Nate Silver's Blog, page 92

Are Democrats’ Senate Chances In 2018 Overrated?

After Democrat Doug Jones won a stunning victory in Alabama’s special election for the U.S. Senate last month, lots of smart people whose work I read and follow, such as The New York Times’s Nate Cohn, declared that the battle for Senate control in 2018 was a “toss-up.” Prediction markets largely concur; after Jones’s win, the betting odds of Democrats taking over the Senate shot up to about 45 percent.

I think this might be premature. Winning in Alabama certainly makes the Democrats’ path easier: They could now gain control of the Senate by retaining all of their own seats, plus picking up the Republican held-seats in purplish Nevada and Arizona. But they’re probably still the underdogs.

Democrats face a really tough Senate map

It’s not that I’m pessimistic about the Democrats’ overall position next year. On the contrary, I think most political observers had, until recently, been slow to recognize just how bad things had gotten for Republicans. But the Senate map is really tough for Democrats, with 26 Democratic seats in play next year (including a newly opened seat in Minnesota after Al Franken announced his intention to retire) as compared to just eight Republican ones. Moreover, five of the Democratic-held seats — the ones in West Virginia, North Dakota, Montana, Missouri and Indiana — are in states that President Trump won by 18 percentage points or more.

Just how bad is this map for Democrats? It’s bad enough that it may be the worst Senate map that any party has faced ever, or at least since direct election of senators began in 1913. It’s bad enough that Democrats could conceivably gain 35 or 40 seats in the House … and not pick up the two seats they need in the Senate.

Don’t believe me? Check out the race-by-race ratings put forward by independent groups such as the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections1 and Sabato’s Crystal Ball. They suggest that Democrats are more likely to lose Senate seats next year than to gain them — and that while there’s a plausible path to a Democratic majority, it’s a fairly unlikely one.

These groups place their ratings into qualitative categories (e.g., “Likely Republican” and “Lean Democrat”) rather than assigning them probabilities. But it’s not too difficult to translate from qualitative to quantitative. I went back and looked at the ratings that Cook, Sabato and Inside Elections had assigned to Senate races at about this point2 in the 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 election cycles. About 95 percent of the races these groups rated as being “safe” were in fact won by the party they listed as the favorite (most of the exceptions were when an incumbent unexpectedly retired). The favorite won in about 85 percent of the races they rated as “likely” and about 75 percent of the races they rated as “lean.”3 We can use these probabilities as guides to estimate the likelihood of Democrats winning each Senate race in 2018, averaging the ratings from Cook, Sabato and Inside Elections together:

How experts rate the Senate races

2018 Senate races by ratings and implied probability of a Democratic win

Rating



State
Incumbent
Party
Cook
Inside Elections
Sabato
Probability of Dem. Win




Mississippi
Wicker
R
Safe R
Safe R
Safe R
5%


Nebraska
Fischer
R
Safe R
Safe R
Safe R
5


Utah
—
R
Safe R
Safe R
Safe R
5


Wyoming
Barrasso
R
Safe R
Safe R
Safe R
5


Texas
Cruz
R
Safe R
Safe R
Likely R
8


Tennessee
—
R
Toss-up
Likely R
Likely R
27


Arizona
—
R
Toss-up
Toss-up
Toss-up
50


Indiana
Donnelly
D
Toss-up
Toss-up
Toss-up
50


Missouri
McCaskill
D
Toss-up
Toss-up
Toss-up
50


Nevada
Heller
R
Toss-up
Toss-up
Toss-up
50


West Virginia
Manchin
D
Toss-up
Toss-up
Lean D
58


Florida
Nelson
D
Lean D
Tilt D
Toss-up
62


North Dakota
Heitkamp
D
Lean D
Toss-up
Lean D
67


Minnesota*
—
D
Toss-up
Likely D
Lean D
70


Montana
Tester
D
Likely D
Tilt D
Lean D
73


Wisconsin
Baldwin
D
Likely D
Tilt D
Lean D
73


Ohio
Brown
D
Lean D
Lean D
Lean D
75


Pennsylvania
Casey
D
Likely D
Lean D
Likely D
82


Maine
King
D†
Lean D
Safe D
Likely D
85


Michigan
Stabenow
D
Likely D
Safe D
Likely D
88


New Jersey
Menendez
D
Likely D
Safe D
Likely D
88


Virginia
Kaine
D
Safe D
Safe D
Likely D
92


California
Feinstein
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


Connecticut
Murphy
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


Delaware
Carper
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


Hawaii
Hirono
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


Maryland
Cardin
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


Massachusetts
Warren
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


Minnesota
Klobuchar
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


New Mexico
Heinrich
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


New York
Gillibrand
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


Rhode Island
Whitehouse
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


Vermont
Sanders
D†
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95


Washington
Cantwell
D
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D
95

* Special election

† King and Sanders are independents who caucus with the Democratic Party.

If you add the probabilities for each race together, you’ll find that these ratings have Democrats losing an average of about three Senate seats next year. An optimistic Democrat might note that all the races the party needs to win control of the Senate — that is, all of their own seats, plus the Republican-held ones in Arizona and Nevada — are nevertheless listed as toss-ups or better for Democrats. But that doesn’t mean their overall chances of winning the Senate are 50-50. Unless Democrats unexpectedly put another seat, such as Tennessee, into play, they’d have to win all of the four toss-ups (Arizona, Indiana, Missouri and Nevada), plus a number of other races in which they’re listed as only marginal favorites (such as West Virginia and Florida).

How you model the Senate makes a big difference to Democrats’ odds

What are the chances of that? This is actually a tricky question because the outcomes in each race are correlated. (Failure to account for these sorts of correlations was a big reason that some models underrated Trump’s Electoral College chances in 2016.) If Trump’s approval rating declines even further by November, for instance, that could make the whole map bluer — so all of the races that currently look like toss-ups could be “lean Democrat” by then. Alternatively, strong economic growth later this year could make voters more inclined to keep Republicans in office — which could enable the GOP to win all the toss-up races.

These correlations make a huge difference when forecasting the fate of the Senate. We’ll launch our “official” FiveThirtyEight Senate forecasts later this year, once we have more polling in each race. (We don’t have much polling now; that’s why we’re using these ratings.) But I built a simulation program in which — unlike in a traditional Monte Carlo simulation where each race is assumed to be independent from the others — I can crank the correlations up or down as much as I want. If I assume that the races are totally uncorrelated — how the Democratic candidate does in Nevada has nothing to do with how the Democrat fares in Arizona — Democrats’ chances of taking over the Senate are only about 1 percent, according to the simulation. If I instead assume the races are perfectly correlated — if you win one “toss-up,” you win ’em all — Democrats’ chances are 50 percent, by contrast.

But neither of those assumptions is realistic. Although it’s important to account for some correlation, Senate races are a long way from being perfectly correlated. Sometimes the candidates can matter, as we saw with Jones and Roy Moore in Alabama. And the most competitive races this year are a somewhat eclectic mix of vulnerable Democratic incumbents (such as Missouri’s Claire McCaskill), vulnerable Republican incumbents (such as Nevada’s Dean Heller), and open seats (such as in Arizona).

A good rule of thumb for Senate races is that roughly half the uncertainty stems from local factors and half comes from national factors. If I encode that assumption into the simulation, it comes up with a 22 percent probability of Democrats taking over the Senate based on the race ratings. That isn’t nothing, but it’s a long way from the even-steven battle that conventional wisdom now seems to assume.

Of course, this logic is a little bit circular. The only thing I’ve “proven” here — it’s also been demonstrated by other analysts such as Dean Strachan — is that there’s an incongruity between how people4 are looking at individual Senate races (let’s call this the “micro” view) and how they’re looking at the overall Senate picture (the “macro” view). But It could be that the macro view is right and that the assessment of individual Senate races is off. Maybe Heller’s seat in Nevada should be thought of as “lean Democrat” or even “likely Democrat” rather than a toss-up, for instance.

I’ll return to this question in a moment — but first, there’s one more slightly unpleasant complication.

More Senate seats could come open by November

The 34 races I listed in the chart above are not necessarily the only ones that will be contested this year. As was the case with Franken’s seat in Minnesota, other senators could unexpectedly retire, or they could pass away, leaving a vacancy that would be filled by special election. Bettors assessing Democrats’ overall chances of winning the Senate are no doubt accounting for these possibilities, even if groups such as Sabato, Inside Elections and Cook are not.

Two seats involving ailing Republican senators could particularly affect the Senate calculus. One is Arizona, where Sen. John McCain has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer; he hasn’t yet announced any plans to retire, but Republicans are preparing for the possibility that he’ll end his term prematurely. The other is Mississippi, where Sen. Thad Cochran, age 80, is reportedly considering retirement after a series of medical complications.

Another way for Democrats to gain seats would be for a current Republican to switch parties. Empirically, this happens fairly often after wave elections (two Democratic senators switched to the GOP after the 1994 Republican wave, and Republican Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic Party after 2008). It also happens when control of the Senate is up for grabs (as when Jim Jeffords defected from Republicans to caucus with Democrats in 2001). The most likely Republicans to switch parties — based on their relatively high rate of disagreement with Trump and their cross-partisan appeal in their respective states — are probably Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

So suppose we add the following contingencies to the simulation:

There’s a 50-50 chance of a second Senate race in Arizona. If such a race occurs, it rates as a toss-up, just like the other Arizona race does (which is also an open seat since Sen. Jeff Flake is retiring).
There’s also a 50-50 chance of a second Senate race in Mississippi. If such a race occurs, it rates as “likely Republican” — slightly less certain for Republicans than the other Mississippi race, which features an incumbent (Sen. Roger Wicker).
There’s a 25 percent chance that Collins switches parties, conditional upon her vote either swinging the Senate to Democrats or Democrats already having won the Senate.5
And there’s a 10 percent chance that Murkowski does the same.

Include these possibilities, and the Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate improve to 29 percent, up from 22 percent before. So they help at the margin but aren’t enough on their own to turn Senate control into a toss-up.6

What a true Senate toss-up would look like

As I mentioned, however, it’s possible that the macro view of the Senate is right in treating control as a 50-50 proposition and that the ratings of individual races are miscalibrated. As reliable as they usually are, ratings from groups such as Cook can sometimes be slow to account for the overall political environment, which currently seems to strongly favor Democrats.

Take Flake’s seat in Arizona, for example. Cook, Sabato and Inside Elections all rate the race as a toss-up. But there’s an argument that Democrats should be considered favorites there. In 2016 — a roughly neutral political year — Arizona voted for Trump by only about 4 percentage points. But as we gear up for 2018, the generic congressional ballot currently favors Democrats by about 10 points, which would be enough to outweigh that. Plus, the GOP has some potentially problematic candidates in the state, such as Kelli Ward. You wouldn’t want to rate Democrats as especially heavy favorites, but it might be reasonable to describe Arizona as leaning Democrat instead of as a toss-up.

Rather than nitpick the ratings in individual states, suppose we shift all the races slightly toward Democrats. I programmed the simulation to keep adding to Democrats’ win probability in every race until their overall chances of winning the Senate reached 50 percent. (The adjustment7 is nonlinear: Races that were initially rated as toss-ups shift more than those where one party was considered almost certain to win.) Essentially, we’re working backward: If we insist that Senate control is a toss-up, what would the ratings in individual races have to look like to justify that claim?

What it would take to make Senate control a toss-up

2018 Senate races by original, ratings-based probability of a Democratic win vs. revised probability if overall Senate odds are 50-50

Probability of Dem. Win*


State
Incumbent
Party
Original
Revised




Alaska (possible party switch)
Murkowski
R
—
6%


Mississippi
Wicker
R
5%
11


Nebraska
Fischer
R
5
11


Utah
—
R
5
11


Wyoming
Barrasso
R
5
11


Mississippi (possible special election)
(Cochran)
R
—
14


Maine (possible party switch)
Collins
R
—
14


Texas
Cruz
R
8
17


Arizona (possible special election)
(McCain)
R
—
33


Tennessee
—
R
27
42


Arizona
—
R
50
67


Indiana
Donnelly
D
50
67


Missouri
McCaskill
D
50
67


Nevada
Heller
R
50
67


West Virginia
Manchin
D
58
74


Florida
Nelson
D
62
77


North Dakota
Heitkamp
D
67
81


Minnesota (special election)
—
D
70
83


Montana
Tester
D
73
85


Wisconsin
Baldwin
D
73
85


Ohio
Brown
D
75
87


Pennsylvania
Casey
D
82
91


Maine
King
D†
85
93


Michigan
Stabenow
D
88
95


New Jersey
Menendez
D
88
95


Virginia
Kaine
D
92
97


California
Feinstein
D
95
98


Connecticut
Murphy
D
95
98


Delaware
Carper
D
95
98


Hawaii
Hirono
D
95
98


Maryland
Cardin
D
95
98


Massachusetts
Warren
D
95
98


Minnesota
Klobuchar
D
95
98


New Mexico
Heinrich
D
95
98


New York
Gillibrand
D
95
98


Rhode Island
Whitehouse
D
95
98


Vermont
Sanders
D†
95
98


Washington
Cantwell
D
95
98

† King and Sanders are independents who caucus with the Democratic Party.

