The Horse Race: Republicans’ Best Chance for a Midterm Senate Pickup

with John McCormack & Brittany Bernstein

Wednesday, October 05, 2022

Republicans' Best Chance for a Midterm Senate Pickup

John McCormack

Nevada now looks like the GOP's best opportunity to pick up a Senate seat in November.

While Republicans nominated poor Senate candidates in several states this year, they got a blue-chip nominee in Nevada, where Republican Adam Laxalt led Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto by a small margin in each of five polls conducted in September.

"Laxalt in Nevada is like a Sununu in New Hampshire. Nevada is the one place where [Republicans] got the candidate they wanted," Democratic senator Tim Kaine of Virginia told Politico last week. If you read John J. Miller's National Review profile of Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general with a strong family name in the state, you know that Kaine is right.

Yet for all of Laxalt's strengths, Republicans have good reason to worry that his slim 2.2-point polling lead may prove to be a mirage. While polls have in recent years overestimated Democratic support in several midwestern states, such as Ohio and Wisconsin, Nevada is one state where polls have repeatedly overestimated Republicans.

In 2010, Democrat Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, trailed by 2.6 points in the final RCP polling average; Reid won by 5.6 points.

In 2012, Republican Senate candidate Dean Heller led by four points in the final polling average; Heller won by 1.2 points. (Barack Obama overperformed the final polling average by about four points.)

In 2016, Democratic Senate candidate Cortez Masto outperformed the final polling average by only 0.6 points, but in September she trailed Republican Joe Heck by three points. (Hillary Clinton trailed Donald Trump by 0.8 points in the final polling average; Clinton carried Nevada by 2.4 points.)

In 2018, Democratic Senate candidate Jacky Rosen was exactly tied with incumbent Republican Dean Heller in the final polling average; Rosen won by five points.

In 2020, however, the final polling average (Biden +2.4) almost precisely nailed Biden's 2.7-point margin of victory over Trump.

What explains the number of polling errors all in the same direction in Nevada? One major theory has been that the Democratic machine, powered by the 60,000-worker-strong Culinary Workers Union, does a good job of dragging unlikely voters to the polls. An unenthusiastic vote counts just as much as an enthusiastic one, and in a column last month in the Hill, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman discussed how the "likely voter" screens caused most pollsters to miss Harry Reid's victory in 2010.

While Nevada's polling history makes Republicans worry, there are reasons to think Laxalt might be more likely to succeed in 2022. One big warning sign for Democrats is that the Culinary Workers Union reports that "about 20% of its members or about 10,000 workers are still without jobs." Nevada remains a toss-up Senate race, but that's a staggering statistic that should inspire skepticism about whether the union machine will perform as well in 2022 as it has in the past.

From a Monday New York Times report, here's a taste of what union workers currently employed as canvassers are getting from voters:

The Culinary Workers Union members who are knocking on doors to get out the vote are on the cursed-at front lines of the Democratic Party's midterm battle.

Most voters do not open their doors. And when some do answer, the canvassers might wish they hadn't.

"You think I am going to vote for those Democrats after all they've done to ruin the economy?" a voter shouted one evening last week from her entryway in a working-class neighborhood of East Las Vegas. . . .

"There is a significant amount of nervousness and fear about the economy and especially about the cost of housing. Your gas costs more, your rent costs more," said Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union, which represents thousands of housekeepers, bartenders and cooks and has played a key role in electing Democrats in Nevada. "Working families are hurting."

Another sign of hope for Republicans in Nevada is their improved national performance among Hispanic voters. On Tuesday, NBC News reported a new $2 million Spanish-language TV ad campaign against Cortez Masto:

If Republicans can win in Nevada, they'll have a good chance of taking back control of the Senate (and almost certainly avoid the worst-case scenario we discussed last week).

CAMPAIGN ROUNDUP

Brittany Bernstein

With crime a top-of-mind issue for many voters, it's set to be a tough year for many progressives who have advocated bail reform and defunding the police.

