School Choice Loses

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Eli Hager and Jeremy Schwartz at Pro Publica:

Coming into this week’s election, Donald Trump and Republicans had hoped to reverse that sort of popular opposition to “school choice” with new voucher ballot measures in several states.

But despite Trump’s big win in the presidential race, vouchers were again soundly rejected by significant majorities of Americans. In Kentucky, a ballot initiative that would have allowed public money to go toward private schooling was defeated roughly 65% to 35% — the same margin as in Arizona in 2018 and the inverse of the margin by which Trump won Kentucky. In Nebraska, nearly all 93 counties voted to repeal an existing voucher program; even its reddest county, where 95% of voters supported Trump, said no to vouchers. And in Colorado, voters defeated an effort to add a “right to school choice” to the state constitution, language that might have allowed parents to send their kids to private schools on the public dime.

Expansions of school vouchers, despite backing from wealthy conservatives, have never won when put to voters. Instead, they lose by margins not often seen in such a polarized country.

Ticket-Splitting in 2020

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.   Our next book, title TBA, discusses the 2020 results.

Tarini Parti and Chad Day at WSJ:

Nebraska is one of two states that divides its Electoral College votes, and Mr. Biden earned one of them by beating President Trump by nearly 7 percentage points in the Second Congressional District, where Mr. Jackson lives. At the same time, voters there stuck with Mr. Bacon, the incumbent Republican, who won 51% to 46% over Democrat Kara Eastman.

Surveys have found that splitting votes between parties has been on the decline in recent years as the electorate grows more polarized. The 2020 election showed there are still enough people who vote that way to matter in places like eastern Nebraska and Maine, where Mr. Biden and Republican Sen. Susan Collins both won statewide.

...

A Wall Street Journal analysis of county-level election results found that, as in the Omaha area and in Maine, Mr. Biden tended to outperform Democratic Senate candidates in cities, suburbs and exurbs.

Bill McInturff, a GOP pollster at Public Opinion Strategies, said his firm found in a survey that 11% of voters nationally split their ticket—a thin slice but one that matters when contested races are decided by a few percentage points. “That number is really pretty deceptively small, but still, I think, really important in understanding where the Republican gains came from.”

There is another voter behavior that could play a role. In every election some people don’t vote in all contests on the ballot. It’s not clear whether that mattered in any close races this year; it doesn’t appear to have been significant in the Maine or Nebraska races.

In an election with record turnout, Mr. Biden won by stitching together a coalition of support from Black voters and white liberals, as well as people in traditionally right-leaning suburbs who were dissatisfied with Mr. Trump.

Some Republicans anticipated that strategy would lead to ticket-splitting. Brad Todd, an adviser to GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, said his campaign sought to encourage it among suburban, right-leaning men. “In this case, the ticket splitting was largely driven by the fact that Biden’s strategy involves borrowing Republicans,” he said.

A puzzle persists:  if congressional Republicans did so much better than Trump, why did they bow to him?  The answer is not that they feared Trump, but that they feared his supporrters.  Cross Trump, and face harassment and defeat in primaries. 

R House Victories and Ticket Splitting

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.   Our next book, title TBA, discusses the 2020 results.

The biggest upset of the election was the House GOP's seat gain in the face of expectations that it would lose seats.

Josh Kraushaar at National Journal:

There were three major groups of contests where ticket-splitting took place: 1) Races where the incumbent lawmaker had a well-defined record of bipartisanship; 2) races where the challenger was either ideologically extreme or ethically tainted; 3) races where the challenger’s political biography was unique enough to persuade a critical constituency to back them despite deepening partisanship.

Nebraska’s 2nd District race is a textbook example of a perfect political storm on all fronts. The Omaha-area district wasn’t just home to a competitive House race, but it also allocated a pivotal Electoral College vote to the presidential winner. Biden dominated in the district, winning by a seven-point margin in a district that Trump carried by two points in 2016. It featured the biggest pro-Biden swing of any targeted presidential state or district in the entire country.

But even as the district turned blue, Republican Rep. Don Bacon won re-election by a larger margin than in his last election. He even faced the same opponent, Democrat Kara Eastman, an outspoken progressive who received significant financial support from the national party in her comeback bid, but badly underachieved expectations. Republicans won over those Joe Biden supporters with an effective ad campaign that contrasted Biden’s more-moderate positions on issues like Medicare for All with Eastman’s progressive postures. One memorable ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee featured an Eastman lookalike sitting at her desk with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bobblehead dolls prominently featured.

But Bacon didn’t just benefit from Eastman’s left-wing record. He also positioned himself as a bipartisan problem solver, and won a critical endorsement from the district’s last Democratic congressman Brad Ashford (whom Bacon defeated in 2016). That double-whammy of an incumbent’s bipartisanship and an opponent’s ideological extremism was crystal clear from the election results.

Unforced Errors by Trump

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway.   It unfolds  as Coronavirus presents unprecedented challenges to public policy and the electoral process.   

During COVID, rallies mostly have to take place outdoors. In late October, therefore, attendees in many places have to wait for hours in cold weather. If a campaign is going to put supporters in that position, it must ensure their safety. 

 Tim Elfrink at WP:

By the time President Trump finished speaking to thousands of supporters at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield on Tuesday night and jetted away on Air Force One, the temperature had plunged to nearly freezing.

But as long lines of MAGA-clad attendees queued up for buses to take them to distant parking lots, it quickly became clear that something was wrong.

The buses, the huge crowd soon learned, couldn’t navigate the jammed airport roads. For hours, attendees — including many elderly Trump supporters — stood in the cold, as police scrambled to help those most at-risk get to warmth.

At least seven people were taken to hospitals, according to Omaha Scanner, which monitors official radio traffic. Police and fire authorities didn’t immediately return messages from The Washington Post early Wednesday and declined to provide reporters on the scene with precise numbers of how many needed treatment.

Under Nebraska's district system for choosing electors, the congressional district surrounding Omaha has one electoral vote.  By screwing up logistics, Team Trump may have thrown it away. 

Even without hypothermia, Trump rallies are dangerous.

Shawna Chen at Axios:

The Minnesota Department of Health has traced nearly two dozen coronavirus cases to three campaign events held last month, an official told Axios on Monday. Why it matters: The Trump campaign has come under repeated fire for being lax about mask requirements and not adhering to social distancing and other local guidelines at its events. Minnesota has also seen a surge in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, with nearly 1,600 new COVID-19 cases reported on Monday, per MPR News. 

Paul LeBlanc at CNN:

President Donald Trump offered his latest appeal to suburban women Tuesday evening, promising to get their husbands "back to work" if he's reelected.

Claiming he was "saving suburbia" at a campaign rally in Lansing, Michigan, the President pitched himself as the candidate for suburban women voters because he's "getting your kids back to school" and "getting your husbands -- they want to get back to work. We're getting your husbands back to work."

While Trump focused on "husbands" during his speech in Michigan on Tuesday, the coronavirus pandemic has had a much larger effect on women in the work place.

The International Monetary Fund warned in July that the pandemic recession is hurting women more than men, and job losses during the economic downturn are happening in sectors of the economy where women are disproportionately represented. The annual Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org showed one in four women reporting they are considering downshifting their career or stepping out of the work place entirely, partly due to the demands the pandemic has placed placed on working mothers.

 

Primary Voters Don't Always Pick the Most Electable Candidates

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

In 2018, Democratic leaders are trying to recruit moderate candidates in swing districts.  Primary voters, however, may have other ideas.

At FiveThirtyEight, Nathaniel Rakich discusses the upset victory of liberal Kara Eastman over moderate former Rep. Brad Ashford in a Nebraska primry for the US House.  Other liberals prevailed in the night's primaries, too.

The potential problem for Democrats is that Eastman’s outspoken liberalism may turn off general-election voters in Nebraska’s 2nd District, which, while not ruby red, is still red. True, Barack Obama carried it 50 to 49 percent in 2008 — but that was 10 years ago and in an election where Democrats won the popular vote by 7 percentage points. Since then, Mitt Romney carried the district by 7 points (while losing nationally by 4 points), and Trump won it by 2 (while losing nationally by 2).2 All in all, the 2nd is 6 percentage points more Republican-leaning than the nation as a whole, according to FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean metric.3 Democrats currently lead the generic ballot by that same 6 points. If that remains true in November, that would theoretically translate to a tie ballgame in the 2nd District — the kind where small considerations, like a candidate’s appeal to the median voter, could tilt the outcome.

And Ashford would have probably bought Democrats a few extra percentage points. In 2016, he lost his re-election race in Nebraska’s 2nd District by 1 percentage point, running slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton. In 2014, he won the seat by 3 points in a year in which Democrats lost the national House popular vote by 6 points. While it’s possible that excitement for Eastman’s candidacy among the progressive grassroots will draw more Democrats out of the woodwork, she may have trouble winning over persuadable voters too. There’s plenty of evidence that candidates closer to the ideological poles do worse than moderate ones; it’s been demonstrated in political science research, and we saw real–life examples of it in 2010, when Republicans had a wave election of their own against an unpopular first-term president. Although Eastman could certainly still win in a strong Democratic year, we may also look back on her nomination as Democrats’ first “tea party” moment: a general-election opportunity squandered in the primary (or, at least, made more difficult).

