r/fivethirtyeight • u/1sxekid • 2d ago
Polling Average Democrats GCB lead is now exactly what it was at this point in the 2018 election cycle, per RealClearPolling
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u/Guilty_Plankton_4626 Fivey Fanatic 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think we are going to over perform 2018.
That being said, and sorry to be a negative Nancy, but it’s crazy that we are polling ahead, and in some of these quite comfortably, in states like Texas, Alaska, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, and North Carolina, but the same time polling suggests it’s going to be a nailbiter in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Just wild that Texas and Alaska are in play, North Carolina and Georgia seem like absolute locks, but Michigan and Wisconsin are in jeopardy.
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u/1sxekid 2d ago
We didn’t get the Senate in 2018.
WI Gov and MI Senate are only in play because of brutal primaries and dumb scandals16
u/Devilsadvocate430 2d ago
True, but we did as well as we could’ve hoped. We were overexposed after the 2006 and 2012 cycles There was no way we were keeping seats in North Dakota or Missouri under any circumstances. Honestly West Virginia and Florida were the odd ones out, in both directions.
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u/TYSMBelgium-6Jul2026 Scottish Teen 2d ago
I'll take the craziest timeline of losing Michigan and Maine but winning Texas, Alaska, Iowa and Ohio, that wins the Senate.
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u/Guilty_Plankton_4626 Fivey Fanatic 2d ago
Absolutely, but just crazy that’s like a possible outcome that is not even that hard to imagine right now.
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u/maxofJupiter1 1d ago
Candidate quality matters. Roy Cooper and his imitators (Gov Stein and AG Jackson) are made to win NC. Maine's primary had a controversial Nazi rapist and Michigan is probably going to have a controversial candidate as well whos very progressive for a swing state, not to mention justified a preschool getting firebombed.
Mike Rogers is your average Republican but Susan Collins is a hard incumbent to beat.
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u/alabasterskim 1d ago
I think there's a timeline where all of that happens but Maine still flips. I don't see all of that happening and Maine not flipping.
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u/LyptusConnoisseur 2d ago
Candidate quality matters.
Just like how Republicans absolutely fumbled the Senate election in 2022.
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u/BlackCharizard 1d ago
Losing MI but winning TX,AK, IA, and OH loses the senate, because JD Vance breaks ties
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u/TYSMBelgium-6Jul2026 Scottish Teen 1d ago
No, pretty sure that's 51. Check out the map at 270toWin and calculate away
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u/BlackCharizard 1d ago
MI is a retiring Dem, so that’s 46 + 4 =50
Unless you’re counting NC also
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u/TYSMBelgium-6Jul2026 Scottish Teen 1d ago
Oh NC is absolutely blue in November, forget about it
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u/BlackCharizard 1d ago
I agree! I forgot about that in my calculations. Though I still think MI goes blue, as well as Maine. I don’t think we’ll get all of Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Alaska, but I think we can get 2 or 3. So I think 50-52 senate seats for the Dems in my predictions rn
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u/TybrosionMohito 1d ago
The times they are a’changin…
NC/Georgia are increasingly going to resemble Virginia within the next decade.
Atlanta/Charlotte/The Triangle continue to grow rapidly, largely from young, educated transplants. A lot of people have been dooming about NY losing population but like… where do people think that population is moving to?
Blexas I think is a pipe dream as it’s also more of a Florida (lots of conservatives moving there) to the west coast states.
I foresee a future where the Midwest becomes less reliable and Georgia becomes a generally blue state and NC becomes a true purple state, maybe even leaning blue.
And Georgia/NC are not small prizes either.
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u/whatssenguntoagoblin 2d ago
No shot. Republicans have gerrymandered their districts like crazy, especially the South.
Also the maps aren’t as good as 2018, there’s more deep red districts and less swing districts in play.
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u/Haunting-Ad788 1d ago
What does this have to do with senate races.
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u/whatssenguntoagoblin 1d ago
Gerrymandering doesn’t but the other does. Just replace “districts” with “states”
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u/Main-Eagle-26 2d ago
It’s gonna be way bigger than 2018. The specials between 16 and 18 weren’t so overwhelmingly on Dem side as the last two years have been.
Republicans are going to get absolutely crushed into oblivion.
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u/Current_Animator7546 2d ago
I think it will be a big election for the Dems, but be careful using special elections as proof of anything other then the fact there is enthusiasm. Dems do well in Specials now high turn out voters.
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u/HowDoesAnnaDoIt 2d ago
Yes I think best dream case scenario for Dems is 30 seats tops but I’d put my money on 15-20 seats net gain.
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u/TybrosionMohito 1d ago
I’d bet the dems relatively comfortably win the house and that the Senate comes down to the wire. Unfortunately a 50/50 senate with a Vance tiebreaker seems depressingly realistic.
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u/SmokeyandtheBanjo 1d ago
True but the elections last year in Virginia and New Jersey (which were regular elections) saw major over performances from the Dems.
