Democratic prospects in the Senate seem to have gotten noticeably worse in the last week, with several of their “51st seat” options (North Dakota and Tennessee) falling further out of reach. But the gubernatorial races are staying largely stable; like last week, the Democrats are on track to pick up at least half a dozen, and probably more, governorships. (They’re currently leading the polling averages in six Republican-held seats, plus there’s a lot of upside right below that: there are three more Republican-held seats that are precisely tied in the averages, and three more on top of that where the Democratic candidate trails by 1.) Part of that is that most states didn’t see any new polls at all, but even in the frequently-polled ones, most of what we saw was consistent with previous polls.
Six to eight flipped gubernatorial seats is certainly consistent with some of the biggest wave elections of recent decades. The Democrats flipped six GOP-held governorships in 1974 and in 2006, for instance; the Republicans flipped eight Democratic-held governorships in 1966 and 2010. Only twice in the postwar era has a party gotten gubernatorial gains in the double digits: the Republicans flipped 11 in 1994, and the Democrats flipped 10 in the otherwise-sleepy midterm year of 1970, where not much happened at the Congressional level.
Much of the difference between the Senate and gubernatorial maps has to do with the vagaries of four versus six-year terms. In the Senate, the Democrats are defending their gains from the good year of 2012; there are few Republican-held seats even up for grabs, and most of the Senate Democrats who represent presidentially-red states are playing defense. In the gubernatorial races, though, we see a lot of swing states that elected Republican governors in 2010 and re-elected them in 2014, where they’re now term-limited out—and that’s on top of the usual dynamics of what happens in a midterm to politicians from the party of an unpopular President.
Let’s look at how the “totem pole” has changed over since last week:
STATE |
D CAND. |
D AVG. |
R CAND. |
R AVG. |
DIFF. |
FLIP? |
ILLINOIS |
Pritzker |
48 |
Rauner (inc.) |
29 |
+19 |
D FLIP |
MICHIGAN |
Whitmer |
49 |
Schuette |
37 |
+12 |
D FLIP |
RHODE ISLAND |
Raimondo (inc.) |
46 |
Fung |
34 |
+12 |
|
CONNECTICUT |
Lamont |
46 |
Stefanowski |
37 |
+9 |
|
COLORADO |
Polis |
45 |
Stapleton |
36 |
+9 |
|
MINNESOTA |
Walz |
45 |
Johnson |
37 |
+8 |
|
NEW MEXICO |
Lujan Grisham |
47 |
Pearce |
43 |
+4 |
D FLIP |
OREGON |
Brown (inc.) |
45 |
Buehler |
42 |
+3 |
|
FLORIDA |
Gillum |
47 |
De Santis |
44 |
+3 |
D FLIP |
IOWA |
Hubbell |
39 |
Reynolds (inc.) |
37 |
+2 |
D FLIP |
SOUTH DAKOTA |
Sutton |
44 |
Noem |
43 |
+1 |
D FLIP |
KANSAS |
Kelly |
39 |
Kobach |
39 |
0 |
|
MAINE |
Mills |
39 |
Moody |
39 |
0 |
|
WISCONSIN |
Evers |
46 |
Walker (inc.) |
46 |
0 |
|
GEORGIA |
Abrams |
45 |
Kemp |
46 |
-1 |
|
NEVADA |
Sisolak |
41 |
Laxalt |
42 |
-1 |
|
OHIO |
Cordray |
41 |
De Wine |
42 |
-1 |
|
OKLAHOMA |
Edmondson |
41 |
Stitt |
46 |
-5 |
|
NEW HAMPSHIRE |
Kelly |
42 |
Sununu (inc.) |
48 |
-6 |
|
ARIZONA |
Garcia |
41 |
Ducey (inc.) |
48 |
-7 |
|
SOUTH CAROLINA |
Smith |
38 |
McMaster (inc.) |
51 |
-13 |
|
ALASKA |
Begich |
24 |
Dunleavy |
44 |
-20 |
I TO R |
MARYLAND |
Jealous |
35 |
Hogan (inc.) |
55 |
-20 |
|
The races that were tied for biggest mover of the week were Wisconsin — which is probably the closest thing that we had to a disappointing result this week — and Rhode Island — a race that probably not too many of you are on the edges of your seats about. Wisconsin fell from a 6-point average lead for Democratic challenger Tony Evers over two-term Republican incumbent Scott Walker, to a tie. That movement is entirely thanks to one poll, from Marquette Law School, which on Wednesday found Walker leading 47-46 after he trailed Evers 49-44 in Marquette’s previous poll in mid-September.
