THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PRESIDENT IS UNPOPULAR
Winning the odd-year election is far short of winning midterms or presidential years, but chalk one up for the Democrats: They couldn’t have done much better Tuesday.
They added a governor in New Jersey and protected an open seat in Virginia. They gained far more seats in the lower chamber of the Virginia legislature than anyone expected, giving them either a tie in that body or a slim majority. They appear to have won an open state Senate seat in Washington, giving them a majority in that chamber. They picked up three more legislative seats in New Jersey to add to their large majorities there, and added three state legislative seats in Georgia special elections and one in a New Hampshire special. Democrats won the biggest ballot measure of the night and expanded Medicaid in Maine.
Republicans did hold the only U.S. House seat contested on Tuesday, which was in Utah. But other than that, it was a wipeout.
That said, it’s very easy to read too much into these results. Virginia is now a fairly solid Democratic state, and New Jersey is an extremely Democratic state. So winning those two is something Democrats are supposed to do. And as for the rest: Remember that Republicans had reached a historic high-water mark almost everywhere, so it’s no surprise that Democrats will find some easy seats to win back, some of which won’t look as easy as they are based on previous returns from years in which Republicans overperformed.
It’s also the case that the in-party usually does poorly in mid-terms and offyear elections, even when the president is fairly popular.
But of course President Donald Trump is not fairly popular; he’s the most unpopular president at this stage of his presidency in the polling era.
Everything we’ve seen over the last nine months indicated that Democratic energy is high; they are recruiting tons of candidates; and Trump is dragging down candidates all over, with Democrats picking up several state legislative seats and beating their previous margins (on average) in all U.S. House and state legislative specials.
This is what happens when a president is unpopular.
So what can Republicans do? They’re really stuck between a rock and a hard place. Stick with Trump, and they energize Democrats and push away potential voters who already reject him. Dump on Trump, and they’ll drive down his approval ratings even more, further energizing Democrats and demoralizing the Republican party faithful.
Republicans don’t have a backlog of popular policy measures they could pass and implement. And they can’t really back off their unpopular tax plan, given that it’s a high priority for many Republican party elites and donors.
Meanwhile, while the results don’t particularly predict anything other than what we already knew, they will have some electoral effects. The more everyone in both parties believes that 2018 will be a good year for the Democrats, the more resources will pour into their campaigns and away from Republican efforts. The biggest one is candidates. Two U.S. House Republicans announced retirements even before the polls closed Tuesday. If there are more members of Congress or other Republican incumbents in state and local government who are on the fence between running or not, these election results might be enough to convince them not to run.
So all in all: A great day for Democrats, one that will have plenty of important policy implications in the affected states and across the nation. But while it does confirm the trouble Republicans are in, it’s also easy to overhype results which will be mostly forgotten long before voters go to the polls next November. Republicans could still rebound, in theory; it’s just not clear that Trump has the capacity to do what he’d have to in order to help himself and the party.