With 8 weeks until Election Day, ClearPath is introducing our Weekly US Midterm Series. We are writing this series specifically with an eye to our non-political and/or non-US friends and colleagues. As strategists and researchers, our aim is to offer cogent assessments of campaign strategy, public opinion, and America’s political trajectory. Unlike the hyperventilating, disjointed election accounts that just regurgitate the horse race, we will offer insights into the underlying patterns shaping the election.
The US is enormous—and so are its politics. Thus, we are going to focus on the US Senate. Right now, the Senate is evenly split 50-50 between the Democratic caucus and Republicans, and of the 35 races, approximately 10 are competitive. Flipping just 1 seat will lead to significant domestic and foreign policy changes. While projections currently favor Democrats holding the Senate, members of the pundit class are rightly calling out weaknesses in predictive models.
A lot will happen in the next two months. Most campaign spending comes in these final weeks, and voters finally start engaging more closely. Political spending in the US continues to break records, with 2022 set to see nearly $10B in ad spending alone—on track to become more expensive election than any election in history (2020’s presidential election saw just over $9B spent on ads). As the tides shift and some campaigns flag, they will take more risks. All this means we anticipate potentially big changes in the coming weeks.
Each week, we will focus on a particular tactic, strategy, or underlying pattern of interest. For better or worse, the outcome of this election will impact the world—and for the next 8 weeks, we hope to provide some useful analysis, information, or at least entertainment along the way.
At the outset of this series, we want to begin with some frameworks that often go overlooked.
1) The US does not have national elections. To understand political dynamics, you must look to the states.
Even in a Presidential year dominated by two personalities, there is no single national election. Administratively, all 50 states conduct elections differently. Politically, conditions vary state to state. Democrats in New York are different from Democrats in Arizona. Republicans in Montana are different from Republicans in Alabama. News reporting will often focus on a national ‘generic ballot’ between Democrats and Republicans, or the national standing of President Biden and party leaders. While these can be informative, they oversimplify and obscure reality.
Recent elections show the folly of attributing national public opinion to US elections: 2016 and 2020 national polling showed strong Democratic advantages, while state-based polling in each election showed tighter margins. State-level polling foreshadowed the 2016 Trump shock win and a narrower margin of victory for Biden in 2020. In the 2018 midterms, pundits suggested Democrats would retake the Senate with ease because of strong national standing. Instead, Democrats lost a net of 2 seats.
2) National brands—though not determinative—have 3 important impacts.
Biden and the Democratic Party as a brand are struggling. Even with recent improvements in Biden’s standing, his job rating is still ~8 points lower than his 2020 vote share—a significant loss in a 2-party system.
The degree to which national brands matter is often overstated—again, it’s 50 different state elections, not one national election. National standing does have three important impacts on these state campaigns:
Turnout: Poor national ratings will depress your party’s turnout locally and likely energize opposition voters.
Transitive property: National attributes accrue to state and local candidates. For example, if the national party has a perception as ‘good on the economy’ in an economic moment (like we are in now), that party’s state and local candidates would stand on firmer ground on the issue, at least as a starting point. The opposite is also true. A national party perceived as weak on the economy would act as a drag on its state and local candidates.
Tailwinds and lightning rods: Popular national leaders can beat the party’s drum, serving as a tailwind to boost the state-level candidates. Toxic national figures serve as lightning rods, attracting negative attention and reminding opponents of the risk of supporting that party’s state-level candidates.
The impact national impressions have on individual campaigns is important, but good campaigns can overcome them in a competitive environment. In 2016, Democrat Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire) defied the Trump wave and Democratic weakness, flipping a Senate seat. In Ohio, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown uses an established brand independent of his party and national figures to consistently outpace Democratic Presidential candidates in a state increasingly supportive of Republicans. On the other hand, Democratic candidates in Florida struggle to differentiate themselves from toxic national party traits, which continues to serve Republicans well.
While an unpopular national party or leader is not an excuse for a campaign’s failure in a competitive US Senate race, the hyper-polarized environment in the US, coupled with the phenomenon of political ‘self-sorting’, means only about a third of these races are competitive (AZ, CO, FL, GA, NC, NH, NV, OH, PA, WI). In this environment, it is unthinkable that a Democrat would win in OK, or that a Republican would win in CA.
3) Events and campaigns matter, right up to the last moment.
Early in the 2022 campaign cycle—a year ago—the assumption was a ‘Red Wave’ would sweep Republicans back into power in DC. Biden’s agenda had stalled, the pandemic didn’t go away as quickly as promised, and inflation loomed. The background context was bad for Biden and Democrats. Plus, applying history forward, a Red Wave would seem inevitable. With one exception, the party in the White House has lost seats in every midterm.
But, history is losing influence over the future. History matters; trends matter. But they do not predict outcomes.
Times have changed. Politics has become more partisan, more polarized. This itself is not new—we can point to moments of extreme partisanship and fraying democratic norms in the past. But it means that relying on trends from recent history to predict the outcome is a mistake.
As likely as not, the age-old ‘October Surprise’ will dictate the outcome of an election these days. Recent history suggests we should expect an October Surprise, but we should not assume the outcome.
In the final months of the campaign in 2004, Democratic candidate, Sen. John Kerry, looked set to defeat George W. Bush. Then came the infamous Swift Boat ad, a direct attack at the strongest asset of Kerry, a decorated war veteran. With the US fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and only 3 years removed from 9/11, security and strength were central to the debate. The attack ad landed, hard, and the Kerry campaign never truly recovered.
In 2016, we had two October surprises. First, a secret audio recording of candidate-Trump making derogatory remarks about women surfaced a month before the election. Trump’s polling suffered. Then, 5 days before the election, FBI Director James Comey released a letter suggesting Hillary Clinton’s Dept. of State emails were worth investigating. Campaign polling that weekend showed Clinton’s support dropped by double digits overnight in key counties in swing states.
There have been a number of ‘events’ already this summer impacting the election’s trajectory. Perhaps the highest-profile one is the loss of national abortion rights when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. This has energized Democrats (especially Democratic women), closing an enthusiasm gap with Republican voters and increasing Democratic voter registration. Later in the summer, the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort may inject new enthusiasm in the Republican base, regardless of how the investigation unfolds. We still have 8 weeks.
Few analysts are still predicting a Red Wave in November. Why? In the immortal (and debatably apocryphal) words of former British PM Harold MacMillan, “Events, dear boy, events!”
Midterm campaigns have spent the past 18 months laying the groundwork for these next 8 weeks. How campaigns navigate the unexpected, how they maintain or lose control over the narrative—that, more than claimed historical precedent—will determine who wins and loses on Election Day.
Eight weeks is a long time in politics. We will see shocks to the system. We will see good campaigns do great things. We will see poor campaigns squander opportunities. In the coming weeks we will share patterns and examples from campaigns—both the good and the bad—that offer strategic and tactical lessons, and maybe a little amusement along the way.