Revisiting the Rubric: Grading Republicans' Election Day Performance

Earlier this year, I put together a rubric highlighting the best and worst case scenarios for Republicans on Election Day.  To summarize, an “A” would mean that Republicans would pick up a large number of seats in the Senate, pick up seats in the House, and see little net change in the number of governorships; a “B” would mean that Republicans would maintain control of the House, pick up seats in the Senate, and lose a minimal amount of governorships; a “C” would mean that Republicans would lose control of the House, maintain or increase their Senate majority, and lose a handful of governorships; a “D” would mean that Republicans would lose control of the House, lose a seat in the Senate, and lose several governorships; and an “F” would mean that Republicans would lose control of both Houses of Congress, and suffer enormous losses in governorships and state legislative seats.  

Republicans came out with a “C.”  They lost the House and ended up losing some seats they had no business losing, although, Republicans did not manage to lose any seat where President Trump won 55 percent of the vote or more in the 2016 Presidential Election. Compared to previous midterm “wave” elections, Republicans did quite well this year.  In 1994, the first midterm year of Bill Clinton’s Presidency, Republicans gained more than 50 seats in the House of Representatives while picking up eight seats in the Senate; although two of those pickups came from previously elected Democrats switching their party affiliation.  The significant number of pickups enabled Republicans to take control of both chambers of Congress. In 2010, the first midterm year of the Obama Presidency, Republicans picked up 63 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate. Picking u p more than five dozen seats in the House gave Republicans a healthy majority in the House of Representatives but they could not retake control of the Senate because the Democrats had nearly 60 Senate seats heading into the 2010 elections.    

Let’s fast forward to 2018.  With ten races still too close to call, Democrats have clinched 227 seats while Republicans have clinched 198 seats.  It looks like Democrats may end up winning five or six more of the remaining seats while Republicans should pick up the remainder. In other words, Republicans, the party in power, will have lost around 368seats; not good, but not terrible. In 19 of the 25 districts carried by Hillary Clinton, Republican incumbents lost to a Democrat or Democrats picked up an open seat.  On the other hand, Republicans only picked up three of the 13 Democratic-held seats carried by President Trump in the 2016 Presidential election.  As I explained in my previous blog post, Republicans will only need roughly a dozen or so seats to retake the House majority in 2020; not an impossible task. In the future, I will release a “Yellow Brick Road” Republicans can follow to retake the House majority. 

Ann Coulter, one of the most vocal critics of the modern liberalism and open borders philosophy that the Democratic Party has come to represent, actually saw a silver lining in the Republicans’ loss of the House majority; noting how many of the Republicans who lost re-election failed to support the President’s agenda on immigration. 

The biggest surprises of the night came in the Senate and Governors’ races. Republicans beat four Republican incumbents in states carried by President Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election.  Cancelled out by a Democratic win in Nevada, it looks like Republicans will pick up a net gain of two seats by capturing Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota.  It initially looked like Republicans would win the Senate race in Arizona but Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has taken a narrow lead.  It looks like Republican Rick Scott will pull off a victory in Florida but the margin has become narrow enough to require a mandatory recount.  The incompetence and/or corruption of the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, who did not report the results of mail ballots within thirty minutes of the polls closing in direct defiance of Florida law, brings back bad memories of the Florida recount, the Washington gubernatorial election in 2004, and the Minnesota Senate election in 2008. In these races, the Republican candidates led their Democratic opponents by mere hundreds of votes on election night.  However, previously uncounted ballots mysteriously continued to appear out of nowhere in Democratic strongholds that led to Democrats ultimately winning the Washington gubernatorial race and the Minnesota Senate race. In the 2000 Presidential Election, forever linked with the Florida recount, President Bush ended up winning the state by a margin of 537 votes; a reduced margin from his Election night total.   In both of the statewide races in Florida, currently headed for recounts, the Republican candidates lead by tens of thousands of votes. 