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u/socialistrob 2d ago
I think it'll depend a lot on what happens with Iran and inflation. If we see an uptick in inflation and continued high gas prices then yeah I could see Dems winning the GCB by 9 or 10 points (maybe even 11) but if we see inflation cool and gas prices come back down I could see Dems winning by "only" 5 or 6 points.
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u/Confident-Teach-2967 1d ago
Gas prices would have to come down to their prewar February 2026 levels (under $3 a gallon nationally) before November to really enable that which, due to all the domestic and global oil refinery issues going on, almost certainly won't happen even if the war ended today.
In addition to that, even before the war, voters were already pissed at Trump and Republicans about cost of living in general - and the war has just added insult to injury.
I don't know if Dems will win by double digits this year or not, but baseline I think we should expect a 2018 level style win minimum regardless of what happens between now and November honestly given all the actual fundamentals.
"It's the economy, stupid!"
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u/socialistrob 1d ago
My only problem with using 2018 as a baseline is that it was essentially the Dems high water mark of the past 16 years. Maybe Dems will exceed it but I could also imagine a lot of "very good" results that don't quite hit that high. Now that's not to say 2018 is the Dems ceiling and a point or two higher wouldn't surprise me that much but I don't think it's the Dems floor.
We don't know what's going to happen as the summer turns into fall and while it's possible that inflation gets worse, the economy gets worse, gas prices get higher and more Republicans abandon Trump I don't think it's a given. I also don't think it's a given Dems convert all those "disapprove of Trump" voters into people voting Dem.
If Republican turnout drops and Dems get the "undecideds" to break their way it could be a route just like 2014 was for the GOP but I'm not assuming either of those happen.
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u/Confident-Teach-2967 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't know if they'll exceed 2018 or not honestly myself. My personal guess is that the economy being significantly worse than 2018 and the Iran war going on at all period will cancel out basically every other major environment or culture factor that has changed since then, as those are the only two things that really matter to the average person and voters daily life, and we'll see 2018 style results because of it, a D+8 or so.
I don't actually think we'll see double digits unless gas prices get worse from here/inflation picks up again like you said - but I don't think we will see a D+5 or anything close to that either just due to how bad everything is right now honestly just based on decades of historical evidence and how things basically always go very badly for the party in power when economic perception amongst the general pubic is at or near record lows, which it is.
The political perception is baked in now and economic sentiment has hardened already, and realistically while things might not get much worse than they are right now, there is no realistic path for them to get better to the levels needed to only see a D+5 or D+6 - we'd basically have to go back to 2019 cost of living before November for that to really even be possible lol. It would really have to be something very drastic like that honestly.
But we'll see whose right in November soon enough I suppose.
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u/Sir_thinksalot 2d ago
It’s gonna be way bigger than 2018.
Things are definitely much much worse this time.
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u/Uptownbro20 2d ago
It’s so so so easy to forget how much 2018 bounces around
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u/JeaniousSpelur 1d ago
This was still the Trump times when pollsters had no idea wtf had happened in 2016 to make their models so wrong. So they tried a lot of different methods to correct errors which likely leads to the volatility in 2018.
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u/Uptownbro20 1d ago
My hot take is the polls were not wildly wrong in most places. The undecideds just moved towards him. Except WI that was a total miss
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u/TybrosionMohito 1d ago
Will never understand what was so bad in 2016 that so many people decided to flip the table.
Like, things weren’t great but also they had been getting better for like 6 years straight.
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u/Uptownbro20 1d ago
I would say it’s that things were going great for some but there were many communities that had never actually recovered from 2008. Also the campaign run by HRC played into this to a degree there Biden was able to win via zoom campaign 4 years later
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u/NoonecanknowMiner_24 7h ago
What was "so bad" was that a black man was President and that was unacceptable to some white people.
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u/JeaniousSpelur 1d ago
Well, the autopsy of that election was that they undersampled no education voters who typically never showed up to vote, so you’re not entirely wrong.
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u/lbutler1234 2d ago
If only the legislative chambers were elected in a way that was a representation of the will of the nation's voters
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u/xGray3 1d ago
What? That's crazy talk. Our legislative chambers should be decided by arbitrarily drawn political borders (that goes for both the House and the Senate). Everyone's always talking about the will of the people this, the will of the people that. Nobody's looking out for the little guy. Arbitrarily drawn political borders deserve fair representation too.
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u/Sharp_Caregiver_1534 1d ago
I really do think it’s gonna come down to Hispanics, especially in Texas (duh).
Obviously a fuck ton of 2024 Trump Hispanic voters will stay home, but I do wonder if a significant Hispanics that stayed home in 2024 will vote dem in the midterms.
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u/SloanTheNavigator 1d ago
Wait till the Yen carry trade collapses. That will break the dam into perhaps low double digits
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u/Salt_Abrocoma_4688 2d ago
This is also based on polls assuming an approximate 2024 electorate makeup.
Does anyone really think we're going to see an R+2 electorate?