# Will Democrats sweep the House and Senate as well? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 23, 2016, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885 "2016-04-23T12:07:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/1 "2016-04-23T12:07:59Z")
Looks like it. In addition to the Trump anchor that will drag down Republican voting in down ticket races, donations of usually reliable [conservative big donors is way off](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/us/politics/with-uncertainty-at-top-of-ticket-republicans-back-off-in-some-states.html), resulting in much less support for Republican incumbents defending their seats: > [@](#): > > In the 2012 elections, the R.N.C. raised more than $409 million. The party has raised $135 million this election, but what is deeply concerning to many Republican candidates, contributors and strategists is that it only had a little more than $16 million on hand, along with nearly $2 million in debt, at the end of March. Mr. Spicer stressed that this was partly because the committee had already begun paying to send staff members to battleground states, well ahead of the same time four years ago. > > But the party’s modest cash availability underscores how much hangs in the balance with its nominee. > > “The minute Trump gets the nomination, the party is going to have to raise another three or four hundred million,” said Al Hoffman, a Florida-based Republican donor. “Trump should pay for it himself.” > > … > > Mr. Washburne said Mr. Trump, who has relied on mostly small-dollar contributors in addition to about $36 million of his own money, showed no sign of being prepared for the fund-raising demands of a presidential general election. > > “The Trump group has done nothing about putting together a finance team at all,” he said. > > … > > “The unspoken concern,” said Mr. Borges, the Ohio chairman, is that if Mr. Trump secures the nomination, “he, No. 1, won’t participate in fund-raising for the party, and, No. 2, donors won’t want to help the party if he’s the nominee.” > > “So that would put a real damper on fund-raising in a number of ways.” Those who insist it can never happen are in for a rude surprise. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/2 "2016-04-23T12:51:00Z")
Money don’t mean that much. Democrats have to be favorted to take the Senate in th event of a Trump nomination, but not the House. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/3 "2016-04-23T12:56:17Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Money don’t mean that much. Then why do conservative donors believe it does? And why is the RNC worried about it? ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/4 "2016-04-23T12:59:47Z")
You sure about that? From where I’m sitting a large part of Trump’s appeal, according to his fans, is that he’s a bazillionaire! (Ergo successful, ergo a winner!) They repeat it every time someone puts a mic in their face it seems. Plus, without his pile of cash, Trump would have no ability to run or secure support from the party, it seems to me. Saying money don’t mean much, doesn’t make it so, I’m afraid. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/5 "2016-04-23T13:00:50Z")
He may be a billinoaire, but he’s not spending or raising much money. The big money raisers in this race were Ben Carson and Jeb Bush. Things have changed. Big time. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/6 "2016-04-23T13:08:22Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > He may be a billinoaire, but he’s not spending or raising much money. That’s pretty much my point. It hasn’t mattered to him, because he can call into radio & TV programs at will and they put him on because he is just so entertaining. That won’t be the case for Joe Incumbent running against a Democratic rival. Trump is unique, and as his primary challengers have proved, it doesn’t work for those not named Trump. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/7 "2016-04-23T13:12:19Z")
If you go to [Opensecrets.org](http://Opensecrets.org), you’ll find that especially in midterms, money hasn’t mattered in terms of which party wins control. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/8 "2016-04-23T13:23:12Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Those who insist it can never happen are in for a rude surprise. I think it’s extremely unlikely that it will happen this year. It’s fairly probable that the Dems will take the Senate. Barring a landslide of Biblical proportions, it’s highly improbable that the Dems will take the House until 2022, and that will require winning some state legislatures that we do not currently control in 2018 and 2020. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/9 "2016-04-23T13:47:17Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > I think it’s extremely unlikely that it will happen this year. > > It’s fairly probable that the Dems will take the Senate. Barring a landslide of Biblical proportions, it’s highly improbable that the Dems will take the House until 2022, and that will require winning some state legislatures that we do not currently control in 2018 and 2020. Is that a common wisdom? That taking the State legislature precedes House gains? I could see it, a popular state government could be good advertising for the party’s Representative candidates but couldn’t it go the other way round? Or I could see there being no causation between the two and some other factors moving a state towards one party or the other. Eta: or are you talking about State legislatures undoing gerrymandering shenanigans? ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/10 "2016-04-23T14:04:06Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Eta: or are you talking about State legislatures undoing gerrymandering shenanigans? Yeah. Redistricting, in most states, is controlled by the state legislature. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/11 "2016-04-23T16:17:53Z")
