The 2018 US Midterm Elections - The Overall Map ( Archived) (4)

[i[The Great Lakes Were Trump Country, but Not Anymore

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election hinged on votes from the industrial Midwest. Since Ronald Reagan, this region had largely voted blue during presidential elections until Trump cracked the code. There was a sense after Trump won that a “reordering” had taken place. Yet, many denizens of these same states—Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania (to name the most important to Trump)—didn’t get the memo ahead of the 2018 midterms.

Facing stiff headwinds that might normally result in a massive blue wave, Republicans are holding up about as well as one could hope at the national level. In states like North Dakota, they are even poised to defeat an incumbent Democratic senator next week. Yet (ironically?) Republicans are facing surprising resistance in (of all places) the Rust Belt.

As Vox’s Dylan Scott observes, “Incumbent senators in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania seem assured of reelection. Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a coveted target for Republicans, is leading by 10 points in Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott Walker could finally lose a reelection campaign.”

Likewise, Michigan appears poised to elect a Democratic governor, and Pennsylvania’s incumbent Democratic governor looks like he’s headed for reelection. (Meanwhile, Ohio’s gubernatorial race to replace Republican governor John Kasich is looking like a nail-biter.)

“Republican leaders are increasingly worried that their candidates for governor and Senate are in political trouble across Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and other states that the party prizes, and that the difficulties could spill into House races that the G.O.P. needs to win in November to keep control of the chamber,” writes Jonathan Martin in The New York Times.

The following is a bit overdramatic. Trump won those 3 states by a total of 70,000 votes, so it was hardly a rock solid margin. Still, it shows that the Trump burp is not exactly been anything solid, for the moment at least.



Democrats suddenly look strong again in the Midwest

The Midwest’s central role in the 2018 midterms, explained.


Donald Trump shocked election watchers on November 8, 2016, by winning states across the Midwest — states that were supposed to be part of Hillary Clinton’s “blue wall.” This year, Democrats have an enormous opportunity to start regaining ground in those same states.

Political pundits have wondered if Trump’s wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio represented a realignment of American politics for good. Republicans in some of those states dreamed of turning them permanently red with big wins in the 2018 midterms.

But in the weeks before Election Day 2018, Democrats are poised for huge wins across the Midwest, a resurgence that seemed unimaginable just two years ago.

Incumbent senators in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania seem assured of reelection. Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a coveted target for Republicans, is leading by 10 points in Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott Walker could finally lose a reelection campaign. And in Ohio and Iowa, states Trump won handily, Democratic candidates for governor have a narrow advantage in the polls. ...

Still, no one factor explains this apparent Democratic strength. The minority party typically performs well in midterm elections. Democrats have particularly strong incumbents in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Republican brand is tarnished in Michigan and Ohio over some state-specific scandals. But those variables only explain so much. Run-of-the-mill Democrats have big leads in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

Rather, these states have the right ingredients for a blue wave in 2018. Suburban, mostly white women seem to be drifting toward Democrats. Working-class whites, historically Democratic voters who broke for Trump, show signs of returning to their economically left-leaning roots. Strong black turnout would deepen the Democratic advantage.

This talks about the strength of Dem Gubernatorial candidates. I think the last line is the most important, they are running on healthcare AND bricks and mortar issues, whereas the GOP has nothing to offer but fear and not much concrete ideas. That is going to break the GOP much more in the long run unless they get something concrete to run on bar giving rich people handouts so they will be nice.



With Election Day two weeks away, Democrats are expected to take control of the House. But the Party’s chances at taking the Senate look bad. There are simply too many tough races in too many tough states. At the same time, though, the Party’s gubernatorial nominees are looking good in several states—including Wisconsin, Iowa, and Georgia—where the incumbent is a Republican and where Trump won in 2016. On Monday, I talked with The New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells, who has covered the Florida race, about Gillum’s campaign and the other Democrats making strong bids for governorships this year.

“In the primary, Gillum was able to win an upset by basically running to the left of the field in ways that Florida Democrats had just not done in a generation,” Wallace-Wells said. Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, embraced policies like Medicare for all and a fifteen-dollar-an-hour minimum wage, in a state where Democrats had traditionally run as centrists. “What DeSantis has been trying to do in the general-election campaign—where Democrats are much more fired up, where Gillum’s crowds are much, much larger—is to pin Gillum to those positions,” Wallace-Wells said. “To attack him as an ideologue, as a socialist, as a clone of Bernie Sanders.” DeSantis’s profile—he is a young, talented politician who has already served six years in Congress; he is a former military prosecutor and a graduate of Harvard Law School—seemingly had him well positioned for this gubernatorial run. But Wallace-Wells argued that the way Republicans, and congressional Republicans in particular, have lined up behind Trump in the past two years has constrained DeSantis. “One of the things we saw last night is that, while he was prepared to make an ideological case against the left, he was not prepared to explain how he differentiates himself from the President,” Wallace-Wells said. “He was not prepared to describe how he’s been a leader.”

There’s another dynamic that Wallace-Wells and I talked about, one that has influenced the type of gubernatorial campaigns with which Democrats have found success this year. In the 2016 election, Trump’s victory in much of the upper Midwest was a surprise—but only in the context of Presidential politics. Six years earlier, in 2010, the Tea Party had swept Republicans into power in state capitols across the region, and kept them there. This year, though, there are signs that the grip of the Tea Party may be loosening. These gubernatorial races may turn less on Trump and his Presidency than on whether an entire political era is ending. “Democratic candidates like Gretchen Whitmer, in Michigan, Tony Evers, in Wisconsin, and even Fred Hubbell, in Iowa, are running very directly against the underfunding of basic services by Republican legislatures and governors,” Wallace-Wells said. In addition to running in defense of the Affordable Care Act, or against the Republicans’ tax cuts for the wealthy, he added, “Democratic candidates are running on campaigns of literally repairing broken highways.”