Wisconsin lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes's support for ending cash bail could prove particularly costly to his Senate bid in a state where the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre is still fresh in the minds of many voters.

In 2021, a man with a lengthy rap sheet killed six people and wounded dozens when he drove his car through a Christmas parade in the city. The suspect, Darrell Brooks, was allowed to leave jail just days before he drove into the crowd, after his bail in multiple pending cases was set "inappropriately low."

As I reported today:

Despite the low bail playing a major part in Brooks's ability to drive into the Christmas parade, Barnes's campaign said in February that he still supports legislation he introduced in 2016 as a member of the state assembly that would have ended "monetary bail as a condition of release" for criminal defendants and prohibited judges from detaining defendants based on the "nature, number and gravity" of the charges.

Under the proposal, a judge would instead be required to release a defendant unless there was "clear and convincing evidence" that a defendant was a flight risk or a danger to an individual or a witness.

Charles Stimson, an expert in crime control at the Heritage Foundation, told me that calls for bail reform are not grounded in reality, noting that,

while proponents of bail reform argue cash bail is discriminatory and that more lenient procedures would not increase crime, "there is no study out there — none — that has survived peer review that says that crime goes down or remains the same if you eliminate cash bail."

RealClearPolitics POLLING AVERAGES

Generic congressional ballot: Republicans +0.7

Republican Senate candidates lead:

Ohio: R +1.2 (Vance 46.2%, Ryan 45.0%)

North Carolina: R +1.5 (Budd 45.0%, Beasley 43.5%)

Nevada: R +2.2 (Laxalt 45.4%, Cortez Masto 43.2%)

Wisconsin: R +3.0 (Johnson 49.2%, Barnes 46.2%)

Democratic Senate candidates lead:

New Hampshire: D +9.3 (Hassan 50.0%, Bolduc 40.7%)

Pennsylvania: D +4.3 (Fetterman 48.0%, Oz 43.7%)

Arizona: D +4.0 (Kelly 48.2%, Masters 44.2%)

Georgia: D +0.7 (Warnock 47.0%, Walker 46.3%)

RACE-RATINGS UPDATE

The Cook Political Report shifted the Pennsylvania Senate race to "Toss Up" just six weeks after first designating the race "Lean Democrat." Cook notes that "Republicans and Democrats alike admit the race has tightened and that Pennsylvania could be the tipping point for the Senate majority."

Cook also shifted four gubernatorial races:

The Pennsylvania governor's race between Democrat Josh Shapiro and Republican Doug Mastriano shifted from Lean Democratic to Likely Democratic.

The Michigan governor's race between incumbent Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Republican Tudor Dixon shifted from Lean Democratic to Likely Democratic.

The Oklahoma governor's race between incumbent Governor Kevin Stitt and Democrat Joy Hofmeister shifted from Solid Republican to Likely Republican.

The Ohio governor's race between incumbent Governor Mike DeWine and Democrat Nan Whaley shifted from Likely Republican to Solid Republican.

Finally, Ohio Democratic representative Marcy Kaptur moved from "Toss Up" to "Lean Democrat." "It's 'Oppo Dump' O'Clock," says the Cook Political Report, after reports indicated Kaptur's opponent, J. R. Majewski, had misled voters about his military record.

AROUND NR

• Ryan Mills recaps the latest scandal involving Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, in which the pro-life Republican is accused of paying a former girlfriend to abort a child they'd conceived:

During an interview with National Review in September, he took aim at his opponent Senator Raphael Warnock's pro-choice position, noting that Warnock is a pastor and should abide by the Ten Commandments. "He's thinking it's okay for a woman to kill a baby. Thou shall not kill. Does that not violate [the Ten Commandments]?" Walker said.

• John McCormack writes that if the allegation is true, then honesty and contrition was the right response — both morally and politically:

One of Walker's own sons does not believe his denial. "It's literally his handwriting on the card. They say they have receipts, whatever," Christian Walker said in a video posted on social media. "We were told at the beginning of this [campaign] he was going to get ahead of his past, hold himself accountable — all of these different things — and that would have been fine. He didn't do any of that. Everything's been a lie."

