Maximizing the effectiveness of your political contributions will usually depend on having informed answers to four questions:
- Is this the right candidate for the state or district?
- Do recent election results from the state or district indicate it can be competitive?
- What are the likely state and national dynamics of this particular political cycle?
- Will the candidate raise the money they need anyway, without any help from me?
In this post, I’m going to share some thoughts on each of these questions, and in the process explain why almost all of my political contributions in the 2022 cycle will be only to candidates who are running in districts that Joe Biden won in 2020. This is a relatively long post, but please know there is a happy ending: As I’ll show in the final section, the data indicates that focusing on Biden states and districts could lead to truly terrific results for the Democrats in November.
Good candidate?
If you’re reading this article, you probably are pretty good already at answering the first question, the one about the particular person running for office. The Internet enables each of us to learn a lot about individual candidates all over the country, both directly (video clips and ads, personal and professional biographies) and indirectly (reports from journalists, endorsements by constituency groups). And our answers to this question usually depend, to a large extent, on a version of the Potter Stewart maxim (“I know it when I see it”). For instance, you don’t need me (or any other writer on this website) to figure out that Sen. Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams are terrific candidates for a statewide race in Georgia, or that Mark Kelly has an inspiring personal and family story that resonates in Arizona, or that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is highly qualified and well-deserving of the JFK Profile in Courage Award that she won last week.
I would, however, warn that it is easy to overestimate the extent to which a Democratic candidate’s particular attributes will impact their ability to get elected in our current hyperpartisan political circumstances. With respect to running ahead of the other candidates in one’s political party, New England Republicans are an outlier as compared to anywhere else in the country: Susan Collins ran seven points ahead of Trump in Maine in 2020, and Chris Sununu should have little trouble getting re-elected as Governor of New Hampshire this year. But in 2020, 2021, and so far in 2022, there haven’t been examples of individual Democrats anywhere in the country, even the most talented ones, running that far ahead of the rest of their ticket in actively contested races. Overperformance is possible for Democratic candidates, but only to a smaller extent. For instance, most recently, in the conservative Milwaukee suburbs, Judge Lori Kornblum ran a great campaign, with the strong support of one of the most capable Democratic parties in the country, but still only got 40.4% in Waukesha County, as compared to the 38.8% that Biden got there in 2020. Or consider the 2020 results in North Carolina: incumbent governor Roy Cooper, running against a Republican that even many other Republican officials in the state detested, won reelection with 51.5% of the vote, while Biden got 48.6%.
I think the Cooper over-performance of nearly 3 points is probably about the best an individual Democrat anywhere in the country can hope for in a competitive race in 2022.
Competitive state or district?
A district that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020 is probably not going to consider a Democrat, even an exceptionally charismatic one, for the state legislature (or dogcatcher) in 2022. Conversely, a Democrat running in a district that voted overwhelmingly for Biden almost certainly will get elected in this cycle anyway, without any campaign contributions from you or me. But what about states and districts that seem purple rather than red or blue—those with a history of closer election results?
Attempting quantitative answers to the question of whether a state or district can be competitive can be made (in my opinion) overly complicated — for instance, metrics such as Fivethirtyeight.com’s “partisan lean” or the Cook Political Report’s “partisan voter index.” My own answer to this question is simple: to predict how a state or district will vote in the 2022 election cycle, find out how it voted in the 2020 presidential race. This basic model is not only easier to calculate but also more likely to be predictive given the extent to which American politics at every level has become more and more like national sports with every cycle—people stick with their team. How a person votes for president has become a better and better predictor of how they will vote in other races.
For instance, as Simon Bazelon recently calculated, the correlation between voting in U.S. Senate races and presidential ones has risen from 71% in 2008 to 80% in 2012 to 93% in 2016 to 95% in 2020. And as I detailed in an earlier Blue Tent post, more and more voters are also increasingly inclined to support their president’s party in down-ballot state and local races, regardless of the merits or demerits of the particular candidates or issues in those races.
How will national dynamics affect local races in 2022?
One of the most ironclad rules in American politics is that the president’s party loses ground in midterm elections. In the 18 midterms from 1946-2018, there has only been one exception: 2002, the year after the bombing of the World Trade Center. In 2018, the Republican share of the national vote for U.S. House candidates dropped 4.9 percentage points as compared to 2016. In 2014, the Democratic share of the national vote for U.S. House candidates dropped about 3.5 points as compared to 2012.