* The original probabilities reflect race ratings from Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, translated into probabilities.

Revised probabilities adjust the original probabilities upward, such that Democrats’ overall chance of winning the Senate is 50-50.

There are several interesting things going on here:

The “toss-ups” aren’t really toss-ups. The four races that were originally rated as pure toss-ups — Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada — now rate as having a two-in-three chance of going for Democrats instead.
Republicans have fewer targets. Seemingly competitive Midwestern states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where there are potentially vulnerable Democratic incumbents, become real long shots for Republicans.
And Democrats have more targets. The blue team has some realistic prospects of picking up Republican seats beyond their primary targets of Arizona and Nevada, with Tennessee or a second seat opening up in Arizona being the most likely possibilities.

So this is what a true 50-50 battle for the Senate would look like — but are these revised ratings realistic? You’d have to go through on a case-by-case basis. As I mentioned, for instance, I’d have no problem with treating Arizona as leaning Democratic. And the revised ratings for some of the Democratic incumbents in purple states, such as Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, seem more realistic than the original ones to me; they shouldn’t be all that vulnerable in this sort of political climate. But I’m not sure I buy that Democrats have a 42 percent chance of a pickup in Tennessee or that McCaskill is a two-to-one favorite in Missouri, where Republicans are fielding some strong opponents.

Personally, I’d probably split the difference between the macro and the micro views and put Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate somewhere in the range of 35 percent to 40 percent. That’s a lot better for Democrats than it was before Alabama, and it’s higher than it probably “should” be given how favorable the Senate map is for Republicans. But it’s still a fairly steep hill to climb.

CORRECTION (Jan. 10, 2:40 p.m.): A previous version of this article incorrectly listed the probability of Democrats’ winning the Tennessee Senate race. According to the race ratings, Democrats’ implied chances are 27 percent, not 23 percent. The article has been updated.

Oprah 2020?

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Today’s topic: OPRAH!!!

Ever since Oprah’s speech at the Golden Globes on Sunday night, the political world has been in a frenzy about the possibility that Oprah might run for president in 2020. That includes President Trump on Tuesday:

"Oprah will be lots of fun," says Pres Trump, asked about a possible challenge for re-election from @oprah. "I did one of her last shows…. I like Oprah," he said in response to reporter's questions – but added "I don’t think she’s going to run.”

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) January 9, 2018

So, I want to talk about two main things:

Are “celeb” candidates here to stay? Or, put another way: Was Trump’s election a turning point of sorts?
How would Oprah do as a presidential candidate?

Let’s start with No. 1. Is all this Oprah chatter just for fun? Is it overhyped? What do you all make of the media response to her Golden Globes speech?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): This is my opening statement:

So, Oprah might well run for prez, but I find our collective compulsion to jump to post-speech discussions of her presidential viability vaguely irritating. Doesn't anyone want to linger over the specific content of what she said first? Ya know, all that women's equality stuff…

— Clare Malone (@ClareMalone) January 8, 2018

micah: Are you surprised by that, though, Clare?

clare.malone: By what?

micah: By the media jumping straight to 2020, bypassing the substance of her speech.

clare.malone: A little, frankly. The story of women and harassment is a big enough one on its own.

Now, her partner did make some comments to the media that stoked speculation after her speech. But I just didn’t expect this level of frenzy.

perry: Is it overhyped? On some level, yes. She seems very unlikely to run. But the excitement, I think, speaks to a lot of things that are important in this moment: The hunger for a person who can unify the country, and the view among Democrats that a celebrity who has never been in politics might be better than all of their other potential candidates.

Oprah’s actual speech was full of commentary about race and gender in America. We are having the conversations we kind of skipped in 2008 and 2016.

clare.malone: Right, but I think the way that politics people are covering her speech is really vapid. And she wasn’t saying something vapid.

I agree that it speaks to a moment, as Perry said — that hunger to have her run. But politics Twitter had this field day with it — and then wrote all these second day stories about how she would actually be terrible — in a way that felt like it undermined the real point of her speech.

Which was to say, that whole harassment story wasn’t just a two-month news cycle.

perry: Part of it, and I think this gets at Clare’s point, was that the people who watched the speech (forget about the political media) thought it was really great. And that matters. Oprah could have said anything. She’s already famous. The fact that she said THAT, I think, reinforces what many people find compelling about her.

clare.malone: Totally.

I mean, I just want to be clear up top that I think this day-long news cycle has revealed a certain pathology of media.

micah: What’s the pathology?

clare.malone: The pathology in American media right now is to find a Trump peg for everything. Sometimes stories are important in their own right, on their own terms.

Also, just posting this because …

Just saw @Oprah's empowering & inspiring speech at last night’s #GoldenGlobes. Let’s all come together, women & men, & say #TIMESUP! #United https://t.co/vpxUBJnCl7

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) January 9, 2018

micah: Yeah, that was awkward.

perry: I might disagree with Clare slightly here. Trump is, in some ways, part of the sexual harassment/#MeToo story; a number of women have said he harassed or assaulted them. So Oprah and her speech do fit into that in some ways. Also, people want someone who can help the country figure out politics, race, gender, identity — all of these complicated issues at once. People know Trump won’t do that. They hoped Obama would have. There is, I think, too much of that hope around Oprah, but I get it.

clare.malone: Trump is definitely a part of the #MeToo moment, but I think it’s grown larger than him, is what I’m saying.

I mean, mostly, my point is about not wanting people to lose focus of what she was actually talking about.

perry: Agree.

clare.malone: It is interesting to me that people see the Democrats’ answer to Trump as another celeb.

micah: Right, so beyond Oprah, do you all think we are in a moment where an outsider celeb candidate can prosper? I.e., was Trump a one-off or a turning point?

clare.malone: We’ve talked about Mark Cuban and the Rock.

Harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): It’s just difficult because we’re getting conflicting statements from within Oprah’s camp. That’s why the presidential stuff doesn’t die down. Stedman says it’s up to the people. She retweets Podhoretz’s article. That’s why the substance of her speech can get lost.

clare.malone: She has the great American talent of making people look.

perry: The fact that we kind of have a rolling, constant presidential campaign helps people who can get media attention and have compelling personalities. So, yes, I think we are in a moment ripe for more celeb candidacies. I don’t think people will conclude that all celebs can’t govern because of Trump. Trump, for most people, is probably unique and not represenative of how other celebrities would govern.

clare.malone: I wonder if Trump makes Democrats less likely to elect a celeb, though. Because if half the message of the left is that Trump is unqualified, doesn’t it require some twisting around to say, “OK, we’re going to elect Oprah”?

