Why The House And Senate Are Moving In Opposite Directions

[DemocratSinceBirth]

At first, I was a little skeptical of the narrative that Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process could send the House and Senate moving in opposite directions. Usually in politics, a rising tide lifts all boats — so whichever party benefited from the Supreme Court nominee’s confirmation would expect to see its fortunes improve in both its best states and districts and its worst ones.

But a House-Senate split is exactly what we’re seeing in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. Democratic prospects in the Senate are increasingly dire, having fallen to about 1 in 5. Indeed, it’s been hard to find any good news for Democrats in Senate polling lately. In the House, by contrast, their opportunity is holding up relatively well. In fact, Democrats’ chance of taking the House has ticked back upward to about 4 in 5, having improved slightly from around 3 in 4 immediately after Kavanaugh was confirmed. And while district-by-district House polling has been all over the place lately, Democrats’ position has improved slightly on the generic congressional ballot.

On the surface, you might reason that House and Senate battlegrounds aren’t that different from one another. Yes, the most competitive Senate races this year are in really, really red states. Specifically, the average competitive Senate race, weighted by its likelihood of being the decisive state in determining the majority according to FiveThirtyEight’s tipping-point index, is 16 percentage points more Republican than the country overall.1 But the average competitive House district is also pretty red: 8 points more Republican than the country overall, weighed by its tipping-point probability.



The more time you spend looking at the battlegrounds in each chamber, however, the more you’ll come to two important conclusions:

The House and Senate battlegrounds really aren’t that much alike. In several important respects, in fact, they’re almost opposite from one another. For example, House battlegrounds are more educated than the country overall, while Senate ones are less so.
The Democrats’ map in the House is fairly robust, because they aren’t overly reliant on any one type of district. (This stands in contrast to the Senate, where most of the battlegrounds fit into a certain typology: red and rural). While House battlegrounds are somewhat whiter, more suburban and more educated than the country overall, there are quite a few exceptions — enough so that Democrats could underperform in certain types of districts but still have reasonably good chances to win the House. This differs from Hillary Clinton’s position in the Electoral College in 2016, in which underperformance among just one group of voters in one region — white working-class voters in the Midwest — was enough to cost her the election.
So let’s look in more detail at the characteristics of the House and Senate battlegrounds, starting with some basics: their geographic region (as according to the U.S. Census Bureau) and whether they’re incumbent-held or open-seat races. In the series of charts that follow, I’ll show what these characteristics look like in an unweighted average of all 435 congressional districts, and compare that to what’s happening in battlegrounds. (Rather than handpick the “battleground” contests, I’m weighting all races by their tipping-point probabilities in the House and the Senate; contests more likely to prove decisive have outsized sway in the calculation.)


https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-house-and-senate-are-moving-in-opposite-directions/

Blue areas are becoming bluer. Purple areas are becoming bluer . And a lot of red areas where Senate seats are being contested are turning redder. A good night for us is winning 225-235 House seats, losing l or 2 senate seats, picking up 6-12 governors, and five hundred or so state legislative seats.

Fingers crossed !


As an aside it would be nice if some of the mountains of cash that are going to Beto were going to Jackie Rosen in Nevada and Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona . Those are races on a knife's edge. Hell, given the size of Nevada you could identify enough low propensity Democratic voters to tip the election and drive them back and forth from their polling places in a limo.

[Polybius]

1. I think it's just mathematics

Many more Democrats are up for election in the Senate than Republicans. Democrats and the independents who caucus with them have 26 seats up, compared with nine held by Republicans. In the House, all 435 seats are up.

[Garrett78]

2. And as we get closer to the election, undecideds "come home," as the saying goes.

[marylandblue]

5. The point of the article is that the demographics are different

It's not just how many Senate Democrats are defending their seats. It's that those seats are more rural, more white and less educated than the competitive House seats. This was the same partisan divide we saw in 2016, but it's even sharper now.

[Garrett78]

8. That's because only a third of the Senators are running for re-election, while every Rep. is.

And the Senators defending seats are in disproportionately red states. The Senate map was never favorable for us this year. Not losing ground would be a victory.

The country as a whole favors Democrats, but about half the states are stark red.

[marylandblue]

10. Sure, but why are the odds moving in opposite directions?

Normally, you'd expect the odds to move together. And they were a few months ago.

It's not because the red districts are already red. Red districts are getting redder. Blue/purple districts are getting bluer.

[Garrett78]

12. As elections approach, undecideds tend to "come home," so to speak.

Republicans flirting with not voting or voting for the opponent decide to vote the way they always do. Or they simply start paying more attention than when previously polled.

With a Senate map (at least the competitive portion) that is very red and not representative of the country as a whole, that 'coming home' tradition obviously favors Republicans.

Even at the peak, our chance of taking the Senate was well below 50%.

[Thekaspervote]

14. Exactly!! analyze it to death, but numbers of Dems vs repukes up for re-elect is the biggest factor

One caa

[BeckyDem]

3. I want to see Heitkamps seat saved. I agree about the money, Beto has an amount one sees

running for president.

[Garrett78]

6. More, in fact. And studies make clear there are diminishing returns.

Money's role in election outcomes is overstated.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. Hopefully it helps down ballot races

Nelson, Rosen, Sinema, Donnelly, and McCaskill could really use that money.

[Garrett78]

4. The Republican Party that remains will be even more extreme, which means...

...compromise will continue to be rare, and it won't really be compromise when it does happen.

[marylandblue]

7. Well, if Democrats take the House, Pelosi will have power over Trump

And he tends to fawn over power. So Senate Republicans will find out what a weak ally he really is. I could actually see more compromise in that situation.

Then again, I am a optimist.

[Garrett78]

9. There will be no fawning over Pelosi. There will be demonization.

We must take control of the House at the very least. For survival purposes, not because there will be hope of compromise.

[marylandblue]

11. We'll see, but he mostly does not demonize those he fears

Which is why he kisses ass of foreign dictators and says nothing about Stormy Daniels. He doesn't even go after Pelosi as much as you might expect in this election cycle.
His attacks have been more about Democrats in general.

[Garrett78]

13. He doesn't fear those dictators. He aspires to be them.

[northoftheborder]

15. great cartoon