BTRTN Election Snapshot: Democrats' Odds of a Trifecta Continue to Rise Slightly

Tom with the latest update on the state of all the national races. 

STATE OF THE RACE

The political landscape in the stretch drive to Election Day has been utterly upended by the death of revered liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the ensuing GOP rush-to-confirm hyper-hypocrisy led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Or has it?

We’ll see.  It’s very early in the process, no matter how accelerated it promises to be.  We don’t even have a nominee yet and then, we have the whole confirmation circus to get through, likely to be compressed within the remaining election cycle.  This is a classic case of spraying lighter fluid on the already roaring flames of the Biden-Trump election showdown.  If you thought the Brett Kavanaugh hearings were unseemly, they will seem like a friendly round of croquet before this one is through.  It is impossible to foretell the impact all this will have on the electorate, and don’t forget – they are already casting votes.

But as of now, early polling indicates the Republican’s about-face in filling this seat after refusing to consider Barack Obama’s pick (Merritt Garland) in 2016 is not helping them one bit -- and may even be hurting.  There have been at least three polls that indicate the plurality, if not the majority of Americans oppose Trump naming Ginsberg’s successor rather than the November winner – Morning Consult has it at 50/37, YouGov at 51/42, and Ipsos/Reuters has it all the way up to 62/23.  In each poll, the independents reflect the overall figures. 

Trump and McConnell are not expanding the GOP base, for sure, with this tack, and if they are thinking the enthusiasm factor will be a plus to get out the vote, the Morning Consult polls appears to support the opposite.  It is the Democrats who appear to be more energized by the GOP push.  To wit: the percentage of Democrats who said the Supreme Court was a “very important” factor in their election decision jumped 12 points after RBG’s death, to 60%, while the Republicans, on the same question, increased by only four points, to only 54%.  For those more persuaded by anecdotes, today I went to a Zoom texting training session, one of 1,400 volunteers attending this single session.  And, of course, the Democrats have been donating by the bushel since RBG's death, over $100,000 per minute in the immediate aftermath, and over $90 million in the first 28 hours

Trump strategists will argue that the court battle changes the dominant subject of the campaign from COVID-19, a terrible issue for Trump and the GOP (polls indicate that American disapprove of Trump’s handling of COVID-19 by a 56/40 margin) to a more favorable one, filling the courts with conservative judges.  But the Biden camp is already turning the SCOTUS issue into a health care issue, another terrible topic for Trump and the GOP, who have never put forward a plan to replace Obamacare.  Health care (and health insurance) remains a leading issue on the minds of voters, along with COVID and the economy.  Trump, of course, vastly refers to talk about the economy and the courts, while Biden will focus on COVID and health care.

As for the down ballot races, it is instructive to see how the GOP incumbents who are in reelection fights for their political lives are handling the SCOTUS issue.  Martha McSally of Arizona and Thom Tillis of North Carolina both quickly jumped on the McConnell bandwagon, while Corey Gardner of Colorado waited a bit before doing so.  Susan Collins, badly bruised in Maine by her support of Brett Kavanaugh and later Trump in the impeachment hearings, was the first to announce that she opposed the McConnell process.

And what of Lindsey Graham?  Locked in a dead heat with Jaime Harrison in South Carolina, he found himself portrayed, with good reason, as the poster child of GOP hypocrisy, with endlessly looping video of his hard-to-spin statement from 2016:  “I want you to use my words against me.  If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.”  Suffice to say, those words are indeed being used against him.

But there is a silver lining for Graham as well.  He will command the spotlight in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, as Chair, and from that platform remind conservative South Carolinians that he is dead solid behind Trump and doing his bidding.  And by Graham’s calculus, that is worth a flip-flop, even one of Olympian proportion.

 

THE ODDS

As of this moment, the Democrats have a very good chance of pulling off a “trifecta” – Joe Biden winning the presidency, the Democrats flipping the Senate, and also maintaining control of the House (the latter almost a certainty).

Election Odds of Democrats' Winning/Controlling
President	Senate	House
82%	67%	99%
Electoral Votes	Composition/(Dem Change)	Composition/(Dem Change)
335 Biden/203 Trump	50 Dem*/50 GOP (D +3)	250 Dems/188 GOP (Dems +17)
*Including Independents who caucus with the Democrats.  Also assumes Biden wins the presidency, which would require the Democrats to get to 50 seats to control the Senate.

These odds have been reasonably stable over time, though unmistakably inching upwards for the Democrats.

BTRTN Democrats Odds of Winning
Date >>>	5/9	5/28	7/1	8/2	8/24	9/8	9/15	9/22
Presidency	n/a	73%	82%	82%	81%	79%	81%	82%
Senate Control	59%	59%	59%	62%	62%	65%	65%	67%
House Control	99%	99%	99%	99%	99%	99%	99%	99%

Having delivered this favorable Blue news, this would be a very good time to reintroduce our “warning label,” which should be the mantra for all Democrats. 

WARNING:  No matter how good the numbers look at any given time, the Democrats will not win any election unless they work hard to earn it – registering voters, calling, texting, donating – throughout the summer and fall, up to and including Election Day.

