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In July 2018, the most respected analysts were decidedly uncertain if Democrats could take over the House. July 6th Cook political report, for example, ranked 180 seats as "solid" for Democrats, with 12 likely / meager and 3 "toss-up or worse". If the Democrats won all these and the 22 seats held by the GOP have been described as "fighting" – they would still have a seat in front of the majority, at 217.
But on July 1, the newcomer Rachel Bitecofer, deputy director of Judy Ford Wason Public Policy Center at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, published his prediction of a "blue wave" of 42 places, "while citing the US Senate competitions in Arizona and Texas as" shots on goal. "His surprising prediction was numerically close to perfection; Democrats will get a gain of 40 or 41 seats, depending on how whose North Carolina reissue will have The 9th district has arrived (Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won the Arizona Senate race, in a major historical turning point, and Beto O 'Rourke was very close to Texas.) In addition, she even beat a little, written on November 2 that she had not adjusted the number of her seats, but that "The last few months have been spent filling empty spaces on which specific seats will switch. The list of these obtained was also close to perfection.
With such a recording, you would not think that Bitecofer's explanation of what happened would have caught everyone's attention and made common sense – but unfortunately you would be wrong to go wrong. It is just beginning to get the recognition it deserves, and more troubling for the country, the outdated assumptions that its model has shed continue to cloud the ideas of experts and leaders of the Democratic Party. (Follow her on Twitter right here.)
This is hindering every day efforts to counteract the destructive effects of Donald Trump and is confusing about the democratic prospects and the strategy for the 2020 elections. Most importantly, the mistaken belief that Democrats won in 2018 by getting support Republicans (reclaiming "Trump voters") is fueling an illusory search for an ill-defined middle ground that could actually demobilize Democratic voters who have led the wave.
Today's polarized hyper-environment environment is the product of long-term historical processes that simply can not be abandoned, says Bitecofer. His case is similar to that described in detail by Alan Abramowitz in his book of 2018, "Great alignment: race, party transformation and Donald Trump's rise" (Exhibition notice right here), as confirmed by both specialists.
"I am concerned about the long-term trends that provide context for these short-term effects," Abramowitz said of the Bitecofer model. "She is very interested in the impact of demographic change and increasing racial and ethnic diversity on the party system, in particular by contributing to growing partisan polarization and negative partisanship", which are key themes of his work.
The good news is that as long as Trump is in power, negative partisanship gives the Democrats an advantage, as electoral realignment continues. Rather than fearing Trump's ability to repeat his surprise of 2016, on July 1 of this year Bitecofer released its projection for 2020, which shows Democrats get 278 electoral votes against 197 for Trump, with several swing states too close to be called. Bitecofer is not afraid that Democrats will lose their majority in the House. August 6th, Bitecofer has published a preliminary list of 18 seats in the House Democrats could switch to 2020, including nine in Texas. The most important threats to Democrats are actually golden opportunities, depending on its model.
This is not to say that Democrats do not have to worry, especially in 2022, while negative partisanship may be blowing in the opposite direction. But worrying about good things, rather than ghosts, is the first step towards solving these problems. So I sat down to chat with Bitecofer, hoping to give some reason and perspective to what is already an astounding election cycle. This interview has been modified for clarity and length.
When I saw your projection halfway through for the first time in 2018, I felt two things simultaneously: first, that makes sense, then a sense of dread. "Oh my God, is it just a reasoned reasoning on my part, does it make me think that it's so clever?" I no longer have shared feelings, but I understand the doubts.
Well, I can tell you that as the creator of the analysis, I have the same problem. Imagine being the person doing the analysis and having this problem: is this really what is happening or is it just wishful thinking?
I had an advantage since the Virginia cycle. [That is, the state legislative races of 2017 that resulted in big wins for the Democrats.] In the Virginia cycle, I kept saying, "It can be a huge landslide, you should invest in delegate races, because you can probably take 15 to 20". And everyone was saying, "Oh no, that's not how it works in Virginia politics, you're too new in Virginia." I have therefore already had the benefit of knowing it. But that does not mean that I was not completely sick on the belly on polling day.
In the initial prediction of a 42-seat wave, other analysts were not even sure there would be a blue wave at all, and everyone had problems where you said it would rock or could be. You were right, but the common sense explanation that Democrats won over moderate Republicans by campaigning on health care was at odds with your explanation. You had this very prescient insight, and then everyone catches up, but they sort of gave up your insight. How did you know and how is this explanation wrong?
