump voters only really vote for the real thing, and less so for candidates using the same playbook, though we only have a small data set to base that on. If the demographic above shift continues, it could be that the Democrats have the more reliable voters in mid-terms going forward.

    The Senate is a little easier to read, and it’s a pretty good map for the Democrats, with several pick-up opportunities, and only a few risks. The Dems should/ could gain seats in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina, while Florida and even Missouri (if the GOP goes for the possibly unelectable Geitens) are possible. Meanwhile the GOP will be eyeing off Arizona, Georgia, and maybe Nevada, but my best guess this far out is that the Dems will hold all three. A 2023 Senate of 52/53-47/48 to the Dems seems likely, so if they can somehow hold the House, they have a good opportunity to push ahead with their agenda. The Dems will be wanting some sort of gain next year, as the 2024 Senate map is pretty tough for them.

    The big elephant in the room (pun fully intended) is voting reform. It’s mystifying to me that the Democratic Congress has pushed this at the earliest opportunity. I get that Manchin doesn’t want to touch the filibuster, and that he will probably need to be pushed into changing it for voting reform only after the GOP demonstrates yet again that they are not interested in helping, but democracy itself is under serious threat from Republican shenanigans, with their serial assault on voting rights, and the Dems may find themselves locked out of power for a decade despite regularly winning a majority of the vote.

  29. Republicans will be fired up about vaccine mandates, critical race theory and whatever the new culture war garbage fad of the month is, like they always are, especially at the mid terms. Democrats and Democratic leaning voters will be wondering why they should even bother, given that between Biden’s lethargy/duplicity and the ‘moderates’ intransigence, the Dems have barely done anything with the power given to them. That’s the biggest elephant in the room.

    Out the of the states you mentioned as possible pickups only Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are even plausibly competitive; North Carolina and Florida are trending Republican (and being ratfucked by voter purges, as you mentioned) and Missouri is an absolute pipedream. Arizonan Democrats will be more wary than anyone of believing the promises of a Democrat, and Nevada’s Democrats are bitterly divided ever since the Reid faction spat the dummy and withdrew both funding and personnel from the party apparatus completely after losing the leadership to progressives. Manchin and Sinema aren’t going to come to some revelation about the Republican threat. They don’t care. They’re only interested in using their positions to enrich themselves and being the centres of attention.

    And vacations. Sinema really likes her corporate sponsored vacations. And wine.

  30. Furtive – your reading may well be correct of course, and on balance it’s probably a likely scenario. However, I will take some issue with some of your finer points. One is that North Carolina is not “trending Republican” – if anything it’s going (very slowly) the way of Virginia, and moving from a safe GOP state to a purple one, on the way to being a safe-ish Blue state (maybe in about a decade). Both Cunningham (Seante) and Biden only lost by a couple of percent last year. It’s also an open Senate seat next year, which makes it more competitive. Florida, on the other hand, is always close, but probably retains a Republican lean, and of course Rubio, as lazy and hopeless as he is, is defending the seat as an incumbent, and so probably starts as favourite (though Deemings could well be a good fit as a candidate).

    I’m more confident that Dems will hold all of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. In part that’s because incumbency is a powerful element, and also because the Dem incumbents are pretty popular. Kelly (AZ) is much more popular than Sinema, Warnocke (GA) has the Black churches firmly behind him and will quite probably be up against a poor candidate in Walker, while Cortez-Masto (NV) will benefit from GOP infighting in the State.

    The other thing to remember is that the mid-terms are still over a year away. It’s actually quite normal for governments to be unpopular at this stage of the cycle, but elections have ways of framing things as a binary choice. If Trump can impose himself on next year’s elections, that will probably help the Dems gee up their own base (against the Trump bogeyman), while not really helping the Republicans (because Trump himself will not be on the ballot). Meanwhile, policy concerns that are hot right now, like Covid, vaccines and petrol prices, may well be long forgotten by next November.

    My best guess at the moment is that GOP will re-take the House (though perhaps not by much), while the Dems will slightly increase their hold on the Senate, but of course there’s a lot of water to still flow under the bridge. The two unknowns work in opposite ways: how much will GOP efforts to rig the votes work in their favour, and how much will the changing electorate work in the Democrats favour? You’d probably say that the GOP come out ahead in that conundrum, but we’ll have to wait and see.

  31. On learning that Berejiklian and Maguire had been in a personal relationship for five years, Baird was “incredulous”, only finding out after viewing the ICAC hearing in October last year.

    The NSW Parliament must be very different to, say, the Supreme Court, where gossip was rife & if there was none, it’d be manufactured. Indeed, there were some still carrying on two years after the very personable Michael Kirby was appointed as President of the NSW Court of Appeal in ’84.

    I’m starting to think the “Bear Pit” resembles the three monkeys.

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