Midterm Signals and Noise

… The current consensus in Washington is that 2014 will be a Republican election – that they will gain some seats in the U.S. House, that they have a realistic chance of recapturing a bare majority in the U.S. Senate and that they will continue to enjoy a sizable edge among the nation’s governors and hold their own in the state legislatures. …

What could be either signal or noise in the Republican election scenario are two factors. First, the mid-term electorate is substantially smaller (by as much as 20 percentage points) than the presidential year electorate, and it tends to include fewer young voters and minorities. Second, there are twice as many Democratic as Republican Senate seats up for election in this cycle and, according to the Cook Political Report there are only 77 House districts that were won by a 55-45 margin or less in 2012, only 33 by 52-48 or less— and those nearly evenly divided between Democratic and Republican winners.

Elections are not decided by how many turn out, but rather who turns out, and it is at this point not at all clear whether the deep divisions within the Republican Party will reduce GOP turnout by a greater amount than the likely lower turnout of some key Democratic constituencies. CONT.

Curtis Gans, Washington Monthly

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