A major overall theme in American political life is the nationalization of politics. How people feel about the president is bleeding down the ballot to an extreme degree, to the point where congressional expert Gary Jacobson observed that the 2018 midterm was “the most sweeping national referendum on any administration at least since the Great Depression.” This helps explain the 2018 results, when Democrats swept the House but lost ground in the Senate because they held too many seats in states that had trended so far to the right in presidential races.
This trend showed up in 2016, too. Every state with a Senate race voted for the same party for Senate and for president for the first time in the history of Senate popular elections.
Nationalization seems very germane when assessing the Democrats’ drive for impeaching President Trump in the House and the possibility of an impeachment trial in the Senate. CONT.
Kyle Kondik, Sabato’s Crystal Ball