I'm really happy to hear you say it's like that. I did not hear it that way, even in my own brain, but you're absolutely right. I'm well ahead of everyone, they are catching up as we get into the last two months before polling day – certainly last month – and then, the elections are going and going exactly like that, and then they have abandoned my explanation. Now, I am trying to fight for the explanation to be accepted.
The explanation, of course, is that it is the massive participation of the main constituencies, be they Democrats or Democrat supporters – they are independents who favor the Democrats – huge explosion of participation. This is not the same pool of voters who change their minds and vote Democrats after voting Republican because of the health care issue. It is a basin of voters completely different.
They may have many reasons they cite, and this is probably not the reason they would invoke. But what made them furious and came forward was Trump Inc., the negative partisanship. I do not know why Nancy Pelosi, the DCCC or many of these moderate members are convinced that moderate Republicans have gone through and voted for them. I have the data for some of these districts and the data tell a very different story and very clear: if the Republicans voted in large numbers, they voted for the Republicans.
Looking back, you actually said there was a Republican wave, but it was not a match against the Democratic wave.
The truth is that the participation of the Democrats, especially at the mid-term, is so serious that with the gigantic wave that the Democrats managed to organize, what they were able to do is close to the participation of the Democrats. Republicans. What is good is a major victory. But in many districts, especially when the candidates want to be moderate, the participation rate of the Democrats remains lower than that of its potential and that of the Republicans, according to the analysis that I will publish after Labor Day.
But the rise in the participation rate of the independents – the new independents, not those who voted in 2014 – was so important combined with this increase in the participation of Democrats to return the district. If the Republicans had also voted for the Democrats, the margins of victory of the Democrats would be much greater.
What factors predicted the turnout that allowed your model to be so accurate?
This model was built as a result of the 2016 elections. It was built as an answer, explaining why the models were removed in 2016, and was based on this belief that polarization had changed voter behavior. This has diminished the effectiveness of factors such as the economy and increased the predictive power of elements such as partisanship. The main predictor of my model is therefore the partisanship, the competition between the state or district parties, if we were talking about my 2018 model, which really defines the framework of the debate.
It must be in a field of possibility. To illustrate this, in 2018, when we look at the map of the Senate, Arizona was a R + 5 state, which meant that Republicans had a partisan advantage of about five points. Tennessee was a R + 15 state, and of course, as I predicted, Arizona went to the Democrats, but Tennessee was not even close, despite the many millions of dollars spent by Democrats in this effort.
The second most important and influential thing – and this is quite unique and new – is the percentage of university graduates residing in the state or district. That's what I said would be unique and new in the Trump era. That's why I was able to look at cards, participate in those races that, in 2018, were perceived as panic and say, "No, no, no, no, they're going to be." ;reverse."
In this new era we are entering, we have college-educated voters heading for Democrats and white voters of the working class who are moving away from them. It allowed me to see months and months in advance of the polls and to say that these are the races where the Democrats will behave really well.
Going back to something you have already mentioned, you say that the "mid-term effect" is poorly understood and that the old model – the party support movement of the independents – was a wrong way of thinking on this subject. What kind of evidence was there before 2016, and then after?
We thought of the effect in the medium term as follows: you have the president, you have two years of performance. For a long time we had a part of the electorate that is partisan. These conditions have worsened, especially for 20 years in what we call hyper-partisanship. But then we have these independents. The independents must be the referees, basically.
According to this theory, they are free of partisanship, they are able to look at a person and see her as she is without these blind partisanship, to judge her real abilities and to make a referendum on the subject. exercise of his functions. So there is this idea that at mid-point they turn to the party in place. And if they do not succeed very well, like Obama, for example, oversized with Obamacare, there is this terrible reaction of the independents and they have this revolution because, God help us all, Obama has modestly modified the care health!
What I am saying is that no, the Democratic base has collapsed, as it was in 2006, at the end of the last semester of their term. [and won]. This has literally collapsed among Democrats, and because of that, it seems that the electorate has this giant pull back effect, driven mainly by those independent voters who reject the ruling party. But what we are really looking at in most of these elections is the rise and fall of some voters coming in and out of the electorate.
Could you elaborate a little more on how the results of the last election improved or refined your model?