To be clear, I mean “unqualified” in the sense that she has never been in political office. She is obviously very successful and smart in other ways.

harry: The public may be more open to celebs because they trust the government less and less. So more people are willing to take a risk in who they elect.

perry: Harry makes a great point about people thinking all politicians are stupid.

micah: And maybe, in voters’ calculations, “respect for governing experience” used to cancel out the advantage of being able to garner media attention.

Now, we’re just left with the ability to draw media attention.

Which is clearly an advantage.

clare.malone: Of course. But it’s still a real potential weakness to propose to replace a candidate with no governing experience with another candidate with no governing experience.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Popping in from a plane! I don’t know if the political landscape is more welcoming to celebrity candidates, but they may be more likely to run.

micah: Nate, you don’t buy the calculus we just layed out?

natesilver: It’s not like all that many celebrities — actual celebrities, like Trump or Oprah, not Fred Thompson or something — had tried to run for office. So the sample size wasn’t all that large. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura were elected as governors, though. And Ronald Reagan was a former matinee idol.

clare.malone: Arnold feels like the closest parallel.

The most famous, I guess.

natesilver: One can argue that party elites losing their grip on the nomination process is important in opening the door to celebrity candidates. More important than the media stuff, since celebrities have always been … you know, celebrities, and had no trouble getting attention.

clare.malone: Well, that’s kinda what I mean — don’t you guys think Democratic elites would do everything in their power to tamp down an Oprah run?

perry: I think Democrats are torn here, and you can see it with the ex-Obama staffers basically saying that Oprah should consider running. Trump’s governing weaknesses suggest that someone with experience might be better in OFFICE. But I think Democrats are desperate to win the election and would take a compelling person like Oprah since the people with experience are perhaps not as compelling (Hillary Clinton in 2016, potentially Joe Biden in 2020).

harry: If Oprah (or any other celebrity) was unable to show a grasp of the issues, then so-said celebrity would be dead on arrival.

perry: Oprah would probably be given more leeway on lack of policy knowledge than one of the senators who is thinking about running. Much more.

micah: This is why, before the sexual misconduct allegations came out, I was so high on Al Franken. He had some celebrity juice and policy bona fides.

natesilver: There would likely be some vicious intraparty battles, but I think Oprah WOULD have some support within the party. Her demographic strengths overlap pretty well with the last two Democratic nominees.

clare.malone: Here’s my thing: If Oprah is, in part, exciting because she is a black woman and that’s a constituency the Democrats haven’t rewarded with a national-level candidacy … well, they already have a black woman in power waiting in the wings to run — Kamala Harris.

micah: Agreed, but has Harris ever had a two-day period of coverage anything like the last couple of days with Oprah?

clare.malone: I mean, no — she’s not Oprah!

micah: That’s an advantage.

Maybe it shouldn’t be.

But it is.

clare.malone: Yeah

I mean … do we think the Democratic primaries will be as fractured as the Republican ones were in 2016?

I tend to think not, but tell me otherwise. (If it’s going to be just as fractured, then Oprah has a shot.)

perry: I mean, with no clear Democratic favorite, if 15 people are running in June 2019 and Oprah gets in, it seems to me that she will lead in the polls from Day 1.

natesilver: What’s weird is that I think Oprah would be vying for the establishment “lane” despite having no political experience.

She’d have trouble with the Bernie Sanders constituency — probably a lot of trouble.

micah: Why do you think she’d be an establishment choice?

natesilver: Because she’d likely have a milquetoast agenda but will be seen as electable.

perry: The idea that everyone who voted for Obama in a Democratic primary will vote for Oprah, I don’t think that is correct. I’m not sure she is winning the wonky (white) liberal vote the way he did. I get the black vote idea, while thinking black voters will want to be sure she’s actually a viable candidate But I don’t see her winning, say, the Wisconsin primary against Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders.

clare.malone: I agree with that

micah: But that was Obama’s big innovation, right? Marrying the black vote with the college-educated urban white liberal vote. Just the black vote isn’t enough.

perry: Oprah might have more appeal with non-elite, non-wonky voters than Obama did. I just think the coalition might be different.

harry: She might basically follow Hillary Clinton’s path, not Obama’s. It may be a combination.

micah: Could be more like Clinton’s coalition.

Jinx.

clare.malone: Hmmm.

micah: OK, let me ask you about Democratic voters for a sec …

So, in 2016, there were a bunch of polls showing that Democratic voters put a higher premium on governing experience than Republicans did. Obviously, that result is, in part, simply a manifestation of respondents’ allegiance to either Trump or Clinton — the experience question was just a proxy for Trump vs. Clinton. But is any of that real? Do Republican voters, who want government to do less, therefore care less about government experience?

clare.malone: I think there’s something to that, Micah, the idea that if you want to do away with big government, you value experience in it less.

I also think the Democrats do actually have a bloc of voters who find Trump’s lack of experience troubling. And so it would be a bit of a contradiction for them to vote for someone with no real governing résumé.

harry: The Democrats nominated Obama, a U.S. senator for less than four years when he started running. The Democrats nominated Jimmy Carter, who had no federal government experience and had been governor of Georgia for only a few years. Republicans nominated Reagan (who was a two-term governor) and George H.W. Bush (former vice president, CIA director, ambassador, congressman). I mean, maybe Clare has a point. But I’m not so sure, myself.

perry: I’d imagine Democratic voters do care about experience and governing more. But 1. they really want to win, 2. Oprah seems like she could be a winner, 3. Oprah, I think, could easily turn her book club, her embrace of Obama, etc., into intellectual credibility.

Oprah, if she ran, could have her staff mention the great presidencies of the very experienced Walter Mondale, Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

clare.malone: lol

perry: We should talk about the general election. Are we sure a black woman can be elected president?

micah: Yeah, I saw someone on Twitter say something to the effect of: “Everyone loves Oprah! She’d be a great candidate with Democrats, independents and Republicans!”

The idea that that would hold true in a general election is crazy. I’d bet my savings account that things would get nasty.

clare.malone: Yeah, I think the rising alt-right tenor of certain places in the conservative media landscape would go for the jugular.

micah: Also, I don’t think the media at large learned many lessons about covering a female candidate from Clinton in 2016. For example: this.

natesilver: It would get extremely nasty in the general election, but I think Oprah would be covered differently than Clinton or Kirsten Gillibrand

perry: I don’t deny the existence of sexism and racism in America. But a black man was elected twice, a white woman won the popular vote. A black woman can win. Harris could be elected president if she won the primary. Oprah could too. Even more so. I don’t take Clinton losing Wisconsin as a predictor of much. 2020 is just a different ballgame.