Even if the results of the Arizona and Florida Senate races don’t turn out the way the Republicans would have hoped, Republicans remain favored in the November 27 special Senate election runoff in Mississippi between Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy.  It certainly wouldn’t hurt if President Trump took a field trip to Mississippi ahead of the vote.  In the best case scenario, Republicans will have three more Senate seat. In the worst case scenario, Republicans will have only one more Senate seat.  Either way, the fact that the party of the President comes out of a midterm with more Senate seats definitely bucks the historical trend.  

An increased Senate majority puts Republicans in good shape heading into 2020.  Based on the 2018 election results, it looks like Republicans will have to fight the hardest to hold onto Colorado in 2020.  After this year’s elections, Republicans only hold two seats in states won by Hillary Clinton while Democrats still hold eight seats in states won by President Trump; that number would increase to nine if Democrats manage to emerge victorious in Arizona.  While Republicans may end up losing in Colorado and possibly Maine and North Carolina, they look favored to pick up a seat in Alabama and potentially Michigan.  In other words, Republicans’ performance in the Senate this year, assuming the Democrats’ dirty tricks do not pay off, has effectively ensured that Chuck Schumer will not hold the title of Senate Majority Leader anytime soon. 

In terms of the gubernatorial races, it looked like Republicans might end up losing quite a few governorships, including some in the pivotal swing states crucial to President Trump’s 2020 re-election bid.  However, Republicans ended up holding onto the governorships in Florida and Ohio despite predictions to the contrary.  While Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has refused to concede, her Republican opponent Brian Kemp still leads with more than 50 percent of the vote.  Assuming that number holds, the race would avoid heading into a runoff.  The Democrats ended up picking up six governorships; winning in Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wisconsin while Republicans picked up the governorship in Alaska, previously held by an Independent and de facto Democrat. Republicans have not performed this badly in gubernatorial races since 2006, when Republicans lost control of both Houses of Congress during the “six-year itch” of President George W. Bush’s Presidency; a time when his approval rating had sunk to a record low.  In spite of their unimpressive performances in gubernatorial races this year, Republicans still hold a majority of governorships.

In terms of state legislatures, Republicans did lose control of a few chambers but not nearly as many as the Democrats lost in President Obama’s first midterm in 2010.  Coming out of the 2016 elections, the Democrats only held complete control of the governments of five states.  That number has increased quite a bit; the Democrats now control both the executive and legislative branches in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.  Republicans hold complete control of the governments of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.  The remaining thirteen states either have a governor and legislature of opposite parties or a split legislature with one party controlling one House of the legislature and the other party controlling the other House. In the most closely watched non-gubernatorial statewide race this year, Democrat Keith Ellison, Vice Chair of the DNC who faced allegations of domestic violence, still managed to become Attorney General of Minnesota.  Ellison will surely become one of President Trump’s most formidable foes, joining a long list of Democratic Attorneys General across the country suing the Trump administration for every decision it makes that does not line up with the policy preferences of The New York Times editorial board. Ellison should thank a compliant mainstream media for failing to cast a spotlight on the allegations against him that could have derailed his campaign.

In 2010, the Democrats lost control of more than twenty state legislative chambers.  Thanks to their complete embrace of sanctuary cities, third-wave feminism, cultural Marxism, and every single fad associated with secular progressivism, the Democrats will never, ever retake control in the Alabama and Louisiana legislatures, which they lost in 2010.  In contrast, Republicans could easily pick up some of the legislative chambers they lost this year, especially in New Hampshire, the most politically bipolar state in the union. While the Democrats chipped away at the Republicans’ sizable lead in state legislative seats, Republicans still hold the majority of state legislative seats nationwide.   

So based on the party in power’s performance in previous midterm elections, Republicans probably deserve higher than a “C.”  But I don’t grade on a curve.  Republicans’ loss of the House will have consequences, more likely negative than positive.  Mollie Hemmingway of The Federalist has already reported that she overheard Congressman Jerry Nadler, the likely chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, talking about how going “all-in” on Russia and impeaching newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh ranked at the top of his priority list.  If they decide to go this route as opposed to finding common ground with Republicans on the issues of infrastructure and lowering prescription drug costs, then they can expect to lose their House majority in 2020.  With the 2018 election almost over, he countdown to the 2020 election has already begun.