Where are the voters?
Both parties likely will win and lose in November
When all is said and done, the 2018 election might be remembered as the “Great Expectations” election: the best of times and the worst of times — for both parties. Consider these divergent indicators.
Last week, the voters of Arizona’s 8th Congressional District went to the polls to elect a replacement for Rep. Trent Franks, who resigned last year. This suburban Phoenix district has long been a Republican redoubt, but the GOP candidate won by a scant 6 percentage points. This coincides with a general trend in special House elections across the country, with Democrats doing far better than they have in recent elections. This does not bode well for Republican prospects in the House.
Yet also last week, a crucial number of Senate Democrats signaled their support for Mike Pompeo, President Donald Trump’s choice to helm the State Department. In so doing, they skunked their party’s plan to score political points against the president, even at the expense of helping to ensure upcoming talks with North Korea go smoothly. The Democratic defectors were Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — all of whom are facing tough re-election battles this year. Two other Democrats, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, went on to vote to confirm Mr. Pompeo Thursday.
This is strange indeed. Democratic House prospects are looking up, but some Democrats in the Senate are behaving like they are endangered. What is going on?
The answer, as always these days, gets back to Mr. Trump.
The president’s job approval rating remains poor — for the last couple of months, he has been floating around 41 percent to 42 percent popularity, hardly a solid number and indicative of a coming midterm calamity. However, his support remains very strong among his base voters. A recent Fox News poll found that a whopping 93 percent of Trump voters continued to approve of how he’s doing his job as president.
From a national perspective, this is hardly sufficient. After all, Trump only won about 46 percent of the nationwide vote in 2016. His victory depended upon a crucial swath of nonTrump/non-Clinton voters in key swing states. Mr. Trump has done little to win them over, and they are clearly causing House Republicans problems in special elections. The main challenge for the GOP are upscale, highly educated suburbanites. They historically have voted Republican but now are breaking somewhat to Democrats. Most election forecasters think the Democrats have at least a 50/50 chance to take back the House of Representatives.
But Senate Democrats are the ones who have more to worry about in 2018, given the seats that are up this cycle. Mr. Trump won comfortable majorities in Indiana (56 percent), Missouri (56 percent), Montana (56 percent), North Dakota (63 percent) and West Virginia (68 percent). All these states have Democratic incumbents up for re-election. And in all of these states, the Democratic path to victory depends in large part upon peeling off core constituencies of the Trump coalition, especially white working-class voters whose ties to the Democratic Party are not rooted in the gentry lifestyle issues of 2018 (environmentalism, gay rights, etc.) but the working-class, kitchen-table agenda of the New Deal from the 1930s.
So that is how we get this strange dichotomy. House Democrats are licking their chops thinking about how big their majority next year will be. Meanwhile, key Senate Democrats are voting as if their jobs are in real jeopardy. The difference is reducible to where Mr. Trump is unpopular versus where he remains popular.
Of course, we still are a long way away from Election Day, which is more than six months out — a lifetime in politics. It’s possible that Mr. Trump’s job approval rating will improve and the danger to suburban Republicans will ease. On the other hand, his job approval could plummet, emboldening vulnerable Senate Democrats. Still, if things continue as they are, 2018 will probably yield a split result — a Republican Senate and a Democratic House — illustrative of how Mr. Trump appeals to certain voters but repels others.