The conventional wisdom says the Republicans are headed for a bloodbath in the November midterm elections. Sadly, it will not be a literal bloodbath, but it could be a big swing in the House. The Senate is a different issue, as most of the seats up this time are currently held by Democrats. Many of them are in states that tilt Republican and many are held by blockheads like Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. The House is where the Democrats have a chance to claw back larger capitol offices.
Now, there are some things to keep in mind when thinking about this stuff. One is the mass media is just the propaganda wing of the Democrat party, so they will be endlessly gas lighting us from now until November. Then there is the fact that the gerrymandering of House districts has made most of them bulletproof. About 15% of seats are truly competitive now. There’s also the fact that the Democrat freak show tends not to show up in midterms. T
To get some sense of what could happen this November, I took a look at the district by district results in presidential races over the last three cycles. If a Republican held a seat during the Obama years, it is a safe bet that the seat is solid GOP. If a Democrat held the seat, despite blowouts in 2010 and 2014, the safe bet is the seat is solid Democrat. The result is 183 seats that the GOP will always win and 194 that Democrat will always win.
That means there are 58 house seats that are in play this election. Redistricting and local issues will always play some role. Then there is the fact that solid districts can swing to the other party because the default candidate is weird or corrupt. Still, the fact that incumbents win 85% of the time and we have 13% of the seats in the contested column, means the real election will be over roughly sixty seats this fall. The “Great Shellacking” in 2010 resulted in 63 seats swinging to the GOP.
Another aspect to this midterm is the fact that Hillary Clinton did not win any of the solid GOP districts and she only won in eight weak Republican districts. Even more interesting, she won in just five toss-up districts. The Democrats perform like a regional party, with a small number of high intensity zones. This has been true since 2006, when the Democrats last had a good midterm. In order to win a toss-up district, they have to put up a candidate that does not remind the voters of his party’s leadership.
There’s also the local flavor. A district like Arizona’s 2nd is a good example. The district went Clinton in 2016, but had been solid GOP for the previous four presidential elections. In 2012, the Democrats won the seat, but lost it in 2014. The Republican incumbent then trounced the Democrat in the 2016 election, despite the district tipping to Clinton. Voters don’t always punish their representative, just because his or her party is run by idiots. The idiot you know is better than the idiot you don’t know.
The challenge for the Democrats is to find 26 seats held by Republicans that they can flip this November. Assuming the solid districts on both sides, there are 58 “in play” districts this election, give or take. Of those, 33 have been pretty reliable for the GOP. That’s defined as going Republican in presidential elections, even when the Democrats won the White House. That leaves 25 truly vulnerable Republicans in the November midterm, plus or minus the results of redistricting, bad candidates and so forth.
Now, the party holding the White House often does poorly in the midterm elections, as the loyalists of the party out of power are full of anger. They’re still mad about losing the last time. Here’s the breakdown of midterms going back to Reagan.
| Year | President | Approval | House | Senate |
| 1982 | Reagan | 42 | -26 | +1 |
| 1986 | Reagan | 64 | -5 | -8 |
| 1990 | Bush I | 57 | -8 | -1 |
| 1994 | Clinton | 48 | -52 | -8 |
| 1998 | Clinton | 65 | +5 | 0 |
| 2002 | Bush II | 67 | +8 | +2 |
| 2006 | Bush II | 37 | -30 | -6 |
| 2010 | Obama | 45 | -63 | -6 |
| 2014 | Obama | 41 | -13 | -9 |
Democrats do vastly worse in midterms than Republicans when they hold the White House. This is a familiarity breeds contempt issue. The average net loss for the Republicans is about 12 seats, with a high side of 30 under Bush in 2006. That 2006 election is probably the absolute bottom for the GOP. The Democrats rely on outlandish lies to get their way into majorities, so they suffer greatly in midterms. Their average loss is 31, which reflects a swing back to normal after a presidential election.