Gerrymandering isn’t a very big reason for the GOP House majority. I’ve debunked it so many times here I know now that some people choose to believe it for reasons of religious -type faith so I won’t even bother rigorously debunking it, but the Washington Post did a very detailed analysis of the issue years ago and showed it probably gave the Republicans 4-6 seats above what they would’ve gotten. At no point since 2010 would the number of seats it gave the GOP have determined control of the House. I do think intentional political gerrymandering is bad and should be stopped by independent boundary commissions along the British model. But I also think it undeniable one party _disproportionately crams itself into tightly geographic compact areas_ while the other party is more diffusely spread, which means any fair drawing of boundaries will be more beneficial to Republicans than Democrats. The left-leaning Fair Vote project advocates for multi-member districts and proportional allocation for exactly this reason–it’s the only way for the left to avoid the problem of disproportionately aggregating in cities. And **adaher** is right, money isn’t that important. It’s important you have enough money to run campaigns. That $ amount is going to vary from district to district (running ads in a big TV market is more expensive than in smaller ones) and from candidate to candidate (some decades-old incumbents are so ensconced they barely have to campaign at all, and thus don’t need much money.) But the truth that it’s important you have enough money to fund your campaign is different from what people often think–that there is a “money race” and whoever wins it wins the elections. The candidate with less money behind them frequently wins elections. For example when you factor in outside money, Romney outspent Obama by a good bit, and lost pretty bad. If you remember when the Tea Party started primarying establishment Republicans, lots of those establishment Republicans had huge amounts of money behind them and still lost. Money is important to keep the lights on–ask most of this year’s failed Presidential campaigns which largely lacked enough money to keep their organization’s afloat (even Kasich’s meets this definition, he’s only still in it as a sort of zombie candidate doing so little traditional organization/campaigning that his bills aren’t that high, but that’s also why he’s not relevant.) But “winning the money race” doesn’t win you the election. One likely reason for this is there’s a “saturation point” in terms of “organization” (i.e. building out your ground game.) After a certain point there is a diminishing returns. But there’s also a saturation point to advertising, that effect has been pretty rigorously studied, after a certain amount of spending and ad time, more ad time really doesn’t make a meaningful difference in the election. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/12 "2016-04-23T16:24:46Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > And **adaher** is right, money isn’t that important. Then why is the RNC worried about it? Are they just politically unaware? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/13 "2016-04-23T16:39:46Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Then why is the RNC worried about it? Are they just politically unaware? I suspect that they use it to fire up the base. Also, the people who are saying that are paid political consultants who stand to personally benefit. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/14 "2016-04-23T16:59:34Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > He may be a billinoaire, but he’s not spending or raising much money. There were reports released April 20; here are the total reported spending amounts (candidates AND their PACs) in descending order: Hillary\_Clinton 189.3 Bernie\_Sanders 168.4 Jeb\_Bush 144.3 Ted\_Cruz 107.5 Marco\_Rubio 105.9 Ben\_Carson 73.1 Donald\_J.\_Trump 49.0 John\_Kasich 37.0 Scott\_Walker 32.4 Carly\_Fiorina 24.3 Rand\_Paul 19.4 Chris\_Christie 18.8 Rick\_Perry 17.2 Lindsey\_Graham 9.7 Mike\_Huckabee 8.3 Martin\_O’Malley 7.7 Bobby\_Jindal 5.9 Rick\_Santorum 2.5 George\_Pataki 1.6 Jim\_Webb .8 Lincoln\_Chafee .4 Jim\_Gilmore .4 The big story is how much Sanders has raised via small donors. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/15 "2016-04-23T17:38:41Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Then why is the RNC worried about it? Are they just politically unaware? Why isn’t Jeb Bush winning the Republican primary? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/16 "2016-04-23T17:44:09Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > Why isn’t Jeb Bush winning the Republican primary? Because as a TV celebrity and loud mouth, Trump got millions of dollars of free advertising? I doubt anyone else can duplicate that unique success. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/17 "2016-04-23T17:44:40Z")
Too early to predict with confidence. I think the chances of the Democrats retaking the Senate have gone from (very roughly) “pretty good” to “very good”, and for the House from “very low” to “lean low”, but those are just feelings and I’m not particularly confident in them. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/18 "2016-04-23T18:09:55Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Because as a TV celebrity and loud mouth, Trump got millions of dollars of free advertising? I doubt anyone else can duplicate that unique success. It’s not unique, Karl Rove spent 400 million in 2012 to lose every single race he supported. Obama had way less money than Hillary going into the primaries. Romney spent more money than him also. Money only makes a difference when one side has none. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/19 "2016-04-23T18:53:50Z")
The bad guys are in power due to gerrymandering. But when you live by the gerrymander, you die by it as well. So they allow a few seats to go blue by 95-5 margins in order to pick up a shitload of 55-45 seats in their favor. The trouble with that strategy is that Trump may well turn out Democrats in massive numbers and depress Republican voting, those narrow district majorities that Republicans have carved out for themselves may well flip against them. I think Nancy Pelosi gets her gavel back and Schumer takes McConnell’s office. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2016, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885/20 "2016-04-23T19:55:44Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Then why is the RNC worried about it? Are they just politically unaware? I get emails from Hillary’s campaign all the time scaremongering about how Bernie has won another primary or raised another $20m. Think why her campaign is doing that even though she knows she’s got the nomination locked up. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-democrats-sweep-the-house-and-senate-as-well/752885.md?page=2)