Democrats would appear to face long odds in the 2018 U.S. House elections. They need to pick up 24 seats to take back control of the House, and there are only 23 Republicans who hold districts carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. In this politically-polarized era, presidential election results strongly […] Read more »
2018 Senate: Democrats start on defense but national environment will be key
At first blush, one might think that the Democrats have a decent chance of taking control of the Senate in the 2018 midterm. After all, midterms frequently break against the president’s party, which has lost an average of four seats in the 26 midterms conducted in the era of popular […] Read more »
A Very Early Look At The Battle For The House In 2018
… If you’re a Democrat thinking about running for office in a swing district in 2018, you’re hoping Trump’s ratings stay on the mildly to very unpopular side of the scale. Actually, “mildly unpopular” might not be good enough. The relationship between presidential approval ratings and congressional elections is rough, […] Read more »
Will Trump’s Approval Rating Be A Problem For Republicans In 2018?
… Trump’s historic unpopularity provides a glimmer of hope to Democrats, who are currently shut out of power in every elected division of the federal government. “Maybe, just maybe,” the thinking goes, “a backlash to Trump’s policies could jump-start a Democratic wave that could flip control of Congress in 2018.” […] Read more »
14 Versions Of Trump’s Presidency, From #MAGA To Impeachment
When faced with highly uncertain conditions, military units and major corporations sometimes use an exercise called scenario planning. The idea is to consider a broad range of possibilities for how the future might unfold to help guide long-term planning and preparation. The goal is not necessarily to assess the relative […] Read more »
The Real Story Of 2016
… While data geeks and traditional journalists each made their share of mistakes when assessing Trump’s chances during the campaign, their behavior since the election has been different. After Trump’s victory, the various academics and journalists who’d built models to estimate the election odds engaged in detailed self-assessments of how […] Read more »