The GOP can look at history and figure they probably hold the House just on inertia. Even when the voters are really mad at them, like 2006, the losses are not catastrophic, despite the claims by the media. After the 2008 election, the media was carrying on about the dawn of the Progressive utopia. In reality, the country remained mostly Republican in inclination and that was proven out in the following midterm. The fact is, the GOP is the majority party in America, because it is the party of the white middle-class.
Now, the one sure way to keep the House in the hands of the GOP is to make sure the Republican president in popular. Reagan was suffering in the polls and his party suffered as a result. Bush was popular in 2002 and his party did well. Clinton was very popular in his second midterm and his party did well in that election. If the GOP wants to avoid a disaster this November, they would be wise to help Trump get over 50% in the polls. The obvious way to do that is help deliver on his campaign promises.
There’s also the fact that the Democrats have inexplicably decided to make gun control and illegal immigration – two proven loser issues for them – the centerpieces of this election. If Trump’s waffling and disastrous signing of the Onmibus de-energized Republican voters, the March for our Lives and the illegal alien caravan is re-energizing them. It’s the same arrogance, overconfidence, and tone-deafness on the left that led to them losing the White House in 2016. All the Republicans have to do is to hold the line on these issues, and they’ll do fine in November. Can they? Hard to say… Read more »
florida GOP and gov pass gun laws, vermont GOP and gov passed gun laws and now this: http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2018/04/daniel-zimmerman/michigans-gop-rep-mike-bishop-drops-gun-rights-support-from-his-website/ Its clear the GOP establishment wants to give control back to the DEMs to spite trump. That way they cna get him impeached without having to answer to the voter for it .
Drudge showing this AM in big red letters that Trump is at 50% approval. It’s likely higher than that. This whole anti second amendment thing is backfiring spectacularly too. And look at the Roseanne numbers. Oh, and very little virtue signaling from the obnoxious lefties on my Facebook the past few months. I’m thinking maybe the left has overplayed its hand. I also think Republicans maintain their hegemony in both houses of Congress in November. Don’t think it’ll be close either.
Rasmussan is a bullshit pollster that always oversamples Republicans. Don’t believe it.
http://thehill.com/media/306721-rasmussen-calls-itself-most-accurate-pollster-of-2016
Stopped clocks and whatnot. They’re still wrong most of the time.
that’s not my impression of how accurate they are.
A) The GOP isn’t smart enough to run on stopping illegal immigration, mainly because they support it, and they just spent the last 15 months of a GOP President refusing to fund law enforcement. B) Nobody thinks “gun control” is going anywhere. The Left has pinned the rose on a 15 year old fascist from FL who will flame out in a few weeks or months. And, the response from “The Government” has been to require students to carry clear plastic backpacks, further proving that “The Government” has nothing useful to contribute to school security or gun control. Absolutely ZERO… Read more »
I am increasingly convinced that Trump and Sessions are quietly laying the groundwork for a bunch of indictments of Democrats before the midterms. FISA abuse, the Awan IT scandal, Hillary’s classified emails, the Clinton Foundation, Project Cassandra (Obama ignoring Hezbollah drug and weapons dealing in the US), and probably some I’ve forgotten about. Any of those would hurt Democratic chances in November. But even without any of that, the Democrats are in a pickle. If they follow their activists to the left, they alienate mainstream Democrats and independents. If they try to tack to the center, they alienate their activist… Read more »
The lefties constantly bitch and moan about Trump being “literally Hitler!!” – yet they show up to rallies and worship the latest teen idol:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/david-hogg-fist.jpg
Pretty sure this is yet another example of that phenomenon that ZMan has commented on a number of times : Whatever the lefties are bitching about the loudest – is almost surely something that they’re doing themselves.
The shrillness of the dems and the media is an all out effort to keep their base engaged and motivated. The energy and money they are expending so early are indications of worry on their part. They are hoping against hope for some defining moment and trying to generate it whether a real one comes up or not.
