Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo
Iowa Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Franken and incumbent Sen. Chuck Grassley debate on October 6, 2022. Their race has been unexpectedly close.
Judging by polls and pundit stories all week, it's over: The election was veering towards Democrats in late summer, but the favorable trends peaked too early. Dobbs looked to help Democrats bigtime, but that was then. Now voters are focused on the economy, which favors Republicans. Biden did achieve some real economic gains, but people don't seem to care. Particular races are breaking wrong. Democrats could lose both houses of Congress.
But this view is vastly oversimplified. For starters, it is based on misleading polls. The worst was the normally reliable New York Times/Siena poll, released Monday, which showed a modest swing to Republicans. But the poll, which under-sampled women, also showed a 32-point swing of independent women to Republicans. After Dobbs, how can anyone believe that? See this excellent debunking by Joan Walsh.
Pollster Anna Greenberg told The New Republic, “I am skeptical that Democrats and Republicans are breaking even among women. I’m looking at it right now. Forty-seven [percent] Dem, 47 Republican. Have we ever since the ’90s had a situation where women didn’t vote more Democratic than men did?”
The Times poll led to even more overstated Times stories, and several copycat pieces, all contending that Republicans had something close to a lock. For starters, this bleak analysis sidesteps the most important variable in this election, which is turnout.
The supposed fading of Dobbs as motivator makes a nice new morning line, but it's almost surely wrong. Turnout of women is likely to be high. TV ads, like this one from Eric Swalwell which went viral, will saturate the airwaves and social media in the final weeks.
In Georgia, voting in the first two days of early voting (both by mail and in person) were 70 percent higher than in the high-turnout, heavily Democratic 2018 election, and African Americans were voting at a higher rate than whites.
Democrats may finally get their act together in talking about the economy—and Republicans are helping them, by announcing their plans to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Yes, several key senate races will be heartbreakingly close, notably Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Nevada. But there are possible offsets.
In Utah, Evan McMullin, an independent backed by Democrats, is running almost even with Republican incumbent Mike Lee. McMullin says if elected, he will caucus with neither party. Even if Democrats lose a seat, that could deny Republicans control of the Senate.
In Iowa, a doddering Chuck Grassley—who is older at 89 than Biden will be if he completes a second term—is barely ahead of his Democratic challenger, retired Admiral Mike Franken, a one-time aide to Ted Kennedy. In the latest Iowa poll, which shows Grassley just three points ahead of Franken and losing ground, 60 percent of all voters and 64 percent of independents say Grassley's age is a concern. And abortion rights are a big deal in Iowa, supported by 60 percent of voters.
It ain’t over till it’s over.