And, yes, I think Oprah has a brand that is distinct and well-defined.

micah: Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I think Oprah, being black and a woman, would get savaged by certain segments of the media, largely because of racism and sexism. And even the mainstream press would have some trouble, I’d bet.

OK, closing thoughts?

natesilver: I’m anti-anti-Oprah. I think there’s a risk that political elites underestimate her popularity outside of the political bubble.

There are reasons to be bearish on celebrity presidential runs. Voters may want the biggest contrast to Trump in 2020. And pundits hyping up celebrity candidates may suffer from recency bias since Trump just won. But I’m bullish on Oprah relative to other celebrities.

Politics Podcast: Oprah, Palace Intrigue And Nuclear War

FiveThirtyEight












 












More: Apple Podcasts |
ESPN App |
RSS
| Embed


Embed Code

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast crew discusses all the talk about Oprah running for president in 2020, spurred by her speech at the Golden Globes. The team also debates the new book “Fire and Fury,” which raises questions about whether President Trump is mentally fit enough to serve. Also, Nate and special guest Oliver Roeder weigh the strategic value and risk of Trump’s recent comments about North Korea.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Politics Podcast: Our New Year’s Resolutions

FiveThirtyEight












 












More: Apple Podcasts |
ESPN App |
RSS
| Embed


Embed Code
https://fivethirtyeight.com/player/po...

Members of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team share their journalistic resolutions for 2018 — things they’d like to do better and ways the broader political media can improve.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Politics Podcast: Which Democrats Will Run In 2020?

FiveThirtyEight












 












More: Apple Podcasts |
ESPN App |
RSS
| Embed


Embed Code
https://fivethirtyeight.com/player/po...

Democratic politicians are already positioning themselves for the 2020 presidential election. Who does the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast crew think will actually run and do well? It’s the holiday season, so we had a little fun on this week’s show: We held a 2020 Democratic primary draft.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Republicans Are Taking Voter Concerns About The Tax Bill Too Literally

In reading coverage of the Republican tax bill, which passed the House on Wednesday and is ready for President Trump’s signature, I was reminded of this famous clip of the 1992 “town hall” presidential debate between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush,1 in which a voter asked the candidates a question about the “national debt” and how it had “personally affected” their lives.

Bush answered the question literally, talking about the effect of the debt on interest rates and awkwardly objecting to the notion that he couldn’t understand the impact of the debt if it hadn’t affected him personally. Clinton understood that the voter was asking about the economy overall — which had recently emerged from a recession — and not the national debt per se. He asked the voter how she was doing personally, and then spoke about people he knew in Arkansas who had lost businesses and jobs. Clinton took the voter seriously but not literally, you might say — and delivered a more effective answer as a result.2

As the GOP tax bill has neared final passage, a number of Republican lawmakers — and some nonpartisan journalists and commentators — have predicted that the bill, which is highly unpopular for now, will become more popular after final passage because voters haven’t yet realized they’re getting a tax cut but will soon receive one.

I wonder if these commentators aren’t making a version of Bush’s mistake, taking voters’ concerns about the bill literally but not seriously.

It’s true that the bill will provide a tax cut next year to most Americans. According to the Tax Policy Center, 80 percent of households will see a federal tax reduction next year as a result of the bill, as compared to 5 percent who see an increase (the remaining 15 percent will see their taxes essentially unchanged). This is improved from previous versions of the bill, because of changes to policies such as the child tax credit and because of more favorable rate schedules. For instance, taxable income between roughly $10,000 and $38,000 dollars will now be taxed at a marginal rate of 12 percent, as compared to 15 percent under current law.

However, most voters don’t expect a tax cut. A Monmouth University poll released this week found that just 14 percent of voters expect their federal taxes to go down, as compared to 50 percent who expect an increase. Once those misinformed voters realize that less is being withheld from their paychecks as a result of the lower tax rates, they’ll come around to supporting the bill, right?

Well, maybe not. For one thing, the voters aren’t necessarily wrong, even in a literal sense, if they’re looking toward the long term.3 Because the cuts to individual tax rates are temporary, 53 percent of households (including 70 percent of households in the middle income quintile) will see an increase in their taxes by 2027 if the law is left intact, according to the Tax Policy Center, as compared to 25 percent who will see a decrease.

But more importantly, voters probably aren’t being quite so single- and literal-minded about whether or not they’re getting a tax cut. Instead, they’re using polling questions like these to signal their overall skepticism and discomfort with the bill — discomfort that also registers when they’re asked other questions about the bill that have nothing to do with their personal finances.

A CNN poll this week, for instance, found that 66 percent of voters expect the bill to do more to benefit the wealthy than the middle class. (Other polls show similar numbers.) Voters have a reasonable basis to be concerned about this. According to the Tax Policy Center, voters in the top income quintile will see an average tax reduction of $7,640 next year, as compared to $930 for the middle income quintile. (High-earners will also do better on a percentage basis.4). The reduction in the top corporate tax rate — to 21 percent from 35 percent — is much more substantial than any of the reduction to individual rates. And the corporate tax cuts are permanent while the individual cuts aren’t.

Voters also have reason to be concerned about deficits — which most economists expect to increase by $1 trillion or more as a result of the Republican bill. For instance, a Marist College poll in September found that, by a 66 percent to 26 percent margin, Americans were opposed to an increase in deficit spending even if it meant they received a tax cut. Voters could also be worried that Republicans will attempt to balance budgets by cutting entitlement programs; after all, the GOP spent most of the year trying to repeal Obamacare, and their tax bill includes a repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate, which the Congressional Budget Office expects to increase health care premiums.

The GOP bill also suffers from not having popular messengers — and from not having a trustworthy message. Trump’s approval rating is 37 percent, close to its all-time low. But Republicans in Congress have even worse numbers, with only about 20 percent of voters approving of the job they’re doing. Party leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are also highly unpopular. Republicans have also mislead voters about some of the consequences of the bill — although so have Democrats — and they’ve lost their traditional polling lead on Democrats on which party the public trusts more on taxes.