Marquette is generally considered the “gold standard” pollster in Wisconsin, though there’s one rather strange detail that surfaced from the poll: their sample was 47 percent Republican and 44 percent Democratic (they point out that the average result over their years of polling Wisconsin is 47 Democratic and 43 Republican). This could be an example of “differential response” in a poll whose field dates coincided with the second Kavanaugh hearing and then the votes (Oct. 3-7). In other words, Republican voters were, because of external events, feeling more motivated to pick up the phone and respond to a pollster than they usually would be.
Good pollsters don’t weight to self-reported party ID, instead weighting to less-malleable demographic characteristics like race and gender, so an odd result like today’s wouldn’t necessarily force them to go back and re-do their math. One other puzzling detail, though, that doesn’t support the idea that the odd party ID composition threw off the results, is that Marquette also polled the Wisconsin Senate race; Democrat Tammy Baldwin saw almost no dropoff from the previous poll, continuing to lead by double digits.
In Rhode Island, most previous polls had Democratic incumbent Gina Raimondo leading only by single digits over Republican Allan Fung, the mayor of the city of Cranston. A poll released Tuesday from University of New Hampshire, however, put Raimondo up 48-34. With few other polls to go on in this rarely-polled state, that was enough to swing Raimondo’s lead in the average from six points up to 12 points.
To the extent that anyone has held the dishonor of “most vulnerable Democratic incumbent governor” this year, it’s been Raimondo, who only narrowly beat Fung in 2014 and had previously put up underwhelming poll results with year. If Fung is indeed faltering (Fung made the apparently fatal error of allowing himself to be photographed in a Trump hat in 2016, an image that Rhode Islanders now see on their TVs multiple times per day), that would instead leave Oregon’s Kate Brown as the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent, something few people had on their bingo cards even a few months ago. She’s leading Republican state Rep. Knute Buehler by an average of only 45-42. (For that matter, Oregon is the most vulnerable Democratic-held seat, period; Democrats are now cruising in the three open seats that people were somewhat worried about earlier: Colorado, Connecticut, and Minnesota.)
The narrow gap in Oregon was largely based on Republican pollsters’ dubious-looking leaked results, but a nonpartisan poll released this week from Riley Research on behalf of the local newspaper, confirmed that it was a fairly close race, giving Brown a 49-45 lead. Even then, there was one serious “wtf?” detail in that poll, though, and, unlike with the Marquette poll, it’s one that (even if “differential response” is the culprit) weighting should have solved:
Fifty-six percent of respondents were men, which Riley said was a higher percentage than is typical in telephone polls.
"I think maybe that's indicative of a more highly motivated demographic," Riley said, explaining that he did not make any adjustments to account for the higher survey participation among men.
There’s one other state that merits a mention, and that’s the other state (besides Wisconsin) that was listed as a Democratic flip last week that isn’t now: Nevada. This wasn’t as big a mover as Wisconsin, but Democratic candidate Steve Sisolak fell from a narrow lead to an even narrower (down 1 point) deficit against Republican Adam Laxalt in this open seat. And again, that was entirely because of one poll, a Marist poll for NBC giving Laxalt a 44-40 lead. (There was one encouraging detail from the poll that’s not reflected in the topline, though: the remaining undecided and persuable voters in the poll distinctly leaned Democratic in their preferences.)
Nevada isn’t a big redistricting prize — compared with, say, Georgia or Ohio, other states where the Democratic candidate trails by only a fractional amount — as Nevada has only four House seats and no likely 2020 gain of another one. But it would still be pretty frustrating to lose the Nevada gubernatorial race; unlike a lot of other swing states, Nevada already has a solidly Democratic state legislature and another Republican governor (especially a right-winger like Laxalt) would be the only thing holding them back from enacting an ambitious agenda.