It may be that the Trump constant barrage of reversals and self-contradictions, talks on/off/on, trade war/deal made/no deal, is exhausting likely GOP voters more than likely Democratic ones, and that lack of energy might include not enough to go to the polls.
The best news, if it’s valid, is polling showing that across the board people want to see some checks on Trump’s power. The news fatigue is real though, at least for me. Trump lying and saying stupid things has become “dog bites man”.
I agree the daily barrage of stupid yet possibly dangerous stuff that Trump does is wearing. I’ve also heard this theory that even his supporters want limits on his powers. I’m not sure how that will play out in the elections yet. Will they look for someone who uses coded language (like “I’m a strong constitutionalist who supports the balance of powers”) or will they vote democrat?
Much more harmful to him, I think, are his activities of the last week. Gutting the parts of the ACA that everyone likes and many rely on will hit his followers hard, and when the G7 start retaliating for his trade policies, many of them will see it in their pocket books as well.
I’ve mentioned before about ~40 million people show up to vote in a midterm for each party (vs 60-70 million in presidential years). If turnout is depressed it goes down maybe 5 million, if turnout is energized it goes up maybe 5 million.
In 2006 the democrats got 42 million votes vs 36 million for the GOP.
In 2010 the democrats got 39 million votes vs 45 million for the GOP.
In 2014 the democrats got 36 million votes vs 40 million for the GOP.
Point is that, when one party is energized (like 2006 or 2010) that party gets close to 45 million votes. When a party is demoralized (2006 and 2014) they maybe get 36 million votes.
It seems like there is a core constituency of about ~35 million voters on each side who always vote in midterms no matter the environment (energized or deflated). And there are another ~20 million people on each side who vote in presidential years but who never vote in midterms.
So it all comes down to about ~10 million people on each side who vote in presidential years, but are on the fence about midterms. In an energized year 10 million show up, in a deflated year they all stay home. In a regular midterm, ~5 million of them show up.
I’m hoping Trump is such a train wreck that the democrats can count on more like 45-50 million votes in 2018. If the GOP is demoralized, their vote count would be closer to 35 million. A 50 million vs 35 million vote count would flip well over a thousand seats. But who knows if that is realistic.
I don’t know though. I think news fatigue is affecting everyone. I hope Mueller released a ton of indictments in October.
Wait–what’s your pool of seats?
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I used to think 50 million was likely, but with news fatigue I’m not sure now.
The reason I felt that way was because in many of the special elections, turnout on the democratic side was roughly equal to turnout during a presidential year. Which means you’d get 60-65 million democratic voters in 2018 (far higher than the 40 million you’d expect).
But now I’m not so sure.
Seats. Flipping a thousand seats? That would be … impressive. 
How many legislative seats are up for election? All of the US House, of course, and 33 (35 counting special elections) in the Senate? Of these, many are pretty impervious to flipping.
There are 1972 state senators, but I have no guess how many are up for reelection – senators in most states serve 4 years, but I suspect most are up for election in Presidential election years. There are 5411 state house seats, almost all of which are 2-year terms.
I suspect that most seats aren’t tremendously likely to be flipped, but flipping 1000 may not be impossible.
I’m sure he’s including state legislature seats in that total.
For years, Republicans have been crowing that they flipped more than a thousand seats during the Obama administration, and of course they mean mostly state legislature seats. It would be nice to start flipping substantial numbers of them back.
In Calfornia half the state senators are up every two years, so half of them are up this year. No idea how it is in other states.
The GOP did flip a thousand seats (state and federal) under Obama, but about ~700 of them were flipped in 2010, the other 200-300 occurred during the next 6 years. There are about 7400 state legislature seats and about 535 federal.
And again, in 2010 the national vote totals in the house were 45 million for the GOP, 39 million for the democrats. Around a 52-45 vote margin.
The democratic margin in 2018 should, ideally, be bigger.
