On Politics: Just how bad is it for Democrats?

Support has plunged recently. Exactly how far is hotly debated.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story November 18, 2021 By Shane Goldmacher Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, has predicted that 276 Democratic House seats could be in jeopardy in the 2022 midterm elections.Al Drago for The New York Times In the heady aftermath of Republicans' winning the Virginia governorship this month, Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader who hopes to become speaker after the 2022 midterm elections, made a bold claim at the Capitol. "If you're a Democrat and President Biden won your seat by 16 points, you're in a competitive race next year," McCarthy declared. "You are no longer safe." It was, by most measures, more bullish hyperbole than sincere prognostication. There are 276 House seats that Biden won by less than that — far more than Republicans have held in nearly a century. (As of now, Democrats hold a narrow 221-213 majority.) But there was also an undisputed truth undergirding McCarthy's braggadocio: Democratic support has plunged nationally in recent months. The party's loss in Virginia was just the most consequential example. Exactly how far and fast Democratic popularity has fallen is hotly debated in both parties. Virginia was one key data point: The election showed a Republican improvement of 12 percentage points, from Biden's win in the state a year ago by 10 points to Democrats' loss of the governorship this month by two points. The governor's race in New Jersey swung toward Republicans by a similar margin. Still, few strategists, Democrat or Republican, believe the Democratic brand's collapse nationally has been quite that complete and widespread. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Among campaign insiders, one popular measurement that is closely tracked to gauge the mood of the electorate is the "generic ballot test." That is when pollsters ask voters whom they would prefer to serve in Congress — a Democrat or a Republican, with no names attached. For years, Democrats continuously have held an edge in this metric. Until now. For the first time since January 2016, Republicans are now preferred, according to the FiveThirtyEight public polling average. FiveThirtyEight's average has swung 4.6 points in the last six months toward the G.O.P. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Just how bad is it out there for the Democrats? A Washington Post/ABC News poll last weekend showed Republicans in the strongest position on this measure in the poll's four-decade history. On Thursday, a poll from Quinnipiac University of registered voters said 46 percent wanted G.O.P. control of the House, compared with 41 percent for Democrats. The same trend is showing up in private surveys. The National Republican Congressional Committee's internal polling this month showed that Republicans in battleground districts had improved by seven percentage points since the beginning of the year. So-called generic Republicans began the year three points behind Democrats; now they are ahead by four points. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's generic ballot testing this month also shows Democrats trailing — albeit by two points. Party officials said that actually was an improvement from some other recent months. The D.C.C.C. declined to say what its polling showed at the start of the year. Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who is chairman of the House Republican campaign arm, said in an interview that the N.R.C.C.'s private polling at the start of the year measured Biden's approval rating as 10 percentage points higher than his disapproval rating. Now, Emmer said, it's the reverse: Biden's disapproval is 10 points higher. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Emmer offered a less hyperbolic version of McCarthy's prediction of exactly how many Democrats are at risk in 2022. "The experts are telling me that any Democrat who sits in a seat Joe Biden won by 10 points or less a year ago is vulnerable," Emmer said. That is still roughly 250 seats. "We will win the majority," Emmer said flatly, "but we're going to let the voters tell us how big that's going to be." The indicators for Democrats are not quite as sour everywhere. My colleague Nate Cohn wrote earlier this week in the newsletter about two House special elections in Ohio, where Democrats finished only about three percentage points behind Biden's performance. That is erosion, but it's not as politically catastrophic. And in Pennsylvania, a Supreme Court vacancy was contested with millions of dollars in spending. In some ways, the contest functionally pitted a generic Democrat against a generic Republican, because even the most engaged voters know little to nothing about candidates for the judiciary. The Republican candidate won by 2.6 percentage points — in a state Biden carried by 1.2 points in 2020. That represented a nearly four-point improvement for Republicans. To summarize, various data points show a range of possibility for Democratic decline: somewhere between three to 12 percentage points. None of the possible outcomes bode well for holding the House in 2022 or maintaining control of a Senate now equally divided between 50 Democratic-aligned senators and 50 Republicans. Perhaps what is giving Democrats the most solace is the calendar. It is 2021 still and not 2022. Democrats also hope they will have more to sell in the coming year — Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure package on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday, and a $1.85 trillion social policy and climate change bill is winding its way through Congress — and more time to sell it. