What Went Down In The 2018 Midterms

Earlier, Christie was talking about the sort of aesthetic difference of voting at a community polling site. I just ran across this interesting study of Arizona’s 2000 election results that found that where you vote can have an impact on how you vote. Like, even controlling for political views and demographics, people were more likely to vote to raise taxes to fund education if their polling place was in a school. Environment matters!

In terms of identity and politics, even as the parties have these high-profile shifts, that’s not totally where the voters are. Remember, about 37 percent of Trump’s voters in 2016 were NOT whites without degrees (meaning they were either minorities or whites with college degrees.) About 60 percent of Clinton’s supporters were white, so the Democrats are not a party dominated by blacks and Latinos. Democrats are likely to make gains in the Midwest in 2018 in part because there are a lot of whites without degrees in the Midwest who are either Democrats or who swing between the two parties.

Chad, we saw I think two big trends in terms of how identity and politics intersect. On the Democratic side, you had this wave of female candidates run and then win primaries. Democrats didn’t take Clinton’s loss as some kind of indication that women could not be elected, but instead made their party more female-led than before. Similarly, in Florida and Georgia, Democratic voters basically rejected nominating white candidates who some said were more “electable.” We are going to see a lot of firsts (Muslim, African-American, gay) in terms of Democratic candidates winning across the country. On the GOP side, in the campaigns of Kemp, DeSantis and some congressional Republicans I think you saw an embrace of Trump-style identity politics: few appeals to minority voters, lots of aggressive anti-immigrant rhetoric, and some campaign ads that are downright racist.