Summing Up Voter Atttitudes

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Karlyn Bowman and Eleanor O'Neil sum up 2018 polls at AEI:

• Top issue for the country: Health care was the top issue for voters, followed by immigration, the economy, and gun policy. Voters who supported Democratic House candidates in 2018 gave top priority to health care; those who supported Republicans gave it to immigration. In the AP VoteCast survey, which asked about a greater variety of issues, the top four issues were the same as those asked about in the exit poll, and they ranked in the same order.
• Voters’ views: Nearly 7 in 10 voters said the health care system needs major changes in the exit poll. In the AP VoteCast survey, a quarter wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act entirely, 27 percent wanted to repeal parts of it, 13 percent wanted to leave the law as it is, and 34 percent wanted to expand it. In the exit poll, 46 percent of voters said Trump’s immigration policies were too tough; 17 percent thought they were not tough enough. In the AP VoteCast survey, 69 percent wanted to offer illegal immigrants a chance to apply for legal status; 30 percent wanted to deport them. Forty-eight percent favored building a US-Mexico border wall; 52 percent were opposed. Fifty-nine percent in the exit poll said they supported stricter gun control measures; 37 percent did not. 
• Increasing importance: In recent off-year elections, more voters have said the president was a factor in their vote for Congress than gave that response in past years. Twenty-six percent of voters this year said that one reason for their vote was to express support for Donald Trump, 38 percent said it was to express opposition to him, and a third said he was not a factor.
• Kavanaugh: Forty-three percent of voters supported Kavanaugh’s confirmation, while 47 percent were opposed. The exit poll asked voters in seven states where there was a key Senate contest whether the incumbent senator’s vote for or against Kavanaugh’s confirmation was an important factor in their vote. Only in the Nevada race did a majority say Dean Heller’s vote to confirm him was an important factor.
• The gender and marriage gaps: Men voted narrowly for Republican House candidates in 2018, while women voted solidly for Democratic ones. Married voters supported Democrats narrowly, a significant change from recent off-year elections in which they were more Republican. Not married voters were solidly Democratic.
• Independents and moderates: Independent voters are key. In 2006, independent voters voted for Democratic House candidates, and in 2010 and 2014, they voted for Republicans. This year, 54 percent told exit pollsters they voted for Democratic House candidates, and 42 percent voted for Republican House candidates. Self-identified moderates have been more likely to vote for Democratic House candidates than Republican ones in all recent off-year elections.
• Divided by education, urbanity: Fifty-nine percent of college graduates voted for Democratic House candidates in 2018, compared to 47 percent who did in 2014. In 2018, voters without a college degree were evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Sixty-five percent of voters in cities with populations over 50,000 voted for Democratic House candidates in 2018, compared to 56 percent in 2014. In 2018, 56 percent of voters in small cities and rural areas supported Democrats.

Conflict and Kavanaugh

In Defying the Odds, we discuss polarization in the 2016 election.

Lloyd Green at The Financial Times:

Steve Bannon, the president’s former senior adviser, framed the narrative in near-Manichean terms: “The fight for Judge Kavanaugh became a proxy fight for Trump’s presidency — the same howling mob intends to stop his agenda if they win in November. That display of the anarchy to come is what has galvanised and united the right, the grassroots and the establishment in a final drive to victory.” So much for Mr Bannon’s antipathy for Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

Yet a majority of Americans continue to oppose Mr Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Not surprisingly, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat and ranking member of the Senate finance committee saw things very differently from Mr Bannon: “This saga confirmed yet again that we as a society have made little progress toward treating women . . . We can and must do better.” Or maybe not.

If any lesson will be drawn from this latest tussle it is that hyper-partisanship is an almost indelible feature of American politics.

Back in the day, Hamilton Fish, a former New York governor and congressman, served as President Ulysses S Grant’s secretary of state. As the general of the Union army under Lincoln, Grant had defeated the Confederacy.

Decades later, the secretary of state’s great-grandson would return to Congress. There, he represented the same constituents as Mr Faso does today. Hamilton Fish Jr, however, also reached across the aisle, and voted to impeach former president Richard Nixon.

That world is gone. Instead, the embers of the civil war continue to glow red hot.

Heitkamp Explains Her Vote Against Kavanaugh

In Defying the Odds, we discuss how the issue of Supreme Court nominations affected the 2016 race.  The Senate narrowly confirmed Kavanaugh, who immediately took the oath.  Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) voted no, which may hurt her reelection chances in a conservative state.  She explains her vote in a new spot: