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Cautiously Calling It a Comeback: The Future for Democrats


Ever since the fall of Roe v. Wade, the political fortunes of Democrats have increased greatly.

Granted, this is largely a function of women who are enraged at having their rights violated and stolen. It’s also worth noting that in much of the country, women have no reproductive rights at all, and it has gotten to the point where state governments are prepared to let women die in the name of stopping abortion or, in states like Texas, sentence these women to death.

Keep in mind that in Texas, the penalty for capital murder is execution.

Now, if it were just a matter of polls showing a comeback (even if that is starting to slow down quite a bit), then I understand why people would be skeptical.

Ever since 2016, polling has gotten harder and harder. This is because it has both gotten harder to contact people with traditional methods (most pollsters call people to ask questions using landlines) and fewer people are completing polls. Oftentimes, cell phones can block numbers unless they are preapproved, and internet polls have all sorts of reliability problems.

This is not to say that polls are useless. They can provide a useful snapshot of the current political environment depending on how well pollsters do their job. That being said, the political environment can rapidly change in the matter of days it takes to conduct a poll.

In 2020, there was a systemic failure in the polling industry to predict Trump’s support in the Midwest and, ironically, Biden’s support in Georgia.

So, yes, people are right to be skeptical of polls.

But there are other ways to take the temperature of the political environment.

Fundraising numbers, recent electoral history, and voter registration numbers can, in context, be helpful.

I would argue, however, that the best method is special elections: they involve voters directly voting in elections and are quite reliable in picking up trends. Referendums can, in context, be a useful metric as well.

Special elections picked up the red wave of 2010 and the blue wave year of 2018. A special election even forecasted the trouble Democrats would have down ballot in 2020, as shown by the decisive win by Republican Mike Garcia in the then California 25th.

Typically, most special elections occur when a member of Congress either dies or steps down.

In the case of the 2022 midterm elections, the special election results show a clear before and after Dobbs, the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

Before Dobbs, Republicans were on average over performing by about 2 points. Republicans even managed to flip the Texas 34th from blue to red.

After Dobbs, the special election results signified a political environment where Democrats were overperforming by 9 points.

In red wave years, Republicans typically overperform by considerable margins and flip seats they have no business flipping, such as a senatorial seat in Massachusetts.

One or two special election results don’t say much; five start to reveal a pattern.

Ever since Dobbs, Democrats have consistently overperformed in all five special elections, even though they only won in two of them.

Three of these special elections happened in solidly red districts where the Republican won but where the Democrat either seriously overperformed or the Republican performed at 2020 levels.

In the case of Alaska, Democrats won because of a combination of excellent campaigning by Congresswoman Mary Peltola and the GOP running a candidate who was hated by many Alaskans for abandoning them while governor. Truth be told, the Republicans would have kept the Alaska congressional seat if they had run literally anyone else, though they still would have underperformed.

Alaska is not replicable across the country because of its unique situation.

However, candidate quality was not a factor in the special election in the New York 19th congressional district. Both candidates served as executives within their home counties’ governments, and although Marc Molinaro, the Republican, had more political experience than did Pat Ryan, the Democrat, neither candidate was a political novice.

Keep in mind the New York 19th is a swing district that went for Trump by 6 points in 2016 and 2 points for Biden in 2020.

The Republican Marc Molinaro outraised the Democrat Pat Ryan by a slight margin.

So with these candidates of roughly equal quality fighting tooth and nail on roughly even footing in a swing district, the New York 19th is a perfect case study in taking the political temperature.

The Democrat Pat Ryan won this race by roughly 2.5 points, a slight overperformance on Biden’s numbers in 2020. Keep in mind that every poll taken of this election had the Republican Marc Molinaro ahead, some by a considerable margin.

I am still of the opinion that holding the House is going to be quite a tall order at best for Democrats based on the math. Truth be told, I am far more optimistic about Democrats holding the Senate, though that is no guarantee either.

But this is a far cry from earlier in 2022 when it looked much worse for Democrats coming off a series of serious losses in Virginia and way-too-close election results in New Jersey.

To be blunt, Dobbs and bad decision-making by the Republicans put Congress in play when, by all rights, it should be looking like a red wave year.

I want to maximize our odds of holding the Senate for the sake of the judiciary, so I will include a list of the most important senatorial races below. I will list some of the gubernatorial races as well.

Stay frosty, everyone.

Gubernatorial races:
Senatorial races:
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