It seemed like a lot of the anecdotes in the link are of the form “I’m angry! And everyone I know in my anti-abortion action committee is angry too!”
waves
If polled, I’d have answered “too soon to say.” The information available about the sexual assault allegations is not, at this time, enough to make me oppose Kavanagh. If I was in the Senate I would be waiting on the FBI’s report before making a final decision on how I would vote.
OK. Nice to meet you.
Turnout in midterms is about 40% lower than in presidential year elections. The democrats have been doing so well in the polls because their turnout is down less than 40%, while GOP turnout remains at about the normal 40%. For every 4 republicans who are planning to stay home, only 2-3 democrats are planning to stay home in 2018.
I really don’t know what kavanaugh will do to the midterms. I’m guessing after he is confirmed, most of the angry GOPers will forget about it and stay home like always, but democrats will be more motivated to vote. That is my hope though.
But this being america, who knows what will happen.
Most of the people who are angry about Kavanaugh were going to vote and vote democratic anyway. I don’t know if it really matters if those people are angry. Maybe they’ll donate more, but again the netroots is small change compared to the wealthy donors.
So overall, I doubt it matters much. The GOP will forget in a few weeks after Kavanaugh is confirmed, and the democrats will still be full of rage but they were going to vote anyway.
I’m still predicting about 40 million votes for the GOP, about 45-50 million for the democrats in 2018.
A metric craptonne of voters, who in the 2016 election either stayed home or voted 3rd party. Of course, I am not talking about those few who always vote green or Libertarian or whatever, but a lot of independent/progressive/Sanders voters bought into the Kremlin/Karl Rove disinformation campaign.
Well “not likely” yes, but 538 has it at 22%. Which is well within the range of possible.
The Kavanaugh matter seems to have had a huge effect on the D’s chances in the Senate. Predictwise gave D’s a 28% chance to win the Senate on 28 Sept. Now, exactly 7 days later, this is 18%. Over the same period, Nate Silver’s figure dropped from 32% to 22% — slightly different numbers, but the 10% drop is the same.
Of course the Senate isn’t wholly about nationwide trends: there are just a dozen or so specific races that might decide who takes control. Heidi Heitkamp, the red-state Senator who will vote No on Kavanaugh, may be ousted partly because of her vote, and give the R’s their 50th seat.
The thing to understand about American politics today is that very few of us are Undecided. Those who are, are not careful analysts sifting through vast data to make a wise decision on Election Day. Just the opposite — to be Undecided in today’s political clime you have to be almost unconscious. We’re speaking of people who, if asked what they know of the Kavanaugh hearings, would barely be able to come up with a single intelligible sentence.
It made the R’s look terrible for people who pay attention. But read my previous paragraph. The election will be decided by people whose intellect will remember only this: “Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh … that name’s familiar. Isn’t he the guy the D’s wanted to obstruct? I guess that’s why some call them Demon Rats. I’m sick of obstruction. I’m voting for the Republican. What’s his name again?”
Attempting to predict the results of the midterms based on party identification, turnout and opinion polls assumes, of course, that the voting process isn’t deliberately compromised to be altered by Russian hackers.
Best of luck with that.
Both parts hurt the Dems. It’s all about voter apathy. There aren’t many people that are still on the fence about their Congress people, so it’s all about turn out. The constant scandals had really beaten up Republican moods. Their turnout was expected to tank this year. Dems were at crazy level of excitement and their turnout was supposed to be great. Kavanaugh narrowed that advantage. Republicans have gotten amped up, so they are closing the gap. Democrats were already at historically high levels of voter interest, so they had nowhere to go. Republicans had a long way to climb and this boosted them. I predict that Kavanaugh will cost Democrats seats in the House with a small chance that they won’t get their majority. I think before Kavanaugh, there was zero chance that Republicans could maintain their majority, but afterwards, they at least have a path. Not a good situation. We’ll see about the long term impacts. It might hurt Republicans down the road, but you would think that Clarence Thomas would have hurt them too and he didn’t seem to and the allegations against Kavanaugh are weaker than the ones against Thomas, so who knows? The world has been turned upside down.
Then there’s no point in voting.
Thanks! That’ll save me a lot of time and stress!
Voting is trivially easy; you may as well try in the hopes the Russians and Republicans haven’t fixed it as badly as they might have.
There are a large number of Republican women votes who are pro-choice but economically conservative. Because of Roe vs Wade these voters have ignored the pro-choice issue when voting since the Supreme Court has legalized abortion. But now Roe vs Wade will probably be overturned.
With respect to Kavanaugh and sexual harassment while people can reasonably differ as to whether or not it happened and whether or not that behavior would be disqualifying for a Supreme Court Justice there are very, very few Republican women who find Donald Trump’s behavior acceptable:
“Lock her up”: Trump rally erupts when the president attacks Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford
Trump mocked alleged sexual assault survivor Christine Blasey Ford at campaign rally in Mississippi on Tuesday
So I think both of the issues are going to cause a significant shift to Democrats among Republican women.
No it won’t. That’d be a death sentence to the republican party and they know it. They’ve known that since the early 80s when I wrote my senator. The might chip around the corners of it but a full reversal? No way.
I dont think that a weeks numbers really mean anything, as the Kavanaugh thing is pretty new.
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has an article on this where he does his best to analyze what numbers there are on a midterm effect from Kavanaugh.
So what about canvassing, fundraising, GOTV, and so on? Are those idiots wasting their time?
I honestly don’t know. What % of gop voters are women? Maybe 47%? Of them maybe a tiny fraction will stay home or maybe switch parties.
I wouldn’t count on a female exodus. At best it’ll be 5-10% of gop women who stay home or switch parties.
if the Dems can’t use this to win the house , they should disband as a party.
I’m no Nate Silver, but if 5 to 10 % of GOP women switch parties, that would be huge.
I think that was entirely because of two bad polls from North Dakota. Polling has been very infrequent there (I’ve read that the lack of voter registration makes it harder for pollsters), so it’s hard to say what caused Heitkamp to drop.