Opinion: Is the GOP Blowing Its Lead in the Midterms?
The State of the Race with Only Three Months Left
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The conventional wisdom that the GOP will win control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives has been clear and consistent for months. President Biden has terrible approval ratings and, since World War II, the president’s party has lost an average of 26 seats in the House and four in the Senate.
The GOP gaining a majority in the House has also been the guidance from political betting sites, which are often more accurate than polls.
Now, the conventional wisdom, the betting sites, and the polls are starting to tell a more nuanced story.
Let’s start with some of the gambling operations and their forecasts for the House. PredictIt (which will soon be banned from allowing Americans to bet on U.S. politics) still shows Republicans as prohibitive favorites to control the House. However, as the graphic below shows, the GOP’s odds have been steadily declining from their peak on June 23, the day before the Supreme Court handed down its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. That drop has accelerated in recent days.
Courtesy: PredictIt.
Ladbrokes, a British betting company, also similarly favors the GOP winning control of the House, as does BetOnline, an offshore gambling company based in Panama.
Turning to forecasters that look at each House race, Republicans are also highly favored to take control of the House. Today, Thursday, August 11, 2022, FiveThirtyEight gives the GOP a 79% chance of doing so.
Courtesy: FiveThirtyEight.
And here’s a House electoral forecast map from 270toWin that paints much of the country red:
Forecast of House seats by party in the 2022 election by 270toWin on August 6, 2022. Courtesy: 270toWin.
What’s the Issue for Republicans?
While the GOP remains a strong favorite to take control of the House, the odds have gotten worse. More concerning is the fact that polling on the 2022 generic congressional vote has taken an even sharper shift against Republicans.
According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, Republicans grabbed hold of the lead on the generic congressional ballot just before Thanksgiving of last year. The lead reached a peak of 4.8 percentage points on April 28, 2022. Now, the GOP is either on the verge of relinquishing that advantage or may have already done so. As of today, per RCP, the Republican lead is a miniscule tenth of a percentage point.
Courtesy: RealClearPolitics.
FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls indicates Republicans have already lost their lead in the generic ballot, with the Democrats up by two-tenths of a percentage point.
Courtesy: FiveThirtyEight.
The worsening performance on the generic ballot does not mean that the GOP will fail to take control of the House. The electoral map, as shown above, continues to favor Republicans in the lower chamber.
However, the decline in GOP support is taking its toll in the fight for the Senate.
On the Sunday, August 7, 2022 episode of CNN’s Inside Politics, the network’s senior data reporter Harry Enten gave Republicans an 84% chance of winning control of the House, but the Democrats a 51-49% edge of holding onto the Senate.
FiveThirtyEight favors the Democrats by even more, as you can see in the graphic below.
The betting sites agree. Gamblers on PredictIt had the GOP ahead all year in the race for the Senate, but they now favor the Democrats.
Conclusion
With less than three months to go before the midterms, the most likely scenario is that the GOP will take the House, while the Democrats will hold onto the Senate.
Of course, many variables are at play in individual races. But, more than ever, the wisdom of “all politics is local” is being challenged by the polarization in national politics and the passions stirred by Trump.
In a column that I will publish on Monday, I’ll take a deeper look at why we are seeing this recent shift in voter preference away from the GOP, including Trump’s influence over candidate selection. I’ll also discuss the economy, abortion, whether the recent passage of major bills will be a positive or negative for Biden’s party, and whether the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago might trigger blowback against the Democrats.
I'll update the forecasts, gambling sites and the polls in September and October because the final stretch before the elections will most certainly be interesting.
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Cover photo: A voter casts a ballot at a polling place at The League for People with Disabilities during the midterm primary election on July 19, 2022, in Baltimore. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)