Trump has not gotten us into a war, and is seen as producing jobs and an improved economy. Bourgeois values kick ass.
I think November is going to be silent majority time.
I’ve always said that the worst thing for Democrats is their liberal allies. This David Hogg twerp and the loonies parading him around is mana from heaven for the GOP.
And the fact that the Media Class takes Hogg seriously also damages the media’s credibility in the eyes of most whites. The Media Class seem to think they can control dialog among enough idiots to maintain control. But they can’t. They can only frame the dialog within the liberalsphere itself.
Hogg is a twerp and the militant hispanic lesbian he teamed up with has already gotten a good start on burying any progress they might have made when she came right out and admitted that she had been bullying the guy who became the shooter at Parkland. This is turning into a situation where the kids at that school might have literally done this to themselves – and now they want to run around and scream at the adults for not doing anything. The stupidity and irony around this whole incident for anybody who actually pays attention to the details… Read more »
How awful are Emma Gonzalez, David Camera Hogg & the rest of gang at the Honeycomb Hideout? The morning after the shooting, I began to experience great empathy for Nicholas Cruz. Look at his schoolmates! I’m not saying what he did was right, I’m saying…I understand. Look, I’m the Democrat’s target demo for these kabuki passion plays-white, upper middle class, educated, mother, grandmother of various aged children, (Inc. a step-grandson the same age as the Hogglet),…so, why do these not only NOT work on me, but they are so counter-effective? I don’t believe I’m unique in this. I think more… Read more »
Z Man; A very thorough analysis. Thanks for you efforts. This is important, *actionable*, information that the Cloud UniParty deliberately keeps on the down low. Which are those key contested congressional districts_? If any of us live in one it would be good to know. Our best strategy for 2018 would seem to be: – Primary GOPe-rs in solid R districts; Just don’t go with any loon the Cloud can make unelectable. – In solid D districts with open primaries, support the D loon. Picking the opponent you’d like your own made man to run against is the oldest Cloud… Read more »
That right there made me want to stand up and salute. Now I’m starting to get ideas.
As Zman’s good work shows, the critical numbers to focus on are few. Everybody pick two and start with a bit of web time.
We’re not playing the entire market here, just selecting a handful to short or go long.
“– Donate across district and state boarders consistent with the above.”
Totally agree. Money is more important than votes.
There were a couple of very important points in this comment! 1) don’t run/vote for newbie nutters, just to try to knock out an establishment GOPe. Got to get solid DNA in there w/o skeletons and who aren’t witches. 2) donate across states/districts. Needs no explanation 3) if you’re in a solid D district, vote for the most VOCALLY INSANE DEMOCRAT. Usually, this is also the most corrupt Democrat, so, win-win. I would also advise you to attend as many events as possible these Democrats hold, presenting yourself as a SOLID supporter. You should *ALWAYS* be covertly recording said events.… Read more »
Since I’m way behind enemy lines have been doing the strategic donation things for years. Every little bit helps.
I’m a one-issue guy in these things (I’ll take a longer or more holistic view in a presidential election, though). I use NumbersUSA to tell me who is trying to turn the USA into a Third World shithole faster, and then vote accordingly. Pelosi’s unhinged speech about wishing her son had brown eyes sounded like something the Joseph Mengele character played by Gregory Peck in “Boys from Brazil” would have said. I think that had to have been the moment that normies who look down their noses at the White Genocide crowd realized this really is turning out to be… Read more »
Never doubt the stupidity and incompetence of the Republican Party.
Gun control and immigration are big winners with minorities. The DNC are simply flogging their base with something other than the Obama-era “kill whitey,” rhetoric. White liberals are projected less likely to defect over gun control than race riots in their cities? Who knows.
The only certainty is that the GOP doesn’t have a demographic or ideological future, so their success or failures in the house won’t be a big deal. Even the diffirence between one or two terms of Trump is likely inconsequential given his inability or unwillingness to take a hard line on the few issues of consequence.