"Don't lie," he added. "I wouldn't have spoken out if there weren't all these lies." That response from Christian Walker is one reason why (in the likely event the central allegation that Walker paid for the abortion is true) the best political response from Herschel Walker would have been honesty and contrition. The pro-life movement has always welcomed and even celebrated converts. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who performed abortions and helped found NARAL, was a pro-life convert and a hero of the pro-life movement. The Christian religion is also pretty big on repentance and forgiveness, too.

• Jim Geraghty says that the alleged scandal is the "kind of risk a party accepts when it chooses to nominate an unvetted first-time candidate to run for a key U.S. Senate seat."

• Several pro-life organizations and GOP leaders have stood by Walker amid the reports. Caroline Downey has more:

Senate Leadership Fund, the Super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, suggested that the Walker bombshell is a sideshow and that the GOP imperative is still to get Republicans elected and flip the chamber from Democratic control.

"We are full speed ahead in Georgia. This election is about the future of the country — Herschel Walker will make things better, Raphael Warnock is making it worse. Anything else is a distraction," SLF President Steven Law told CBS News.

• Isaac Schorr points to recent evidence that the abortion issue's impact on the midterms may not be as strong as previously expected, as the number of weekly Google searches in the U.S. on abortion has returned to pre-Dobbs levels and the number of searches about the economy are on the rise.

Moreover, polling shows that abortion is not an especially important issue to voters. A Monmouth University survey released on Monday shows that voters place more importance on inflation, crime, elections and voting, jobs, immigration, and infrastructure than they do on abortion. A majority of voters did not not express approval of President Biden's handling of any of those topics, including abortion.

• Republicans have gained ground with Catholic voters, according to a new EWTN News and RealClear Opinion Research. As I reported:

Republicans now have a slight advantage among likely Catholic voters heading into the midterms, with 48.7 percent of Catholic voters saying they would support a Republican candidate if the 2022 elections for Congress were held today and 44.7 percent saying they would support a Democrat.

• Madeleine Kearns argues that, for Republican candidates, resisting gender ideology is not only the right thing to do but a winning strategy:

For evidence that the wedge issue has potential, look no further than the latest data from the Pew Research Center. First, sports: Roughly six-in-ten (58 percent) adults favor requiring athletes to compete on teams that match their biological sex, while only 17 percent oppose this idea. Second, on medicalized gender transition for minors: 46 percent favor outlawing the practice compared to 31 percent who oppose doing so. Third, on keeping gender-identity ideology out of elementary schools: 41 percent are in favor, while 38 percent are opposed.

• Progressives have miscalculated when it comes to Hispanic voters, Rich Lowry writes:

One of the most significant events in American politics is that Hispanics are, in effect, deciding that they are working-class voters rather than ethnic-grievance voters. This is so momentous because it means that Democrats can't rely on the monolithic Hispanic voting bloc they imagined would guarantee them an enduring electoral majority, and that the shift to the Republicans may be just beginning (the migration of working-class whites to the GOP has been happening over the course of a couple of generations).

• NR editors on Stacey Abrams's very bad day in court:

There's losing a lawsuit, and then there's what happened to Stacey Abrams in federal court last week.

Abrams, of course, has become a progressive rock star thanks to her insistence that Georgia's election system is a sink of racially motivated voter suppression. She denied the legitimacy of her 2018 defeat in her first run for governor based on these claims, and she's been hailed in the press as a savior of American democracy because she is so committed to fighting the state's supposedly malign practices.

Now, federal district judge Steve Jones, an Obama appointee, has shredded key contentions in her long-running argument against Georgia. In the case, a group founded by Abrams, Fair Fight Action, alleged all manner of violations of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. In a comprehensive, careful, and rhetorically unadorned 288-page decision, Jones would have none of it. He ruled against Fair Fight Action and the other plaintiffs on all counts.