Also keep in mind that the democrats won big on the federal and state level in 2006 and 2008, so by 2010 they were arguably overleveraged. When you combine that with losing the popular vote, losing 700 seats in 1 election cycle is realistic.
But luckily now the shoe is on the other foot. The GOP is overleveraged in the number of seats they own. Sadly they also gerrymandered the hell out of everything too.
I was including dog catcher elections in my prediction. Sorry for the confusion. I predict democrats will win 2 federal senate seats, 43 federal house of representative seats and 975 county dog catcher elections in 2018.
I’m not a fan of the term “news fatigue” because of the way it lets the malefactors off the hook.
We wouldn’t be fatigued by good news. We’d be happy and energized to hear that a great new trade deal will create 50,000 (real) US jobs, or that an innovative training program will prepare US workers for jobs currently hard-to-fill, in tech and other industries, or that a ground-breaking health-industry initiative will provide quality care for less to all.
It’s not “too much news” that’s creating fatigue and disgust and depression. It’s too much news about con artists getting away with looting the nation’s resources; it’s too much news about racists feeling emboldened to express their views (sometimes with violence); it’s too much news about liars and cheaters and fakers and thieves prospering—seemingly above what used to be the law.
That’s what’s fatiguing. It’s not “news” that’s leading us to feel helpless and disheartened—it’s that the assholes are flourishing.
The term “news fatigue” is actively harmful, I think–it strongly implies that what’s wrong is the fault of the journalists. But what’s wrong is not the fault of the journalists.
I agree 95%, and if you are disincluding fox news staffing in the term “journalists”, it goes to 100%
The real cause of fatigue is feeling like there is no accountability, transparency or rule of law. I think there is just a deep seated sense of despair about the American people and America as a concept. The fact that 63 million Americans voted for a treasonous, dangerously incompetent con man (and his enablers in congress) because they share the voters white nationalist beliefs is very depressing. Trump could be caught on video raping a child and kissing Putin’s ring, but as long as he treated blacks and muslims like shit he’d still get 63 million votes.
It is good Europe is moving on without us. We aren’t intelligent or mature enough to lead as a collective nation.
Excellent point. The deliberate fakers who call themselves “journalists” are definitely making us all tired.
That’s what I was saying. “…liars and cheaters and fakers and thieves prospering—seemingly above what used to be the law”, and so on.
I mostly agree with this, though I still have hope for “America as a concept.” My reading of history is that every group contains some members who are pro-authoritarian (and tribal and xenophobic and racist), and some members who deplore those things. And we happened to meet the great ill-fortune of having a foreign dictator who was willing to invest in an American authoritarian, at the same time that our pool of pro-authoritarian-brained citizens were feeling butt-hurt about having had to endure eight years of a Not-One-Of-Us president.
I think our appalled-by-authoritarianism citizens will make themselves heard in November----but we have to be alert for dirty tricks by the pro-authoritarians. Certainly there’s no reason to believe the Trump Administration has refrained from rolling out the red carpet to Vlad’s hackers, for one thing. We can’t take anything for granted.
How do your hypotheses about news fatigue square with more GOP supporters feeling fatigued and the larger consumers of new feeling less fatigue than those who consume the news less*?
Are Democrats just getting more good news than Republicans?
I’d theorize that Trump voters, though they may not admit it, or even be conscious of it, are just as disturbed by “thug does thuggery and faces no consequences” stories as are Trump opponents. They are just as likely to feel a sense of helplessness at the knowledge that some people are getting away with exploitation, though on a conscious level they may be cheering on the thieving bullies. (Bully-toady relationships are not necessarily long-lived ones, which might be due in part to the emotional conflicts involved.)
No matter where a particular human lies on the ‘pro- to anti-authoritarianism’ continuum, all humans—like all primates—have an innate interest in justice. It seems to be the way we’re wired.
An interesting paper on primate psychology and injustice that’s available in full-text version is at: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/Supplement_2/10416.full