CA120: A 3-legged stool and figuring out our general election

Watching analyses of this coming election can be a bit like watching a tennis match. The lead in many races – from U.S. Senate contests to local competitive house and legislative districts — has seemingly volleyed back and forth for months.

If it all seems less stable than past elections, that’s not just your perception – it really is.

To understand the election cycle as we head into the last 10 days, I like to think of it as a three-legged stool, with the outlook being determined, first, by what’s called the election “fundamentals,” then shifting those expectations by looking at the most recent polling and, finally, cautiously watching the early vote as it comes in.

While these fundamentals are a strong basis for initial thinking about an election, they should be adjusted for the realities of the day.

Election fundamentals are those historical trends that help shape elections. These include the expectation that elections after a redistricting are more volatile, as incumbency loses some of its power when elected officials are being shifted into new districts.

Turnout for a gubernatorial election is generally lower, impacting the partisan composition of the voters who cast ballots. The midterm elections are often a referendum on the party in power, with the party not in power getting a bump from their voters being more engaged and upset, while the party in power shows a bit lower turnout and engagement.

While these fundamentals are a strong basis for initial thinking about an election, they should be adjusted for the realities of the day. For the past few months, as an example, there was a lot more attention being paid to the former party in power.

Republicans earned a massive policy victory with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, pushing abortion into center stage through actions of the Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision, and actions in dozens of Republican controlled states to ban or severely limit abortion. Instead of Republicans being motivated by Democratic policies, it was the opposite. This part of the fundamentals was turned on its head.

Exacerbating this was the fact that the former president, Donald Trump, was seemingly overshadowing the actual president.

Democrats were poised to break from the fundamentals and potentially avoid a major loss in U.S. Senate and Congressional elections this fall.

The Jan. 6 hearings, confidential documents kept at Mar-a-Lago, the New York lawsuit over his business practices, his rallies denying the last election outcome – all of these were the kind of events that also messed with the fundamentals.

If the theory was that voters would make the mid-term a referendum on President Biden, the events of the day were setting the stage for an election that could be a referendum on Trump. This all could help explain much of what we were seeing in the past months with Democrats poised to break from the fundamentals and potentially avoid a major loss in U.S. Senate and Congressional elections this fall.

As we have moved closer to Election Day, attention has pulled away from Trump, relative to a couple months ago, and there appears to be fewer breaking news stories regarding the abortion battle nationally, although in California, Proposition 1 has served to keep this issue before voters.

More of the election narrative focuses on President Biden and issues of his administration’s handling of the economy and gas prices, giving more heft to the fundamentals. That should be bad for Democrats and put them into the territory of a 15-20 seat loss in Congress and at high risk of losing control of the U.S. Senate.

One canary in the coal mine for progressives would be the public poll this month showing Rick Caruso leading Karen Bass in the L.A. Mayor’s race.

The second leg is the most recent polling.

Surveys from around the country show a virtual tie among Democrats and Republicans in the “generic congressional ballot” in which voters are asked which party they will be voting for in the coming election. This has shifted in the Republican direction over the last couple of weeks. And this directional force, combined with the Republican advantage at the district level due to more aggressive partisan gerrymandering in Republican states, can also point to likely gains, unless that polling shifts back.

In California, we’ve seen a tightening of the polls in key races.

One canary in the coal mine for progressives would be the public poll this month showing Rick Caruso leading Karen Bass in the L.A. Mayor’s race. That could be an outlier, as it was a relatively small survey, with only 400 respondents. And the massive spending by Caruso could cause shifts that end up being isolated to that race. But it could also show signs of a softening of core Democratic messages, and a stronger message from voters that they want to see significant change from the establishment Democrats who have the most power in California.

It wouldn’t be the first time that a red wave stopped at the California borders, but Democrats can’t pin too much hope on that.

The most recent Public Policy Institute of California poll shows that in these competitive districts, Democrats still have an advantage, but it is yet to be seen if they will be able to hold all of their currently held seats following redistricting and in a potential national election environment in which Republicans are making gains. It wouldn’t be the first time that a red wave stopped at the California borders, but Democrats can’t pin too much hope on that.

Look for more polling as we head into Election Day, and consider these polls as either reinforcing, or pushing against, the fundamentals.

Finally, and most controversially, we have the tracking of early votes. California politicos have for more than a decade followed the Political Data Early Vote Tracker. This can be found on the PDI website, or you can subscribe to receive it in your inbox every morning, getting statewide early vote numbers, or getting them for any legislative, congressional district, city, county, city council or supervisor race.

According to Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, giving out early vote numbers is like giving heroin to an addict. Those who are running elections and the candidates on the ballot can see these early tallies of who has already cast a ballot and become overly confident, or utterly despondent, without understanding all the factors that go into when and how different voter subgroups participate.

For example, in elections before 2020, Republican share of turnout with early mail-in ballots would far exceed their share of registration – causing news reports that Republicans were going to be huge turnout by Election Day. But in the end, we would see that early vote was cannibalizing the Republican in-person turnout.

The early ballot returns this election cycle are trending more Republican and less Democratic than the 2020 General Election.

Democrats, either through general laziness or lack of experience of voting by mail, would vote late, many voting in person, and cause their Democratic candidates and issues to win in the final tally. Democrats would revel in the “blue shift” while Republicans would decry the “red mirage” of their early mail-in votes.

In 2020, we saw a massive shift. Caused by Republican conspiracies of voter fraud with by-mail voting, and Democratic fears of ballots not being delivered on time, the partisan voters traded places.

Suddenly, Democrats were huge in the early vote, and prognosticators were expecting them to sweep the national presidential race and all the key congressional and legislative races. In the end, as we know, the presidential contest was extremely close, and Republicans in California picked up four of the congressional districts they had lost just two years earlier.

The early ballot returns this election cycle are trending more Republican and less Democratic than the 2020 General Election and even the 2022 Primary. This could mean panic stations for Democrats, or it could simply mean a reversion to the mean, with both parties slowly slipping back into their pre-2020 voting patterns.

As one reporter characterized it to me this week, we’re not making predictions, but we are making preparations.

Looking at early vote as an isolated metric would be a mistake. But starting with the fundamentals, being honest about how those factors are contributing to the election, pairing that with the late polling, and finally adding a splash of early vote analysis can, in total, help paint a picture for observers as to what may be coming by Election Day.

As one reporter characterized it to me this week, we’re not making predictions, but we are making preparations.

And all three legs of this stool can help us brace for what may be coming by Election Night — and the weeks after as final ballots are counted, and election outcomes are finalized.
—
Editor’s Note: Paul Mitchell, a regular contributor to Capitol Weekly, is the creator of the CA120 column, vice president of Political Data and owner of Redistricting Partners, a political strategy firm.