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chairman of the D.C.C.C., has pushed for both the president and Democratic members of Congress to more forcefully pitch what they have already passed this year. As he told my colleague Trip Gabriel this month: "My message is 'free Joe Biden.' That campaign needs to start now before the next crisis takes over the news cycle." Maloney said it was understandable that voters hadn't given Democrats credit for the large economic recovery measure that passed earlier in the year or for the new infrastructure spending. "We don't expect them to know if we don't tell them," he said this week on Capitol Hill. "So we're going to tell them." Hundreds of protesters against vaccine mandates rallied outside the Florida Capitol this week.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press As Republicans fight mask and vaccine mandates, Florida is taking the lead. Early this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis crisscrossed Florida promoting coronavirus vaccines, visiting retiree communities and hospitals, and celebrating people who got their shots. But it was a remarkably different picture this week, when Florida's lieutenant governor, Jeanette Nuñez, was a prominent speaker at a rally organized by anti-vaccination activists on the State Capitol steps. The jarring scene gave vaccine skeptics in Florida a big win and moved the state further away from the guidance of federal public health officials. It reflected a highly politicized pandemic that has become only more so as Republican-controlled states confront the Biden administration's wide-ranging attempts to ease it. Perhaps no state has been more aggressive than Florida. DeSantis and his allies are betting that the anger over public health restrictions that drove Republicans to the polls this month in Virginia, New Jersey and other states will expand their base and keep voters fervently engaged going into the 2022 midterms. DeSantis, who faces re-election next year, is also considered a leading 2024 Republican presidential contender. Read the full story. Subscribe Today We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times with this special offer. RECOMMENDED READING Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times Pelosi Predicts Thursday Vote on Biden's Ambitious Social Policy Bill A House vote, months in the making, could come as early as Thursday evening on a $1.85 trillion social policy and climate bill that would be the largest expansion of the safety net in 50 years. By Jonathan Weisman and Emily Cochrane Erin Schaff for The New York Times Four Years After 'Unite the Right,' Charlottesville Still Struggles to Move On Many residents hoped the town would become an example of racial reconciliation. It hasn't happened. By Neil MacFarquhar Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. Is there anything you think we're missing? Anything you want to see more of? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for On Politics from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

On Politics: Want a clue about the midterms? Look at 2 Ohio races.

There's a long history of special election results foreshadowing the next general election.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story November 16, 2021 By Nate Cohn Domestic Correspondent for The Upshot Shontel Brown, center, a Democratic candidate for Congress, won the special election in Ohio's 11th district by 58 points.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times A lot seems to be going poorly for Democrats right now, including President Biden's sinking approval ratings and the results of this month's elections in Virginia and New Jersey. But two obscure special elections in Ohio's 11th and 15th congressional districts, where Democrats and Republicans each retained long-held seats, revealed a possible bright spot for Democrats and faintly signaled that political conditions may not be as dire for Democrats as they seem. Neither race received much national attention. Neither race was especially competitive. And neither had a high turnout. But unlike in the flashier races for Virginia and New Jersey governor, the two Democratic candidates in the Ohio congressional races ran about as well as Democrats usually do. They ran far closer to the party's recent benchmarks, including Biden's showing in the last presidential election, than Democrats did in Virginia, where Terry McAuliffe lost to the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, and in New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, won by a slim margin. While it would be a mistake to read too much into these two low-profile affairs, it would also be a mistake to ignore them. The two House races didn't receive much attention for a simple reason: Neither party had any reason to contest them. Ohio's 11th District is overwhelmingly Democratic, and the 15th is firmly Republican. Yet in both races, the Democratic House candidates ran only three percentage points behind Biden's showing against former President Donald Trump in last year's election. The margin is nothing for Democrats to brag about, but it's simply not the same as what they experienced in Virginia and New Jersey, where the Republican candidates ran 12 and 13 points ahead of Trump. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Of the two districts, Ohio's 15th is more competitive — and the most representative of next year's battlegrounds. It stretches from the suburbs around Columbus to the conservative working-class countryside of south-central Ohio. Unlike the House battlegrounds, this is not a district where Democrats have a chance to prevail, even under favorable circumstances: Trump won the district by 14 points while the incumbent Republican, Steve Stivers, won it by 27 points last November. But despite a more favorable national political environment, Mike Carey, a Trump-endorsed Republican and coal lobbyist, defeated Allison Russo, a Democratic state representative, by a fairly typical 17-point margin — a bit better than Trump, and quite a bit worse than Stivers. While the results of the Virginia election spurred talk that the Democratic Party's leftward lurch on race and cultural issues might be hurting the Democrats in the suburbs, Russo won 55 percent of the vote in the Franklin County portion of the district, home to the Columbus suburbs, nearly matching the 56 percent won by Biden. Ohio's 11th District is even less competitive. The majority-Black district, which snakes from Cleveland to Akron, favored Biden by a whopping 61 points last November. The previous Democratic representative, Marcia Fudge, who is now the secretary of housing and urban development, won by 60 points. The result was similar this time: Shontel Brown, the establishment-backed Democrat who narrowly defeated the progressive favorite Nina Turner in an August primary, won by 58 points. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT It might seem odd to draw attention to the results of uncompetitive races, but special congressional election results often do a decent job of foreshadowing the outcome of the next midterm elections. Four years ago, special elections were one of the first signs of Democratic strength after Trump was elected president. So far this cycle, other special election results have tended to resemble the modest Republican gains in Ohio more than the significant G.O.P. swings in Virginia and New Jersey. Another reason to pay attention is that the special congressional elections are contests for federal office, not state or local government. While politics has become increasingly nationalized in recent years, it remains quite common for voters to split their tickets and back the other party in down-ballot races for governor or other local offices. Maryland and Massachusetts elected Republican governors in 2018, despite the so-called blue wave that year. Local issues, like education or property taxes, naturally play a much bigger role than they do in federal contests. And it is much easier for a relatively moderate candidate for local office to shed the baggage of the national party. After all, a vote for Youngkin as governor of Virginia is not a vote to make Kevin McCarthy the House speaker or Mitch McConnell the Senate majority leader. Democrats and Republicans were deadlocked on the generic congressional ballot, a poll question asking whether voters would back a Democrat or Republican for Congress. Historically, the measure tracks well with the eventual House national vote. On average, Republicans lead by less than a percentage point, according to FiveThirtyEight — they took the lead while I wrote this newsletter. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT A roughly tied House national vote would most likely mean clear Republican control of the chamber, thanks to partisan gerrymandering and the tendency for Democrats to win lopsided margins in reliably Democratic areas. But it would be a much closer race than one might guess based on Virginia and New Jersey. And it would be roughly in line with the results in Ohio: a four-point shift to the Republicans, compared to Biden's four-point win in the national vote. "Looking at where I live right now, it's like they want to push us out farther and, well, it will gentrify the community," said Dorothy Wiley, who opposes a proposed highway expansion near her home in Louisiana.Emily Kask for The New York Times Achieving the U.S. goal of racial equity through infrastructure is being left up to the states. President Biden's $1 trillion plan to rebuild America's infrastructure comes with a built-in promise: No longer will roads, bridges and railways be instruments of bias or racism. Communities that ended up divided along racial lines will be made whole. But the decision about how to spend the money falls largely to the states, not all of which are likely to put as high a priority on that promise as Biden does, raising questions about whether the legislation will deliver on his goal. Read the full story. Subscribe Today We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times with this special offer. RECOMMENDED READING Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press Trump Seeks Continued Block on Sending White House Files to Jan. 6 Panel The ex-president's brief to a federal appeals court argued that his residual secrecy powers could block a House subpoena for information about the Capitol riot. By Charlie Savage Doug Mills/The New York Times News Analysis U.S.-China Summit Produces Little More Than Polite Words, but They Help In a chilly relationship of mutual mistrust, staving off the prospect of a broader conflict between two superpowers counts as progress. By Steven Lee Myers and David E. Sanger Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. Is there anything you think we're missing? Anything you want to see more of? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for On Politics from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018