The way this has helped to refine the model is – go back to what happened in 2010, when democratic participation collapsed once the anti-Bush sentiment disappeared. Previously, the balance sheet of 2002 was completely different because of September 11, so we had only 2006 to look at and we had this huge wave. The Democrats overthrew 35 seats in the House, Nancy Pelosi became the speaker, and they doubled that figure with Obama's victory in 2008, after which their voter turnout plummeted.
So I was expecting it, even though Trump and the Republicans are just better at voting, and especially Trump with his message – people sneer, but it touches people's basic emotions. So I was expecting it to be effective enough to get people to vote, even though I was expecting a drop in voter turnout from Republicans.
If that happened, we would have had participation rates in the 1940s and we probably would have had a better Senate night for the Democrats, probably very similar to what we saw in the House. But the reason it did not happen is that Republicans 'participation rate has risen just as much as Democrats', which I was not expecting.
This certainly did not happen in Virginia in 2017, and it has taught me that negative partisanship can be created artificially with a very good strategy, which Republicans possess. Some people made fun of him. You'll even hear some very smart GOP analysts, some political experts, say, "Oh, Trump's caravan strategy was so stupid." Well, the loss of 40 seats was stalled and it did not matter, but he probably saved a few seats in the Senate. My 2020 model has therefore been refined to reflect my belief that the Republicans' turnout will also be extremely high.
As a corollary to that, would you say that "we should not do X because Trump will exploit it to mow its supporters" are out of the grassroots, because that will happen anyway?
Absolutely. In fact, in analyzing the district-level voter file in California and Virginia that I will post after Labor Day, I have competitive districts in those states. The data show that voter turnout has increased and how much the composition of the electorate was different between 2014 and 2018. I can also show that even in those districts where Democrats have nominated Blue Dog candidates who were as unobtrusive as possible – with, exactly you stated that the goal of not disturbing Trump voters – the turnout of Republican voters in these districts was enormous.
In fact, not only did the Democrats not benefit from the do not stirring up Trump's base – Trump's base was stirred up and displayed in large numbers – but not taking advantage of anti-Trump sentiment in their own campaign strategy, by not intentionally activating Trump's anguish they paid the price of their own basic participation. It was depressed, compared to other districts.
This year, you published your presidential prediction on July 1, showing Democrats getting an absolute majority of 278 votes, a little more than the 270 required for victory. Trump is at 197, with four states of reversal. But Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are not part of your model. You write that Trump is in trouble in the Midwest and that there is a deep misunderstanding about how we won these states in 2016. What is at the heart of this misunderstanding and why is this important for 2020?
When we hear the experts talking about what happened in the Midwest, they will usually say that the Midwest has turned to Trump, is not it? Well, that's only true in two states. In Iowa and Ohio, where Trump has cracked 50%, you can truly claim that he has defeated the voters of these states. The others – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – Trump won these states by winning only the majority of the votes, which I would call the default winner. He won about 46 or 47 percent of the vote.
The reason why none of the candidates was more than 50% was that a large number of voters in those states voted for protest votes, and in the polarized period, the average of the votes cast is about 1.5%. The famous election of Ralph Nader, the Florida spoiler in 2000, was about 1.5%. In Wisconsin, 6.2% of voters voted for ballots in 2016. This is an extraordinary amount.
So, when you understand the role played by third parties in Trump's victory in the Midwest and his inability to break through to 50%, you realize that the path to victory is very complex. This is closely related to the fact that he was opposed not only to a Democrat, but also to that Democrat for whom the GOP had succeeded in provoking a turnaround in public opinion. This will certainly not be the case in the 2020 cycle.
So, what about 2020? What does your model say?
My model for 2020 starts with the Democrats at 278 Electoral College votes, and that's a problem for Trump, because it takes 270 of course to win. It does so because of the prediction of my model, based on the participation rate and the predicted voice share, that Pennsylvania and Michigan will return to the Democrats. I'm not sure of Ohio, but even if Trump wins Ohio, he will not be able to win the other three Midwestern states. Then, as you point out, I have four complementary states: Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, and Iowa. Even though he wins all four, the Democrats have already won the election and the idea that he would win all four is rather unlikely.