Abortion, Identity Politics, and the Democratic Party

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 election, pointing out that the Democratic Party has moved to the left, particularly on social issues such as abortion.

At The Atlantic, Emma Green spoke with Michael Wear, former director of Barack Obama’s 2012 faith-outreach efforts, who said:  "The Democratic Party used to welcome people who didn’t support abortion into the party. We are now so far from that, it’s insane."

Jonathan Martin reports at The New York Times:

Mr. Sanders and the new leadership of the Democratic National Committee touched a party sore spot this week when they took their “Unity Tour” to Omaha to rally for a mayoral candidate who opposes abortion rights. Mr. Sanders, repurposing the themes of his presidential bid, told a crowd of about 6,000 on Thursday night that the candidate, Heath Mello, 37, would be a future star in the Democratic Party who could help break the grip of big money on the nation’s politics.

Identity politics reared its head, and pro-abortion forces attacked, forcing party chair Tom Perez to backtrack.

By Friday afternoon, Mr. Perez had issued a far more strongly worded statement. “I fundamentally disagree with Heath Mello’s personal beliefs about women’s reproductive health,” Mr. Perez said. “It is a promising step that Mello now shares the Democratic Party’s position on women’s fundamental rights. Every candidate who runs as a Democrat should do the same because every woman should be able to make her own health choices. Period.”

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Perez further toughened his language, saying he respected those Democrats who “have personal beliefs” against abortion rights but warning them not to pursue such policies in office. “If they try to legislate or govern that way, we will take them on,” he said.

Sasse: Not the Tea Party Stereotype

At National Review Online, Jim Geraghty writes about the Nebraska GOP Senate primary:

By 10 p.m. Tuesday night, the Associated Press called the primary for Ben Sasse. This morning we see Sasse won nearly 50 percent in a four-way race. As the Hotline’s Josh Kraushaar noted, after Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and now Sasse, National Review has the reverse Sports Illustrated cover jinx.

This morning you’re seeing some folks celebrating this result as a win for the Tea Party over the Establishment, and while that’s not quite wrong, the usual lines were a little blurred. Sasse went to Harvard, Oxford and Yale; already worked on Capitol Hill and President Bush appointed him as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

His first prominent rival, Shane Osborn, had a distinguished military record; he was the pilot on that jet that the Chinese forced down at the beginning of the Bush administration. Osborn probably immolated himself by going negative and delivering the negative message personally.

Dinsdale was the wealthy banker running as the outsider, but his bank had helped nudge Ben Nelson to support Dodd-Frank. Maybe not the worst sin for a GOP candidate, but a reason to be wary of the guy who’s touting himself as a pragmatist who can reach a deal.

Senate Recruitment

At The Washington Post, Chris Cillizza sees some positive signs for GOP Senate pickups.

Recruitment — or a lack thereof — also has handed Republicans a bit of momentum.

In South Dakota, former representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, the son of the retiring Sen. Tim Johnson, have both passed up the chance to run for the Democratic nomination. While Republicans may face a primary between former governor Mike Rounds and freshman Rep. Kristi Noem, the winner will be considered a clear favorite over likely Democratic nominee Rick Weiland.

It’s the same in West Virginia, where a series of big-name Democrats have said no, leaving the party without a clear next step in terms of a candidate. Meanwhile, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito looks like the clear favorite to be the Republican nominee, although she will have to face a primary opponent from her ideological right.

Republicans have had their fair share of recruitment problems, too, most notably in Iowa, where the party has watched a cavalcade of candidates bow out as Democrats landed their first choice in Rep. Bruce Braley. In Nebraska, Gov. Dave Heineman’s decision not to run means a more wide-open Republican primary, but the state’s strong GOP tilt probably keeps the race from being all that competitive.

Crossroads Groups v. Kerrey and McCaskill

American Crossroads v. Kerrey

Former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey is mulling a run to replace retiring Ben Nelson.  American Crossroads is making a preemptive strike against Kerrey:

WASHINGTON – As carpetbagger Bob Kerrey returns to Nebraska from his New York City home to consider a U.S. Senate campaign, American Crossroads has launched a radio ad to remind voters of Kerrey’s far-left record of supporting Obamacare, voting for the largest tax hike in history, and leading a university the New York Times called a “liberal haven.”

The statewide radio buy, which totals $30,000, started Wednesday night and will continue through Sunday.  You can listen to the spot here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDHx6RtKNIo 

“Bob Kerrey thinks if he can survive for a decade in New York City then he can make it anywhere, but Nebraskans are inclined to disagree,” said Nate Hodson, American Crossroads director of state and regional media relations.  “For example, Bob Kerrey’s proud support of Obamacare might win him friends in Greenwich Village but it will destroy him in Nebraska – just as it did Ben Nelson.”