Election Outlook: Congress 2006

Click here for the latest "Election Outlook."

This week the micro election caught up with the macro election: individual races are now falling the Democrats' way, and the overall results are beginning to reflect the party's large lead in generic national surveys. In particular, churchgoers are deserting the Republicans. I now project Democrats 11 seats ahead in the race for control of the House, an improvement of 5—they need only 3 more seats for control.

In the Senate, 2 more contests that were tossups now lean Democratic, Ohio and Rhode Island. Democrats must still win the remaining 3 tossups—Missouri, New Jersey, and Tennessee—to control that chamber.

In the House, 4 races look different this week. Three moved from tossups to leaning Democratic:

• Indiana 2: Incumbent Chris Chocola is a member of the Republican House leadership, and he is now embroiled in the Mark Foley sex scandal as well as the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. New polls show challenger Joe Donnelly with leads of 4 and 16 points.
• New York 24: Democrat Michael Arcuri is running an aggressive campaign for this open seat, and the latest Majority Report poll gives him  an 11-point spread over Republican Ray Meier. Arcuri may also be helped by the meltdown of Republican leader Tom Reynolds in an adjacent upstate district (see below).
• Pennsylvania 10: Incumbent Republican Don Sherwood admitted to a long-term affair and was accused of choking his mistress. That scandal has allowed Democrat Chris Carney to pull ahead, particularly since the scandal plays into the prevailing atmosphere of Republican corruption and hypocrisy.

One seat, which I have added to the contested list, has moved all the way from safe Republican to leaning Democratic. In New York 26, Republican Tom Reynolds knew about Mark Foley's inappropriate behavior, but he kept it secret and even encouraged Foley to run for Congress again this year. Reynolds's explanations have been embarrassingly inadequate, and his previously rock-solid GOP seat will probably now go to Democrat Jack Davis, who leads by 15 points in the latest poll.

The national generic polls are moving strongly in the Democrats' direction too. Congressional preference is now up to a 12.8% Democratic lead, as measured by Charles Franklin at Political Arithmetik, the largest lead in this entire election cycle. RealClearPolitics averages just the most recent polls for a 14.8% Democratic lead. Franklin measures Bush's approval near its lowest point ever at 37.2%, and RealClearPolitics has 38.4%.

At the Emerging Democratic Majority website, polling expert Ruy Teixeira explains the significance of these generic polls and other macro indicators in relation to the micro indicators of  individual congressional races:

The two methods can tell different stories and, indeed, this spring that’s just what they did. The macro story suggested that the GOP was in terrible shape and likely to get swamped by the Democrats in November. Indeed, by these macro-indicators, as Charlie Cook pointed out at the time, the GOP was at least as badly off as the Democrats were at that point in the 1994 election cycle.

The micro story was different, however. Looking at individual races, it was hard to see where the Democrats could pick up enough seats to take back the House, while the Senate looked almost impossible.

But that was then. This is now and now the macro and micro data are aligning and pointing in the same direction: big trouble for the Republicans and a good chance that they could lose not only the House—which looks better than 50-50 at this point—but also the Senate.

Read the whole essay to understand how this election might well become a landslide.

Then there are the shifting churchgoers. According to a Gallup survey, in the last two months many whites who attend church and were previously reliable Republicans—in fact, the very core of Karl Rove's core Bush constituency—are having second thoughts. When asked who they will vote for in the midterm elections, whites who are regular churchgoers now split evenly, 47% Republican to 47% Democratic. And 60% of white infrequent churchgoers plan to vote for a Democrat. This is an enormous change, and it calls into question the continuing viability of the Rovian wedge strategy. Disillusionment with the GOP may be a result of Foleygate, though the worsening situation in Iraq is almost certainly a factor too. Kevin Drum has more details and a graph. As he mentions, David Kuo's new book Tempting Faith is also significant; Kuo describes how the Bush administration never took the religious right seriously.

For the House, I am tracking the 52 most competitive races: 50 chosen by Stan Greenberg, plus two Foleygate additions, Florida 16 and New York 26. I am tracking all 33 Senate races, with emphasis on the 10 most competitive. I read the predictions of five pundits and the results of recent polls in order to estimate the current outlook for each race. (The working spreadsheets for House and Senate include additional details on methodology.)

I am writing posts for each of these 62 races. The posts completed to date are listed in the right margin, with links. There are also six earlier "Election Outlook" posts, some of which include additional information:

• September 1, with a discussion of 2006 as a tidal-wave election
• September 8, with a pointer to Pollster.com and a discussion of district-level polling
• September 15, with a discussion of fundraising
• September 22
• September 29
• October 6

If you have more information about a race, please comment on the specific post or send me an email.

Comments

[Danny Boy]

Great website! My source for following the election

[Dylanfly]

Did you see Krugman's piece on the Republican levees? Am curious to know if you had any response to his analysis. Your labours, if I may say, are nothing short of heroic.

[Robert Silvey]

Thanks, guys! Krugman, as usual, is brilliant and right on the mark. For those of you who may have missed his piece on Friday (yes, it's behind the Times subscription wall), here's the key graf:

Here’s what’s happening: a huge Democratic storm surge is heading toward a high Republican levee. It’s still possible that the surge won’t overtop the levee — that is, the Democrats could fail by a small margin to take control of Congress. But if the surge does go over the top, the flooding will almost surely reach well inland — that is, if the Democrats win, they’ll probably win big.

Nice metaphor. Look at it this way: yes, every race is local to some extent. But every race is affected by the national issues and the national mood to some extent. It's the micro versus macro perspective. So even if a GOP president and his policies were popular, a few of his party will get knocked off for local reasons. The greater the unpopularity, the more safe Republican seats will become tenuous, the more tenuous seats will become tossups, the more tossups will go the the Democrats. And that's exactly what's happening, a steady migration away from GOPland, step by step.

Finally, as Krugman's metaphor suggests, a tipping point may be reached, and instead of 15 seats changing hands it's 35 or 40! That outcome seems entirely possible to me.

Notice that my chart is showing only 3 House seats in the likely Republican category. That's almost certainly inaccurate: some seats I list as safe Republican have really migrated to likely or lean Reapublican, but I haven't moved them on the chart. That's because I started with the 50 seats Stan Greenberg thought were competitive in July, and the whole spectrum has changed (or, to use Krugman's image, the water has risen), but I've only added the two obvious Foleygate seats.

As of today, not one of the 10 Democratic seats Greenberg selected is really competitive any more, and at least some of the following 13 districts should be added to the 42 Republican seats I track: CA-04, AZ-01, NY-26, MN-01, KY-02, NC-08, NY-19, CO-05, OH-02, KS-02, TX-23, WY-AL, and VA-10. The water is definitely rising.

That's why James Carville suggested the DNC should borrow several million dollars and spread it around to such newly competitive races. It sounds like a good idea to me. If 40, why not 60?

[Dylanfly]

Many thanks for the Krugman follow-up. As for Carville's cajun ambush: heck yeah--let's pour it on. Swamp 'em. But I sure ain't givin money to the DNC! Do you know a good place to drop money? Here's all I found: https://pol.moveon.org/donate/06match.html

I assume that's as good as any, but if you know of a better recipient, please holler.

[Robert Silvey]

I'm so glad you asked. I recently identified five candidates who would, I think, be particularly deserving. They are all in close races, where a bit more money could really make a difference.

Just go to my ActBlue page here, and read what I have to say. If you like these candidates, send the money through that page. If you want to give to other candidates, click on the candidate directory (top of ActBlue page) to find their names.

[Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz)]

Hello,

I thought you and your readers might be interested in the survey of election projections that I've begun, somewhat similar to the survey of electoral college predictions I did before the 2004 election.

Ed Fitzgerald

[Robert Silvey]

Thanks, Ed. Valuable data, updated daily.