I will have a much better sense about this once we see participation rates in the Democratic primary. But I think what we're going to look at is Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia as states where Trump is forced to play defense to keep up. I think we're coming in September [of 2020] – I do not think we will get to the point where Democrats feel comfortable in the Midwest. I think we will see an unprecedented campaign and an expenditure-driven press in the Midwest until election day. But I think that starting in September and October, they will also spend resources in the sunshine belt and in other states like this.
You say that if Joe Biden is the proposed candidate, he should consider a vice-presidential nominee who will motivate grassroots voters, and that if a progressive candidate is the proposed candidate, there could be a dynamic of conflicting issues in the nominees. media. Even if none of these things should make the Democrats lose points, they are worrying and reflect a lack of understanding of what your model and analysis provide.
Democratic leaders – the way they chose to navigate Trump's impeachment process, and certainly the way they talk about their victories in the House and how to maintain their majority in the House – tell me that they still live in the data understanding. it's obsolete. If you do not understand how you won and what the competing political data environment tells you, it's worrying. So, I see a lot of evidence that the Democrats do not understand that. I do not know why.
I know there are more and more voices in democratic politics leaning towards a vision of the environment, and we have seen it play in 2018 in the campaign strategies of Beto O'Rourke and Stacey Abrams. What they could do in terms of competitions in these two deep red states is absolutely remarkable and demonstrates the effectiveness of a participatory approach, a strategic approach.
In Texas and Georgia, O & # Rourke and Abrams both got the independents vote, while in Missouri and Indiana where [incumbent senators] Claire McCaskill and Joe Donnelly were much better positioned in the Blue Dog camp for the broadcast positions, both of which lost independents.
So you may think "Why this? If a group of candidates has adopted more liberal positions, why did they defeat the independents? This seems counterfactual, and the reason is that what mattered was the turnout. O'Rourke and Abrams transported independents because their participation rate has increased different self-employed people running for voting, motivated by the targeting strategy implemented by these campaigns, which were run according to my suggested model, rather than the old game book that worked in the 90s and 80s.
Democrats remain very worried about their freshman class, based largely on the notion of the static electorate, rather than on an electorate that is still realigning itself. But you've recently released projections for 2020 citing 18 seats in the House held by Republicans, including nine in Texas. What do you see here that others forget and what will it take to realize this potential?
I see two things. No. 1, I want to emphasize that these are possible targets. These are not my official forecasts for 2020 House because I do not include all home runs. This is only 18 targets for pickup opportunities. And you're right, because the realignment is still going on, the conditions are improving for the Democrats. My model has identified many districts. Democrats have not even proclaimed themselves competitive because they believe that what makes an election competitive is a candidate like Amy McGrath. [who is running against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky].
I argue no, they are conditions similar to those of the suburbs with many educated voters. No matter the quality of the candidate, if you put him in bad electoral conditions, whatever the amount you invest him, they will not be able to overcome these conditions.
So here's the other thing that the leaders of both parties should understand. In these swing areas, your power time is limited, so you should probably use power when you have it, because it is totally wrong to think that you will keep it indefinitely. According to my research hypothesis, according to my model, the Democrats win the White House in 2020, and in 2022, they will experience a very difficult electoral cycle, because the participation of Democrats will return to normal.
And since the Democrats have a poor electoral strategy, they will make the problem worse, probably by not appealing to the Democrats to go to the polls. So, no matter how far you hold the legislation of your Blue Dogs, they will all be wiped out anyway. So use your power where you have it. No. 2, there are ways to keep them in power, but the means they choose are not.
Regarding the Democratic primary campaign, on Twitter, you have several times warned that name recognition was the main thing that polls measured so far. How can people be more realistic about thinking about the 20 candidates currently competing?
People who read your article, those who follow me on Twitter – we forget how we are atypical, even with regard to those who will vote in the Democratic primary. Primary voters are already more active, more aware and more engaged than average Americans, but still not like us. They do not pay attention, do not watch debates, they do not read news, they do not read on Twitter, they read political news sites, but they will vote.
So, several blue-check reporters from my stream said, "Oh, it's interesting that Bernie Sanders voters chose Biden for their second choice." No, it's not interesting at all. This is the only other person whose constituents have heard about. The problem is therefore the proliferation of analyzes that completely analyze shit and that are totally false. It's in the data, okay? But he is motivated by this name identity problem.
I've said a million times that we lived at the golden age of the data. We just have to understand its limits. And the sad truth is that the only way for people to do this is to follow me and read my research because nobody talks about it.
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