If you think Democrats are due for a shellacking, here’s why you could be wrong.
The 2022 mid-term elections for Congress will be pivotal for America. If history is any guide, the Biden White House will lose control of the House of Representatives and possibly also the Senate. The mid-term electorate almost always is made up of more voters who fear the power of the party that controls the White House than those who support it. Current polls show that people who identify as Republicans are strongly motivated to vote this fall, while many Democrats — especially younger voters — are unenthusiastic, choosing to focus on the things Democrats promised but failed to deliver. The only times in recent history when this general tendency failed to hold was in 2002, when President George W. Bush’s Republicans gained 8 seats in the House and 2 in the Senate, and in 1998, when President Bill Clinton’s Democrats gained 5 in the House. Bush benefited from his post 9–11 bump in popularity and his drive to war with Iraq (sadly); Clinton benefited from the public’s greater dislike of Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his drive to impeach the president for his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
History is only a guide, not a guarantee. And as the 1998 and 2002 midterms show, sometimes current events cause voters to prioritize different things and opt to support the party in power in the White House. As the fall elections approach, there are four new variables that may scramble expectations of a Democratic wipe-out.
First, the electorate is always changing. Older people die, leaving the voter rolls; young people and newly naturalized citizens register, joining the rolls. People also move, something that’s especially scrambled more this cycle (more on that below). On top of that, there’s been a surge of millions of new voters since 2016. One of the positive effects of hyper-polarization is that a lot more people are motivated to vote on both sides. Overall voter turnout in the 2018 mid-terms and 2020 presidential reached levels not seen since 1914 and 1900, respectively. This could help Democrats hold onto Congress, since so many of these new voters leaned their way. In 2018, 25 million people who had not voted in 2014 turned out and voted for House Democrats. 26 million people who had not voted in 2016 voted for Biden in 2020.
Second, the war in Ukraine is a new factor. Everyone is paying intense attention to it, fearful that it may widen and even go global, or horrors, nuclear. Current polling suggests that it hasn’t done much to shift attitudes toward the Biden Administration, which I interpret to mean that people’s partisan leanings are still driving their opinions more than any change in current events. A Pew poll done March 7–13 found 47% of the public approve of Biden’s handling of the war so far and 39% disapprove. Even though massive majorities say working closely with our allies, strict economic sanctions, and keeping large numbers of US military forces in NATO countries is the right approach — the core of Biden’s strategy — that doesn’t translate into greater affection for Biden overall. Will Biden and the Democrats gain from a war-time “rally round the flag” effect that we’ve seen in other crises? Only time and events on the ground will tell.
The last factor that may scramble expectations for 2022 is not discussed very much. It’s the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on who is alive and where people live. Newly released data from the US Census shows that the pandemic has both reduced the number of new births and increased the number of deaths that would otherwise be expected in 2021. Newborns obviously don’t get to vote, but increased mortality among seniors might mean a reduction in Republican turnout, since that party’s base tilts older. Red states, which have generally been more resistant to getting vaccinated and wearing masks, have also seen more death from COVID. The pandemic has also shifted where people live, with big urban areas like New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and the Bay Area losing 700,000 of their residents as they took advantage of work-from-home arrangements and moved to nearby suburbs, moved in with parents or opted for country living elsewhere.
How may these shifts affect the political scene? They just might tip the suburbs — the main battleground of 2022, as Doug Sosnik explains in a timely memo — in a more Democratic direction. I have a good friend who moved with her family from NYC to southern New Hampshire at the height of the pandemic’s first summer in 2020 to take a new job closer to family. A natural go-getter, she soon found herself active on several of her town’s governing committees. She’s part of a larger shift in the state, whose counties have seen a 1–2% growth in population in the last year. Suburban counties like Maricopa in Arizona, Collin in Texas and Riverside in California have all seen similar increases. Of course, a tilt of 1–2% in population isn’t likely to tilt an election, except in places that are already closely divided.
What all this means is the 2022 election is still up for grabs, and the suburbs in particular are where they will be decided. Democrats face stronger headwinds, because of the weaker motivation of their base voters compared to Republicans. But suburban voters, who clearly tipped the 2018 and 2020 elections in a bluer direction, could yet decide that they still dislike the MAGA version of the Republican Party more than they dislike the urban Democrats and their demands for more government spending on social, racial and economic justice. The January 6th Select Committee, which is holding hearings starting later this spring or early summer, and the US Supreme Court, which is expected to overturn Roe v Wade this June, may also have an impact on public attitudes.
Finally, there’s one last X factor, which is what political activists and organizers choose to do. Though there’s little evidence that political advertising changes voting outcomes, hundreds of millions will get poured into paid media. On the other hand, direct contact with voters by knocking on their doors, calling them on the phone and other kinds of visible connection (including lawn signs), can shift turnout by a few percent. What you choose to do with your time and money in the next six months could still make a difference. Choose wisely.