Wave Elections Are Different

Going Down by Nancy Ohanian

The pundit class doesn't remember how different wave elections are. Seats no one was looking at suddenly some into play. Whose war chest is bigger stops being meaningful. TV ads are just as expensive but really unimportant. Even name recognition stops mattering. We're in the middle of an anti-red wave. In purple districts, anyone who isn't a Republican is in great shape. Democratic voters are gung-ho, Republican voters are dis-spirited and Independents are repulsed by Trump and his congressional rubber stamps.

In analyzing the new Reuters poll by Ipsos, Maria Caspani assented that "Name recognition is critical in motivating voters, is the reason candidates spend millions of dollars on TV ads and is a major factor in incumbents’ advantage in fending off challengers... About a third of registered voters do not know the name of their party’s candidate for office."

She immediately goes on to disprove her own assertion.

But it may be slightly less critical on Nov. 6 as many voters may view their choices as referendums on a man whose name will not be on the ballot: Republican President Donald Trump.

“With the current party polarization, voters increasingly vote based on party (read: like or dislike Trump) rather than the local candidates,” Robert Erikson, a professor of political science at Columbia University in New York City, wrote in an email.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that 34 percent of Republican registered voters and 32.5 percent of Democratic registered voters said they did not know the names of their party's congressional candidates in their districts.

...The level of congressional candidate name recognition is about in line with recent elections, said Marc Hetherington, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina.

“People aren’t voting for their side as much as they are voting against the other side,” Hetherington said. “It really doesn’t matter what the names are these days.”

Generic party interest is not working to Republicans' advantage nationally. Some 54 percent  of U.S. adults told Reuters/Ipsos they disapprove of the way Trump is handling the presidency and Democrats have a 9 percentage point lead in a generic question on which party they expect to vote for in Congress.

Beyond party and name recognition, gender may play a role in voters’ decisions this year, said Michael Cornfield, an associate professor of political management at George Washington University. The #MeToo movement and protests around Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have played into that trend.

“In these cases, it’s not just the name,” Cornfield said in an email. “Gender relations may be the top issue.”

Silly goose Lindsey Graham, obsessed with auditioning for Attorney General, doesn't understand this dynamic. He told the audience at the Atlantic Festival yesterday that the election is all about Kavanaugh and that "Whether you’re a Trump Republican, a Bush Republican, a McCain Republican, a libertarian or a vegetarian-- you’re pissed. I’ve never seen the Republican Party so unified as I do right now. The defining issue in 2018 has changed. It’s about this." He missed 2 categories: Democrats and independents. Whatever crazy nonsense Republicans think, normal Americans are opposed to confirming Kavanaugh-- and by a margin that keeps growing.

The new Pew Research survey found that "large majorities of voters in both parties view Supreme Court appointments as a 'very important' voting issue... As Congress considers Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, appointments to the high court rank among the top issues for both Democratic and Republican voters this year. But, in contrast to 2016, Democratic voters are now more likely than Republican voters to say this is very important to their vote. The share saying this among Republican voters is largely unchanged from 2016 (about seven-in-ten both years), but the share of Democrats saying the court is very important for their vote is 19 points higher than it was in 2016 (81% now, 62% then). Overall, 76% of registered voters-- including 81% who support the Democratic candidate and 72% who favor the Republican candidate-- say appointments to the court will be very important to their vote this fall.

The new poll from The Economist by YouGov asked voters: "Do you have a favorable or an unfavorable opinion of Brett Kavanaugh?

• Very favorable- 22%
• Somewhat favorable- 12%
• Somewhat unfavorable- 12%
• Very unfavorable- 31%

40% of voters say he is not honest and trustworthy and just 32% say he is. And, Lindsey Graham should look at this: just 33% think the Senate should confirm him. 43% say the Senate should not.