This is only a snapshot, no need for panic, but it is time to GOTV. The Good News: FiveThirtyEight.com puts the odds that Dems take over the House now at 77.5% or 7 out of 9 chances. The avge. number of seats Dems pick up in their model is currently 35+, well over the 23 we need to give the gavel to Nancy Pelosi (or another Democratic Rep. if she doesn’t survive a leadership challenge). The Bad News: The door APPEARS to be closing on our always slim Senate hopes. Currently Dems only have a 19% or 1 in 5 shot at flipping the Senate. This shrinking of our Senate chances is powered by several new polls showing Blackburn ahead of Bredesen in TN, Heitkamp losing in North Dakota, Cruz starting to pull away in TX, Heller ahead in NV, and even a new poll showing McSally beating Sinema—the first lead for McScally since Labor Day.
It appears that McConnell’s plan of “saving the Senate by sacrificing the House” with the “plowing on through” with Kavanaugh’s nomination might be working. The righteous anger of women is hurting Republicans in the suburban districts Dems need to flip to win the House. But the GOP “sleeping base” has been awakened and that is strongest in conservative or rural states we needed to flip 0r hold for the Senate: TN, NV, maybe AZ, TX, ND. We are doing better in MO, NJ, IN, and FL, and Manchin’s cowardly vote in WV has not hurt his lead.
Now there may be factors in our favor not showing up in the Senate polls: Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Bredesen might have tons of young, newly registered voters ready to beat back Blackburn. Likely voter models might be missing Latinx in TX, NV, and AZ or young people everywhere. But we can’t COUNT on this. That would be “unskewing the polls” and we saw how badly that worked out for Karl Rove on election night 2012.
Also, if Wall Street doesn’t rebound, that could hurt Rs in the 26 days left. But as of right now, it looks like our Blue Wave only goes as far as the House and not the Senate. Time to try harder, folks.