And remember, this is a snapshot, not a forecast.

THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE

The national polls continue to be very positive for Joe Biden, and have changed little over time.  He remains +7 points ahead of Trump.  Keep in mind when you look at national polls that, given the inherent GOP advantage in the Electoral College make-up, Biden has to be up +4 to be considered truly “ahead.”  Yes, the GOP advantage is that pronounced, as Hillary Clinton discovered in 2016, when she won the national vote by 2.1 percentage points but lost the electoral vote.  But +7 is a very healthy margin, worth an extra 5-6 million votes for Biden versus Clinton; it would be very difficult for Trump to pull off an “inside straight” again, finding those magical 78,000 votes in those swing states, given a margin nearing, perhaps, eight million votes.

TRUMP VS BIDEN HEAD-TO-HEAD NATIONAL POLLS
	Jul	Aug	wk ending Sep 5	wk ending Sep 12	wk ending Sep 19
Biden	49	49	50	50	49
Trump	41	42	43	43	43
Diff	8.0	7.4	7.0	7.3	6.7

Biden continues to dominate the swing state polls as well.  In the month of September, there have been 71 polls across 14 swings states and two swing districts (Maine’s 2nd and Nebraska’s 2nd), and Biden is ahead in 57 of them; Trump has led in only eight, with six ties.

At this stage, we see Biden with an 82% chance of winning the presidency, up a tick mark since last week’s 81%.  That modest improvement is mostly accounted for by two BTRTN rating changes in the last week, both in Biden’s direction, and both in Maine.

Ratings Changes	From	To
Maine	D Likely	D Solid
Maine 2nd District	R TU	D TU

Biden is thus ahead in states and districts that total 335 electoral votes to 203 for Trump.  At this point, Biden could lose ALL EIGHT toss-up states and still win the election.  Biden has many “paths” to 270 votes, but the simplest one, perhaps, is to keep every state Hillary Clinton won (and he is ahead of all of them), flip Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, each of which he leads by a healthy 6-7 points, and then flip either Maine’s 2nd or Nebraska’s 2nd.  That gets him to 270. 

Mind you, Biden, also leads in Pennsylvania by +4, which is worth another 20 electoral votes, and is in essentially dead heats in those 8 toss-ups states.  If Biden swept all the toss-ups he could get to a whopping 413, a modern day landslide.

Trump can only count on his solid base of 125 electoral votes in 22 states or districts.  The rest are either toss ups now or leaning to Biden in various degrees. 

BTRTN PRESIDENT SNAPSHOT
BTRTN Rating	Entities	Electoral Votes
DEM TOTAL	30	335
Dem Solid	19	212
Dem Likely	2	14
Dem Lean	5	63
Dem Toss-up	4	46
GOP Toss-up	4	78
GOP Lean	0	0
GOP Likely	0	0
GOP Solid	22	125
GOP TOTAL	26	203

 

Here is the state-by-state look.

BTRTN 2020 PRESIDENTIAL SNAPSHOT
States	2020 Electoral Votes	2016 Margin	Swing State Poll Avg	BTRTN Rating
Solid Dem (19 states or districts, 212 electoral votes): California, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maine 1st District, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington
Minnesota	10	Clinton +2	Biden +9	D Likely
New Hampshire	4	Clinton +0.3	Biden +6	D Likely
Wisconsin	10	Trump +1	Biden +7	D Lean
Michigan	16	Trump +0.2	Biden +7	D Lean
Arizona	11	Trump +4	Biden +6	D Lean
Nevada	6	Clinton +2	Biden +4	D Lean
Pennsylvania	20	Trump +1	Biden +4	D Lean
Nebraska 2nd District	1	Trump +2	Biden +7	D TU
Maine 2nd District	1	Trump +10	Biden +4	D TU
Florida	29	Trump +1	Biden +2	D TU
North Carolina	15	Trump +4	Biden +1	D TU
Ohio	18	Trump +11	Trump +1	R TU
Texas	38	Trump +9	Trump +2	R TU
Iowa	6	Trump +9	Trump +2	R TU
Georgia	16	Trump +5	Trump +4	R TU
Solid GOP (22 states or districts, 125 electoral votes):  Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nebraska 1st and 3rd Districts, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming

THE SENATE

The Democrats, of course, need to flip a net of +3 seats, along with a Biden win, to gain control of the Senate with 50 seats (including the two Independents that caucus with them).  With the prospects of holding Alabama looking exceedingly grim, the fate is Senate control will come down to whether the Democrats can flip at least four seats.

Right now two of those potential flips – in Arizona and Colorado – are looking very solid for the Dems, with Mark Kelly and John Hickenlooper, respectively, sporting leads approaching double digits.  And two other potential flips are looking very promising, Maine and North Carolina, where the Democratic challengers Sara Gideon and Cal Cunningham, respectively,are up by roughly 4-5 percentage points.

And, remarkably, the Democrats are putting on tremendous pressure on five other GOP-held seats:  Iowa, Georgia (the regular election), Kansas, Montana and South Carolina.  Limited polling indicates Alaska is close, too, though we don’t quite believe that yet.  And who knows what will come out of Georgia’s special election, which will have a jungle primary on Election Day, setting up a potential run-off in January.