Indeed, Trump is doing a fine job making himself irrelevant. Here we have a Honduran horde traveling through Mexico to invade the U.S. and all Trump can do is tweet like a little girl. It’s pathetic.
Trump just doesn’t care anymore about immigration. Doesn’t matter why. He’s not going to do anything.
Trump doesn’t get it though, this is just a probe. If he does nothing and they succeed. There will be a million more in six months or less.
Count on it and the country becomes another Argentina.
Rasmussen has Trump at 50%, which should not be taken as gospel. Still, it suggests he has a lot of goodwill with the voters, so he has time to fix his presidency. The interesting thing is his popularity may be coming at the expense of his party. Most people who voted for him see Paul Ryan as a bigger villain than Chuck Schumer. We’ll get a sense of this in the next month. This is when both parties are looking at house and senate races, seeing who is weak and who is strong.
Trump does have time, but he has no party and a base that largely lives in fear of being a known supporter of the president. All signs point to the midterms and his polling numbers being irrelevant.
It’s as if somebody, say, bond vultures and commodity traders, were roiling Latin America to force economic refugees into the U.S. A Latin Spring.
As an aside, does anyone remember that the ending to “Born in East L.A” with Cheech Marin ended with a swarm coming over the border and overwhelming all attempts to stop them. The open border crowd are resorting to movie plots for their strategies.
No matter who wins, dem or republican, whites will get the short shrift. The left-coast boomer-cons like to talk about how the country swings on a left-right pendulum, that happy days are here again and how we’ve reached ‘peak insanity’, but what continues to play out in policy, law and demographics don’t match this fantasy. The political ground under young white men’s feet has ONLY moved in one direction – against them. The Ryan/Priebus/McConnell wing of the GOPe proved long before Trump came along that they not only like the idea of Pelosi as speaker, but prefer it and Trump… Read more »
“the mass media is mostly just the propaganda wing of the Democrat party,”
You go too far, sir. The Democrat party is our legislative wing; we are not their propaganda wing.
– The Mass Media
If the Trump presidency has proven anything, its that the GOP and the Dems are just two sides of the same coin, so whether or not the GOP wins or loses seats is immaterial to the issues facing the U.S.
I keep reading reports of a “caravan” of illegal immigrant wannabes working their way thru Mexico to the US border.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/01/why-a-u-s-bound-caravan-of-central-american-migrants-is-getting-trumps-attention/?utm_term=.03b36b3cf125
With any luck – they’ll storm the border and make their way across and trash a couple of US side border towns in the process.
Pretty sure that will help immensely to bury any Democrats that have been running their mouth about how great all the illegals are. Whether the effect will last all the way to November is another issue though.
That is likely a dream that won’t come true. More likely is that the caravan will simply present themselves to the BP and await their handouts patiently while the open borders activists handle all the screaming and screeching to ensure that each and every one of the caravan of the saints realizes their God given rights to live and welfare in These United States. Trump should use the caravan to hammer the Establishment, pin it on them, make em wear it like a pig slopped in mud. It’s either Establishment chaos or Trumpian common sense immigration laws. I don’t think… Read more »
I hope you are right that the caravan will galvanize whites. I have a nightmare vision of an army of women crying about the beauty of inclusion and successfully browbeating all the Democrats and most of the Republicans.
Call Trump and demand that he keep the caravan out of our country: 202-456-1111. We’ve got to counter Ivanka’s tears. (The phone line is closed Monday but opens Tuesday.)
History, recent history anyway suggests that whitey only learns the hard way. I think Sailer demonstrated the difference in voting patterns amongst gringos was mostly explainable by proximity to NAMs. Thus southern crackers are red pilled GOP voters and whitopia progs are open borders hate whitey social climbers. TLDR: we NEED the caravan of the Saints. White Devils in Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, etc are incapable of distance learning and will not be red piled until the blessings of diversity beats the crap out of their kids in their own rapidly declining neiborhoods. Second best choice- caravan of the saints type,… Read more »
I was in Iceland and local woman started lecturing me about diversity. She said Europe has been at peace because if diversity. No kidding. It’s easy to get wacky ideas in your head when you live in imagination land.
I would have liked to ask her how she enjoyed her vacation in Malmö.
was she hot?
“Do you know where you’d be without the good old USA? You’d be the smallest fucking colony in the Soviet Empire” –Otto
And being “smallest fucking colony in the Soviet Empire” may have been a healthier fate. The USSR, which had many terrible problems, inadvertently protected its people from Cultural Marxism. For example, trannies aren’t worshiped in Russia.
F*ck the USA, at least for the last 100 years.
You don’t have to push me much to engage my accelerationist feelings. But sometimes, “the worse the better” is only worse, no? The coming defeat that harshly educates whites is ineluctable, but shouldn’t we struggle along the way? Are you really not going to make the call to Trump?
‘“the worse the better” is only worse’ and ‘Generation Tide Pod’- dammit, I love this website.
I get it. Most of the time winning is better than losing. But whitey is too dumb to live in prosperity, we need some ghetto lest we margarita our way to self extinction. Think Churchill; he needed Pearl Harbor the way we need the caravan of the saints; many of them, ever larger and more contemptuous of the host. So no, I’m not makin that call. Yet!
“One is the mass media is mostly just the propaganda wing of the Democrat party…” The other way around today. The awesome wealth and power of the media class has put it in the driver’s seat. Once they realized their power to take down politicians like Nixon, they pretty well framed all national discourses. They can make or unmake Democrats as they see fit. Labor unions have faded in power and the blue collar worker no longer trusts his union leadership for political advice. We live in the Media Age. And it’s almost all Progressive crap. The food of liberal… Read more »
Hilarious line: “Sadly for us, it will not be a literal bloodbath”
Anything less is kabuki theatre.
The GOP is going to make than much worse than in it has to be with stupid stuff like this http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2018/04/daniel-zimmerman/michigans-gop-rep-mike-bishop-drops-gun-rights-support-from-his-website/ I live in Michigan and I worked many campaigns in the past . I don’t know now if it is even worth my time to go vote. they are out-stupiding stabenow
Predicting political contests is a little like predicting the weather. Reasonable accuracy a few days in advance, terrible accuracy much beyond a week or so ahead. The wildcard this year will be upcoming corruption scandals in DC and if Trump uses the Defense budget to actually begin building the Wall. So far he has been crazy like a fox and Hilliary, Pelosi, and Schumer remain the face of the Democrats.
Changing demographics already baked into the cake of the American electorate dictate the following: 1. There will be no more Republican Presidents after 2024 or 2028, when at least one of Texas, Georgia, or Florida become blue states. Trump is likely the last Republican President of the United States. 2. The House will eventually be held permanently by the Democrats, although this will take longer due to gerrymandering and the idiosyncrasies of specific districts. 3. The Senate will eventually be held permanently by the Republican party, quite possibly with filibuster-proof majorities, as the population continues to cluster in blue cities.… Read more »
Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Florida, will all turn blue before Texas. If will depend a great deal on immigration #s from 2016-2020 and 2020-2024, along with redistricting, but they are all very close to the tipping point of no return. With the mass influxes of Puerto Ricans, new felonious voters, and massive native Hispanic population turning 18, I think Florida is the first domino to fall. But, I could be wrong. I haven’t worked in this game in decades so I no longer have the insider info I once had access to, and am just talking out of my… Read more »
Why are you worried about elections? TINVOWOOT Long term, short term its going to come to civil war. succession collapse and/or any combination of these and thinking otherwise is wishful thinking Trump is a delaying action not a solution always had been. However it won’t come to those until the Right actually gets an ideology and a will to enforce that ideology at gunpoint. The Libertarian bullshit the Right spouts is Leftism , in the Founding Fathers version its a somewhat benign strain but you aren’t getting that back for a lot of reasons You also can’t ghost dance the… Read more »
I view the Republican establishment differently. First, they’re not by definition ‘Republicans. ‘
They don’t want to be the majority in Congress, and they weren’t for over 40 years.
