Republicans struggle to counter Democratic wave

Les démocrates préparent la bataille des “midterms”.

Aux Etats-Unis, le Congrès, composé du Sénat et de la Chambre des représentants, est aujourd’hui sous le contrôle des Républicains. Mais en novembre prochain, les élections de mi-mandat pourraient changer la donne. Le quotidien américain The Los Angeles Times livre son décryptage, à dix mois de cette élection déterminante pour Donald Trump.

The clock is ticking on the Republican majority in Congress: The GOP has just over 10 months to avoid a rout in 2018. Almost all signs point toward big Democratic gains this year, largely driven by President Trump’s widespread unpopularity. And some of the pugnacious instincts that helped the president win the election a year ago may now be worsening his party’s dilemma. 2.Midterm elections “are a referendum on the party in power,” notes Sean Trende, political analyst for the Real Clear Politics website. Trump has “terrible numbers,” Democrats have a large advantage in the polls, and “it all adds up to a really rough midterm” for the GOP, he says.

3.The trouble for Republicans comes despite some of the best economic conditions in years, which normally would boost the party in power. Much of the discontent appears to center on one person — the president.

ON EDGE

4. Throughout 2017, opposition to Trump has generated energy among Democrats. But something new has been added to the mix in recent months, said Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic consultant. “The sense of chaos, the constant fight, fight, fight and alarm bells going off all the time” has deeply troubled voters.“There’s this sense of being on edge”, Trippi said.

5.If a year of Trump has put voters in the mood for less confrontation, that poses a big challenge for Republicans.“I don’t know how you stop Donald Trump from putting people on edge,” Trippi said. “That’s what he does.”

6.Indeed, even if conflict weren’t so deeply ingrained in Trump’s personality, political calculation might lead him to continue seeking out battles at every turn. Voters as a whole may not like it, but to Trump’s most fervent supporters, his willingness to fight forms a major part of his draw.

DEMOCRATIC ADVANTAGE

7. Trump’s hard-core supporters remain loyal and probably always will. But for all the attention they get from the White House, Trump’s fervent backers make up only about one-fifth of the public and are outnumbered about 2 to 1 by fervent opponents. Those numbers form just one of several indicators of problems for Republicans. The most basic comes from the so-called generic ballot — a question that asks which party’s candidate a person plans to vote for in the next election.

8.For most of the fall, Democrats showed a healthy lead on that question — enough to sug- gest the midterms would be competitive. This month, the forecast took an abrupt jump in surveys — to 13 points in a poll from Marist College, 15 in Quinnipiac University’s poll and 18 points, a previously unheard-of level, in a poll for CNN.

9.Exactly why the numbers for the GOP worsened is unknown, although the timing suggests the unpopularity of the Republican tax bill played a role.

10.The average size of the Democratic advantage forecasts that if the election were held now, they would gain in the neighborhood of 40 seats in the House — considerably more than the 24 they would need for a majority.

CONTROL OF THE HOUSE?

11. For those who don’t trust polls, actual election results point the same way. Some of the contests have gotten wide attention, including the Alabama Senate race and the Virginia election in November, in which Democrats won the governorship and all but wiped out a huge Republican majority in the lower house of the Legislature.

12.The current size of the Democratic advantage would overwhelm two of the protections Republicans have counted on — gerrymandering in the House and, in the Senate, a favorable lineup of state contests. 13.In the House, partisan gerrymandering has helped pad Republican majorities in the last three national elections. But a gerrymander works by taking a party’s voters and spreading them out over as many districts as possible — ensuring just enough to win — while packing the other party’s voters into as small a number of districts as clever linedrawing will allow.

14.The result can allow a party to win a big majority of districts even with a small majority — or sometimes even a minority — of votes cast. But when a wave hits, a lot of those “just enough to win” districts suddenly get swamped at the same time. Just that sort of wave brought the GOP to power in 2010 in the House. Now, the indicators point to a Democratic surge.

15.In the Senate, where one-third of the 100 seats are up for election in 2018, the selection favors Republicans. Of the 34 contests, including a special election in Minnesota, Democrats have 26 incumbents to defend. To win a Senate majority, Democrats would have to hold onto all their current seats and take two from the Republicans. That’s not impossible - but clearly it is a tough road.

16.Republicans who think the map alone will save them have gotten a stern warning from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “The environment today is not great, the generic ballot’s not good, and I’d love to see the president’s approval rating higher,” McConnell said in an interview with the Washington Examiner, a conservative publication. “I think we should anticipate a real knockdown, drag-out — even on the Senate side.”