So at this juncture, that net seems more likely than not – we now have increased the odds to 67% from 65%.  Those increased odds reflect positive Democratic movement in three races that have resulted in BTRTN ratings changes as follows:

Ratings Changes	From	To
Minnesota	D Lean	D Likely
Ga	R Lean	R Toss Up
Montana	R Lean	R Toss Up

Our ratings now falls as follows, pointing to a 50/50 composition post-election, enough for the Dems to claim control with a Biden win, with Kamala Harris presiding with the tiebreaking vote.

BTRTN SENATE SNAPSHOT
BTRTN Rating	Current	Flips
DEM TOTAL	50	4
Dem Holdover	35	0
Dem Solid	9	0
Dem Likely	3	2
Dem Lean	3	2
Dem Toss-up	0	0
GOP Toss-up	5	0
GOP Lean	1	0
GOP Likely	3	1
GOP Solid	11	0
GOP Holdover	30	0
GOP TOTAL	50	1

Here is how each race “in play” is shaping up, in a nutshell.

SENATE SNAPSHOT
State	Inc. Party	Dem Nominee	GOP Nominee	2014 Margin	2016  Pres Margin	BTRTN Rating	2020 Recent Polls Avg
Dem Seats not up for reelection in 2020 (35)
Solid Dem (9): Delaware (Coons), Illinois (Durbin), Mass (Markey), NH (Shaheen), NM (Lujon), NJ (Booker), Oregon (Merkeley), RI (Reed), VA (Warner)
Arizona	R	Kelly	McSally	D + 2*	R + 3	D Likely Flip	D + 10
Colorado	R	Hickenlooper	Gardner	R + 2	D + 5	D Likely Flip	D + 8
Minnesota	D	Smith	Lewis	D + 11*	D + 2	D Likely	D + 7
Michigan	D	Peters	James	D + 13	R + 0.2	D Lean	D + 8
Maine	R	Gideon	Collins	R + 37	D + 3	D Lean Flip	D + 5
N. Carolina	R	Cunningham	Tillis	R + 2	R + 4	D Lean Flip	D + 4
Iowa	R	Greenfield	Ernst	R + 8	R + 10	R Toss Up	Even
S. Carolina	R	Harrison	Graham	R + 15	R + 14	R Toss Up	Even
Georgia	R	Ossoff	Perdue	R + 8	R + 5	R Toss Up	R + 1
Montana	R	Bullock	Daines	R + 18	R + 20	R Toss Up	R + 2
Kansas	R	Bollier	Marshall	R + 11	R + 21	R Toss Up	R + 2
Georgia (S)	R	open primary 11/3; run off 1/5/21		R+14*	R + 5	R Lean	n/a
Alaska	R	Gross	Sullivan	R + 2	R + 15	R Likely	Even
Kentucky	R	McGrath	McConnell	R + 15	R + 30	R Likely	R + 9
Alabama	D	Jones	Tuberville	D +2*	R + 28	R Likely Flip	R + 9
Solid GOP (11):  Arkansas (Cotton), Idaho (Risch), Louisiana (Cassidy), Mississippi (Hyde-Smith), Nebraska (Sasse), Oklahoma (Inhofe), South Dakota (Rounds), Tennessee (Hagerty), Texas (Cornyn), West Virginia (Caputo), Wyoming (Lummus)
GOP seats not up for reelection in 2020:  (30)
* Arizona margin from 2018 election (Sinema beat McSally; McSally was appointed after McCain's death); Alabama from 2017 special election; Minnesota from 2018 special election

THE HOUSE

The Democrats already hold a large majority in the House.  The current count is 232 Democrats to 198 Republicans with one Libertarian and four vacancies.  When you take the four vacancies and apportion them back to their original holder, and assign the Libertarian to the GOP (he’s Justin Amish, the former GOP turned Independent turned Libertarian, who is not running for reelection), then the effective split is 233 to 205.

By far the most important predictor of how many seats will switch parties is the generic ballot.  For years we have come within a few seats based on our regression models that feature that variable.  For instance, in 2018, BTRTN predicted the Democrats would flip 38 seats from red to blue, and they actually flipped 41 seats.

This year, the generic ballot continues to heavily favor the Democrats.  The most recent set of generic ballot polls, in September, continue to show the Democrats up by roughly seven points.  If the Democrats maintain this margin through Election Day, they would be expected to flip 17 more seats, give or take a few, to get to a whopping 250 to 188 margin.

Also – there is simply no way the GOP can possibly flip the House.  We are being kind to put the odds of the Dems holding the House at 99%; we are simply allowing for the highly unlikely threat of a meteor landing.

HOUSE SNAPSHOT
House	As of 9/23
Generic Ballot	Dem + 6.9
Democrats	250 (+17)
Republicans	188 (-17)

And always remember this:

WARNING:  No matter how good the numbers look at any given time, the Democrats will not win any election unless they work hard to earn it – registering voters, calling, texting, donating – throughout the summer and fall, up to and including Election Day.