Their purpose is to sit on the other side of the negotiating while the Progressive majority ushers in their new nirvana.
Their job in the midterms is to lose the majority if they can. The easiest way is to run open borders Trump haters.
And they will. They’re not stupid; they’re lying grifters.
sorry zman but you sounds like Jazzhands McFeels in your homer-ism. Are you familiar with wipeout elections like 1958 or 1974? From what I know, the 1974 elections were foretold by a series of special elections in late 1973 and early 1974. How is an election like PA-18 anything different?
Are you familiar with the non-wipeout of 2002? The past offers a cornucopia of confirmation for whatever bias you like. I’m simply looking at the reality on the ground. As to what special election foretell, they were completely out to lunch on the 1994 Republican wave. That PA-18 may mean something. It may mean nothing. The GOP ran a drunk ion a district that is going away in a few months. The Democrats ran a guy sounding like me. Can they put together a combination like that in 26 districts? Probably not. As I wrote, the GOP is probably looking… Read more »
the dems probably would have taken over the HOR in 2002 had 9/11 not happened. 2006 was a correction to 2002.
If that were true, then 2004 would have put Kerry in the White House. The 2006 election was the result of Republican voters revolting against the Bush administration. Again, look at the number of seats the GOP lost in 2006. Everything was against the GOP in that midterm. Bush was unpopular. The war was a mess. There were economic concerns. The GOP had been in power for a long time. The Democrats had a great recruiting strategy, run by Rahm Emmanuel. 2006 was the perfect storm and the Democrats netted 30 seats. Maybe the country has decided they should have… Read more »
ok – but the democrats had a bigger majority in 09-10 than the republicans do now – and they ended up losing it. Word on the street was that people were skeptical to hand back power after GW Bush – but it happened anyways.
Demographics, Demographics, Demographics. Here in Mexifornia, Illegals are automatically now registered to vote and it is completely legal for them to do so in state and local elections. As of April 1. Let that sink in — in California illegals vote for Governor and other statewide offices. There is no mechanism to keep them from voting in Federal Elections.
Republicans are looking at a historic wipeout. By “rotten districts” filled with illegal alien voters who vote for pay — I expect this to be replicated in most states. Republicans have no answer for this.
But, but but… Hispanics are natural conservatives!
since your previous pro jewish article,your articles seem to have lost there punch ,,,sorta’ ho hum now,,or really maybe before,,not sure.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
did you fall asleep on the keyboard?
As a prime offender, I recant and disagree. The JQ is a distraction. Plenty of it elsewhere. Z’s forte is the underserved early American culture, as befits a Boston colonial. And cultural history, as befits an imperialist oppressing Lagos-on-the-Bey. Last week was like reading a Big Think by Codevilla near every day, with laugh out loud lines. Literal bloodbath indeed!! He really shines in exploring religion as politics in a language we can all relate to. The Puritan version of Tikkun Olam has become the secular religion of Progressivism, just as the Rootless have secularized Talmudic obedience to Judah into… Read more »
I know, I know! I was trying to whisper.
The neocons have gotten their money, as Trump hopes the military will back him against the Deep State spies. He can get thrown under the bus. Now is the time for the Repubs to throw the House, as the Dems have said they will impeach. Pence could then start the war to bring the last three non-BIS banks into the fold- Syria, Iran, North Korea- with an added benefit. The resulting war will inflate the economy, which was the purpose of the Bush wars. Dubya’s skyrocketing mortgages allowed Daddy’s S&L tranch setup to payoff in the biggest pump-and-dump heist in… Read more »
Run an Art V CoS for 2020. 1 topic: Art 1 Section 8 Clause 2: States take USA debt limit. Take the “credit card” away from the clowns.