Finally, voters are usually change-averse when it comes to complicated bills that affect their finances. The GOP bill is not really a simplification of the tax code, and in some ways it makes the tax code more complex. And some popular deductions have been removed or capped. Although some voters will see greater take-home pay by early next year as a result of less tax withholding, others will have profound uncertainty about the overall effects of the bill until they pay their 2018 taxes in April, 2019.

For all that said, there are a couple of reasons for Republican optimism. About 15 to 20 percent of voters don’t yet have an opinion about the bill, and those undecided voters are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats; now that the bill has passed, those GOP voters may come around to supporting the bill as a result of partisanship. That won’t make the bill popular overall, but it would improve its numbers around the margin.

And in the long run, any effects the bill has on the economy could outweigh its popularity rating in political importance. This isn’t a panacea for Republicans; voters already feel pretty good about the economy and yet Trump and Republicans are highly unpopular despite that. Also, even pro-free-market economists are skeptical that the bill will improve long-run economic performance, in part because it increases deficits. But if Republicans can steer the discussion of the tax bill into a conversation about how the economy is doing — instead of how voters feel about Trump or the Russia investigation or their unpopular efforts to repeal Obamacare — that’s a conversation they’ll be happy to have.

Nonetheless, if Republicans are looking toward Obamacare for an example of a bill that eventually became popular once voters learned what was in it, they may be waiting a long time. The Affordable Care Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law in March 2010, didn’t become popular until late 2016, after Trump had become president-elect. In the meantime, it contributed to a disastrous midterm for Democrats; a fate that Republicans are increasingly likely to endure next year.

The ‘Most Powerful Political Players Of 2018’ Draft Extravaganza!!

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): OK, welcome all. Today we’re doing a “MOST POWERFUL POLITICAL PLAYERS OF 2018 DRAFT!!!!!!!” The idea here is both to look back on our 2017 picks and see how horrible they were and to preview what we’re looking for in 2018.

In case you forgot: The goal is to pick a team that will have the most influence over politics, policy and the national discourse in 2018.

Here are the final teams we drafted for 2017:

Our old, 2017 ‘power draft’ teams




Round
Nate
Harry
Clare
Micah




1
D. Trump
M. Pence
R. Mueller
M. McConnell


2
P. Ryan
M. Meadows
A. Kennedy
J. Sessions


3
J. Comey
J. Kushner
B. Sanders
G. Cohn


4
S. Bannon
B.R. Luján
R. Tillerson
T. Price


5
J. Roberts
R. Maddow
R. Murdoch
S. Collins


6
H. Clinton
I. Trump
D. Coats
N. Gorsuch

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): My team was good.

I HAVE NO REGRETS! (Except maybe, like, Rex Tillerson.)

micah: Harry’s team is the worst?

clare.malone: 100 percent.

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): I’m still impressed by my Ben Ray Luján pick!!!

micah: Nate’s last three picks are

Politics Podcast: Lessons From Alabama

FiveThirtyEight












 












More: Apple Podcasts |
ESPN App |
RSS
| Embed


Embed Code
https://fivethirtyeight.com/player/po...

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team sorts through the various narratives that have emerged after Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore in last week’s Alabama Senate election and discusses what the upset means for Democrats looking ahead to 2018. The crew also weighs the political implications of the Republican tax overhaul, which could get a final vote this week.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Can The GOP Stop Running Toxic Candidates?

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): For your consideration today: Can Republicans find a way to stop nominating toxic (perhaps fatally flawed) candidates?

The immediate spark for this question is, of course, the GOP managing to lose a Senate seat in Alabama, one of the reddest states in the nation. But there’s a long (recent) history of other races the GOP has seemingly thrown away with bad candidates.

For example …

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): Ken Buck in Colorado in 2010.

Sharron Angle in Nevada in 2010.

Christine O’Donnell in Delaware in 2010.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Todd Akin in Missouri in 2012.

harry: Richard Mourdock in Indiana in 2012.

micah: Also, before we really get going, I just wanted to note that Nate wanted today’s chat to be about why Doug Jones is a legit 2020 presidential contender.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): That was Harry’s idea. He got it from a Twitter egg and talked about it on the podcast Tuesday night.

harry: There are no eggs anymore.

natesilver: My idea is that he’ll be the vice presidential nominee to a female nominee.

clare.malone: aaaaand we’re already sidetracked.

micah: In fairness, that was my fault.

harry: It’s always your fault.

micah: OK, so let’s start with why the GOP keeps putting up toxic candidates. (Then we’ll dive into ways they can not do this.)

What’s going on here?

In Alabama, for example, Republicans had two other deeply conservative, perfectly viable primary candidates — Luther Strange and Mo Brooks. They went with Moore.

clare.malone: The GOP base has gotten a lot more conservative.

harry: It ranges, right? In Alabama, the GOP establishment candidate, Strange, was flawed too, with ties to an unpopular governor. (Brooks, on the other hand, likely could have beaten Moore in the runoff.) In Delaware in 2010, the GOP candidate running against O’Donnell was too liberal for the base.

But at the end of the day, it’s the voters who are doing this.

natesilver: I’m not sure it’s just that the base has gotten more conservative, in a traditional left-right sense. It’s more that Republicans have been trained to distrust the establishment and distrust the media, and some candidates have been able to exploit that.

clare.malone: Well, GOP voters certainly identify as more conservative:

And those things that you mention, Nate, are now intertwined with what it means to be a conservative in America.

harry: Dare I say it’s both?

micah: I think Clare is right that they’re intertwined now.

natesilver: I actually don’t think it’s both. President Trump’s nomination last year is fairly powerful evidence of this, IMO. Because he was one of the least conservative candidates in the field, in kind of an American Conservative Union sense.

micah: But when someone identifies as conservative these days, part of what they mean is “anti-establishment.”

clare.malone: Right. Most people don’t think in DW-Nominate scores; they think in terms of where their views fall on our cultural spectrum. And conservatism has taken on new contours — it’s not about economics anymore.

Right? Or, that’s not the motivating factor for voters.

natesilver: I don’t think “conservative” is a good term to describe those characteristics. Among other reasons, because it’s quite a radical viewpoint in some ways.

harry: Sometimes it really is about ideology though.

micah: But anti-establishment sentiment seems to correlate so strongly with “conservative,” Nate.

So, it’s like: There’s nothing about old-school conservatism that leads to toxic candidates. But contemporary conservatism is, in part, defined by anti-establishmentism. And that does lead to toxic candidates.

natesilver: Right and then we had a test case — named Donald Trump — who kept all the anti-establishment parts and dropped the movement conservatism. And he did just great. It’s just one data point, but a pretty influential one.

clare.malone: Yeah … I think it’s not just that some of these candidates are anti-establishment. It’s that there’s a certain strain of contrarianism that runs in the veins of some of these candidates.

micah: I think we’re having a semantics debate and in fact we all agree.

clare.malone: This is what we have to do when we agree!

micah: lol

harry: I hate you all.

clare.malone: The people want to see a fight.

micah: OK, so far we have: Republicans are more prone to nominating toxic candidates because anti-establishmentism has become so core to the party.

But why has anti-establishmentism become so core?

And why can’t they nominate an anti-establishment candidate who nonetheless appeals to a broad swath of a general electorate?

natesilver: Because anti-establishmentism is sort of defined by opposition to established order, and the established order is usually popular.

clare.malone: Conservatism is about, on a simplistic level, reducing government intrusion, allowing people the freedom to think and act as they like, within reason. (If you want to see a version of “think and act as they like, with no bounds of reason,” talk to some folks at a Libertarian convention.)

When the culture is moving at rapid clip toward cultural liberalism — the acceptance of what was not long ago considered out of the norm, such as allowing women to have abortions, gay marriage, the widespread acceptance of premarital sex — then you see more and more candidates capitalizing on an appeal to people who feel more and more like they are in an out group.

micah: Oh god, Clare … your inbox will suffer for that libertarian comment.

harry: It’s also important that Republicans don’t have a sizable group of base voters who are generally pro-establishment. Democrats have that with African-American voters, who delivered the nomination to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

natesilver: Now, in theory, anti-establishmentism could morph into populism, which can be more successful as a long-term, majoritarian political strategy. But that would require Republicans to give up putting so much emphasis on things like tax cuts.

harry: Well, that’s what’s so bizarre, right?

clare.malone: Right, in theory. But as of yet, with the exception of Trump, the anti establishment/contrarian GOP candidates have been more in the vein of culture warriors. Right?

micah: Yeah, Moore, Akin, etc. were definitely not populists.

natesilver: I think a few of the tea party candidates in 2010 weren’t really culture warriors. Like, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson isn’t a culture warrior. But he sure as hell isn’t a populist, either.

clare.malone: Well, he won! So he wasn’t a bad candidate. He was more buttoned-up. And I think it helps to have a more buttoned-up facade if you’re going to run as an ideological anti-establishment person.

micah: Yeah, I wouldn’t put Johnson in this group.

clare.malone: This is actually where I think sexism and people’s unwillingness to see women as “serious” politicians comes into play with someone like Kelli Ward in Arizona’s Senate race.

Ward has been easily painted as a crazy conspiracy theorist when in fact she never said she believes in chemtrails.

She made an ill-advised comment to a constituent that she would be happy to answer questions about it. But a lot of the “chemtrail Kelli” stuff is excellent spin against her from fellow Republicans.

micah: I didn’t know that!

natesilver: Wait, chemtrails aren’t real?

clare.malone: Guys, this was the lede of my piece about the Arizona race!

micah: Busted.

(Kidding, I read that.)

harry: Oh boy.

clare.malone: From my piece:

Polished might not be what you’d expect from Ward if you first heard about her, as many outside Arizona did, in an ad from the Mitch McConnell–allied Senate Leadership Fund PAC that labeled her “Chemtrail Kelli,” a nickname spun out of an incident at a Ward town hall where she didn’t shoot down constituent concerns about the chemtrails conspiracy theory.

I mean, maybe that’s a more precise way to say it, but she was never saying, “Hell yeah, chemtrails are gonna killlll you.”

micah: What are chemtrails?

harry: But I think this points to a greater thought. These candidates aren’t all the same. They share some form of anti-establishmentism, but sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

The airplane thing.

clare.malone: They’re gonna kill you, Micah.

micah: ohhh

clare.malone: They’re the government coming to get you.

micah: Before we turn to measures to prevent toxic candidates …

Are the nominations of candidates like Moore, Akin, Mourdock, etc., a manifestation of a fundamental problem with the Republican Party — a split between the base and elected officials?

Like, isn’t that split real, unusual and a big problem?

I mean, it’s easy to overlook how weird it is that Moore basically ran against his party’s senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

McConnell’s net favorable rating in the exit polls in Alabama on Tuesday was like -245 percentage points. (It was actually -50 points.)

That’s crazy

harry: LOL.

natesilver: My favorite number from the exit poll was how McConnell was equally unpopular with Jones voters and Moore voters.

harry: Actually my favorite number is that those who had a favorable view of McConnell only barely went for Moore. That’s a Republican establishment “screw you, Moore” vote right there.

By the way, there were more Republican senators who lost primaries between 2010 and 2012 (three senators) than in the eight elections between 1994 and 2008 (two). And one of those Republicans between 1994 and 2008 was appointed.

clare.malone: A lot of this comes down to the fact that a chunk of the Republican base is simply receiving ill-conceived ideas about how realistic it is for a “pure” conservative agenda to be pushed through.

If you just watch Fox News … you’re not getting the full picture.

natesilver: That’s putting it mildly, Clare. I think the conservative media bubble is a big part of this story.

clare.malone: And the politicians in the party read the real news.

natesilver: Fox News was once sort of a bridge between the establishment and insurgent wings of the GOP. In the Trump era, it’s gone much more fully to the insurgent side.

clare.malone: It has certainly jumped the shark.

micah: Jumped the horse, if you will.

clare.malone: Wouldn’t the fox jump the hound?

natesilver: By the way, it’s relevant too that doing well among white working-class voters happens to really help you in the Electoral College, and also the Senate and the House, given how voters are distributed (and how districts are gerrymandered). So Republicans can be competitive essentially playing to 45 percent of the country, when Democrats couldn’t really be.

harry: Well, it’s not just that Fox News has become more anti-establishment. It’s also that it’s become the dominant news source.

micah: OK, to change gears: What can Republicans do about this?

natesilver: Nothing.

To a first approximation.

Or at least, nothing easy.

Not while Trump is their president.

clare.malone: Right, they can’t do jack.

This is the identity crisis that they’re going through, that they’ve been trying to paper over.

harry: Well, I think what you might want to do is play it safe. What do I mean by that? Don’t try to get your preferred candidate. Try to ensure the least desirable candidate doesn’t win the nomination. In Alabama, for example, don’t go after Brooks. In last year’s presidential election, go after Trump early.

I don’t know if that works.

natesilver: For sure, there are some cases where they could work to ensure the establishment candidate isn’t a total stiff. They did a better job of that in 2014/16 than in 2010/12, for instance.

harry: Yes, they did.

What I’m essentially saying here is that the GOP thought they could beat the clown car that was Moore because they assumed Brooks voters would join up with Strange voters in the runoff. Don’t assume anything.

micah: Wait, that’s all they can do?

What about not easy things?

What difficult things could they do?

harry: Well, they could eliminate primaries.

clare.malone: What does that mean?

That would be … radical.

micah:

Republicans Shouldn’t Assume Roy Moore Was An Outlier

I’ve been covering American elections at FiveThirtyEight for almost 10 years. During that time, by far the most remarkable outcomes — of course — were Barack Obama being elected president in 2008 and Donald Trump being elected in 2016.

But in third and fourth place1 were two special elections to the U.S. Senate: Scott Brown’s January 2010 election in Massachusetts and Doug Jones’s victory on Tuesday night in Alabama. Each occurred at roughly the same point in Obama’s and Trump’s respective terms.

Brown didn’t last long in office — he was defeated by Elizabeth Warren in 2012 — so it would be easy to overlook his significance. But his win was a huge deal. Slightly more than a year after Obama had been elected in a 365-173 Electoral College landslide, Democrats had lost Ted Kennedy’s former seat in Massachusetts, a state Obama had won by 26 percentage points. Brown’s win threatened the passage of Obamacare — although Democrats ultimately passed it anyway — and presaged a massive wave in the 2010 midterms, in which Democrats lost 63 House seats.

Alabama has some of the same qualities as Massachusetts, just with the parties swapped. Trump won Alabama by 28 points last November, and that in some ways understates the difficulties Democrats face there because Alabama votes Republican for pretty much every office, regardless of the candidate. (Massachusetts, on the other hand, has fairly often elected Republican governors.) Furthermore, somewhat like with Massachusetts and Obamacare, the Alabama election represented a referendum on one of the most pressing political issues of the day: the increasing number of powerful men (including political candidates, men in Congress and President Trump) who have been accused of serial sexual harassment or assault. In Moore’s case, the accusations were especially egregious because they involved underaged girls.

After Massachusetts, I went through an exercise to assign blame for the outcome. The conclusion was that “when a Democrat loses a federal race in Massachusetts, the default assumption ought to be that several factors are to blame.” Some of the blame had to go to Democratic candidate Martha Coakley, who had blown a fairly large (although obviously not insurmountable) lead in the polls with a series of gaffes. Some of it had to go to other circumstances peculiar to Massachusetts, such as that the election had been a power grab, with Democrats having repeatedly changed the rules for how replacement senators were appointed in the state. But much of the problem also had to do with the national political environment. There were plenty of signs by early 2010 that it had shifted substantially toward Republicans.

We can go through a similar exercise in Alabama. By the way we usually calculate these things, Alabama is 28 or 29 percentage points more Republican than the country as a whole, but Jones just won an election there by 1 or 2 points,2 representing a 30-point swing from the norm. That is, we have about 30 percentage points worth of blame to assign. So how to divvy them up? Consider:

First, we can assign about 10 points to the national political environment. That’s because the generic congressional ballot favors Democrats by about 10 points, meaning that you’d expect the Democrat to win the typical swing seat by about 10 points in this political climate.3
Next, we can assign about 10 points to Moore’s problems as a candidate other than the sexual misconduct allegations. If Republicans ordinarily win in Alabama by 25 or 30 points and the national environment favors Democrats by 10 points, you’d expect a “generic” Republican candidate to be ahead by 15 or 20 points. Instead, Moore’s lead was in the range of 5 to 10 points in polls before the sexual misconduct allegations came to light.4
And finally, we can assign another 10 points to shifts in voter preferences and turnout patterns because of the misconduct allegations. That roughly matches the swing from the pre-allegation polls to Jones’s eventual margin of victory. It also lines up with empirical research on the electoral effects of scandals. Although many voters didn’t believe the allegations, many others did, and it affected Moore’s campaign in a variety of ways, such as by decreasing Republican enthusiasm.

Unless all three of these factors had lined up perfectly for Jones, he would have lost — perhaps by a significant margin. For instance, if Trump were more popular and the Republican brand were in better shape, the GOP could have willed more of its voters to the polls and Trump’s last-minute endorsement of Moore might have been more effective. Instead, Trump’s approval rating was only 48 percent (against 48 percent disapproving) among special election participants in one of the country’s reddest states.

The question for Republicans is to what extent these factors will be replicated in other races in the 2018 midterms and in other special elections between now and then.

Obviously, the national environment is highly problematic for Republicans — and in all likelihood, it will continue to be problematic for them through next November. Republicans ignore signs of this at their peril, because they’ve now gotten poor results in Alabama, a host of other states, the generic ballot and Trump’s approval rating.5

Of course, Republicans won’t have Roy Moore running in other races. But they will have other candidates with characteristics similar to Moore (ignoring, for now, the sexual misconduct allegations). That is, they’ll have candidates who are nominated by the GOP base against the wishes of party elites and who prove to be disasters with swing voters. There could be more of them in 2018, especially with Steve Bannon targeting “establishment” Republicans in almost every Senate race. Republicans have had plenty of these over past election cycles, such as Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock in 2012 and Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell and Ken Buck in 2010. If not for these candidates, Republicans might have somewhere in the neighborhood of 55 Senate seats instead of being down to 51.

Both Republicans and Democrats will have to deal with other candidates — perhaps dozens of them — who are credibly accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault. Polls suggest that voters care quite a lot about this misconduct — Al Franken’s approval ratings tanked in Minnesota after several allegations of groping and unwanted kissing, for example. Again, there’s risk here to both parties, but because Republicans occupy most of the swing seats in the House6 — and because a higher percentage of Republican members of Congress are men — they have somewhat more liability.

In all but a handful of the 239 Republican-held House seats, 26 Republican-held governorships and eight Republican-held Senate seats that are up for election next November, these factors will not line up for Democrats in quite as fortuitous a way as they did in Alabama. That’s a good thing for the GOP, because if Democrats won every House seat as red as Alabama, they’d gain something in the order of 160 House seats from Republicans next November.

But Democrats need 25 House seats, not 160, to take over the House next year. And they need two Senate seats — not eight — to win that chamber. (Jones’s win has substantially upped the odds of a Senate takeover; Democrats face an awful map but now have a clearer path to victory than they did 24 hours ago.) In the 2010 midterms, Republicans didn’t win a single House seat as blue as Massachusetts.7 They nonetheless picked up 63 seats and delivered a crippling blow to Obama’s agenda. Not every race is going to go as badly for Republicans as this Alabama Senate election — but if enough go half as badly, or even a third as badly, they’re still in for a rough time next year.