Right now, in FiveThirtyEight's average of public polls, generic Democrats are polling about 3.4 points worse than Biden did in 2020. Moreover, historically, the President’s party also tends to decline in standing as the midterms approach. So for November 2022 a drop of about 3.5 points for generic Democrats as compared to November 2020 (similar to the Democratic drop from 2012 to 2014) seems like a good baseline.
If that’s the case, and if over-performing by about 3 points in the maximum we can expect for individual 2022 Democratic candidates, then we have nearly arrived at my simple criterion — where did Biden win in 2020 — as the boundary for where Democratic candidates will be viable in November.
To arrive the rest of the way to that simple metric, I’m adding in a half-point of optimism, in part because of uncertainty, but mainly because (as I will detail at the end of this piece) winning the Biden states and districts would be enough for a wave of very important Democratic victories in this cycle.
Who has enough money already?
In spite of all that I have said already, there are some incumbent Democrats in Trump districts that might survive 2022. Although incumbency is no longer the advantage it once was, it may still be something in some places. But because incumbency is also a huge fundraising advantage, I’m not sending money to these Trump-district Democrats. For instance, in the U.S. House of Representatives, there are currently only four Democrats running for re-election in (what are now with redistricting) Trump districts: Tom O’Halleran (AZ), Cindy Axne (IA), Jared Golden (ME) and Matt Cartwright (PA). As of March 31, O’Halleran and Golden each have $1.7 million cash on hand; Cartwright $2.0 million; and Axne $2.6 million. I’m confident that, because they are incumbents who have raised substantial sums in previous cycles, all four will raise the additional money they need without my help. Equally important, the Democrats can hold the House in 2020 even if all four of these candidates lose, as long as they win the Biden districts.
Democrats can do well in 2022 only winning Biden states and districts
In a sense, the advice that I’m offering in this article is pessimistic, because I’m suggesting that you avoid contributing to inspiring candidates who are running in Trump territory, even in places that went only marginally for Trump in 2020. But I hope you’re still reading, because now we’re finally at the optimistic part: what the election results will be in November 2022 if the Democrats carry the 2020 Biden states and districts:
- Democrats gain two seats in the U.S. Senate. (holding NH, NV, AZ, GA and flipping PA, WI). This would mean Manchin and Sinema were no longer the gatekeepers for what passes the Senate.
- Democrats keep control of the U.S. House of Representatives. From a Biden-district perspective, redistricting has helped the Democrats. In the 2020 elections, with old maps, the tipping point (median) congressional district (Lauren Underwood’s IL14) was Biden +2.4 in 2020. With redistricting, even if Florida sticks with the hyper-partisan DeSantis map, the tipping point Congressional district will be Representative Tom Malinowski’s NJ 07 which was Biden +3.6.
- Democratic governors and other statewide officials are elected or reelected in the states that will likely determine the 2024 presidential race, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Moreover, if Democrats win the Biden districts, they will gain some control in state legislatures in states that will be battlegrounds in 2024, including:
- Flipping the Michigan State Senate. With the new district lines, Democrats will win a clear majority (21 of 38 seats) if they win the Biden districts. From this perspective, the tipping point districts are the 9th district (Troy/Clawson), where State Representative Padma Kuppa is running, and the 11th (Warren/Macomb). In each of those districts, Biden got 0.5 points more than Trump in 2020.
- Flipping the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. With the new district lines, Democrats will win a clear majority (104 of 203 seats) if they win the Biden districts. From this perspective, the tipping point district is the 3rd (Erie County), where incumbent Democrat Ryan Bizzarro is running, and where Biden got 2.2 points more than Trump in 2020.
- Winning half the seats in the Arizona State Senate. With the new district lines, the tipping point district (to secure a tie) is the 4th (North Central Phoenix), where Biden got 0.8 points more than Trump, and where (because of redistricting) incumbent Democrat Christine Marsh will run against another incumbent, Republican Nancy Barto.
I think that if the Democrats get the above very positive results in November, we should be very glad, and well-positioned to win the presidency and other key races in 2024. For me, these goals are aspirational enough, so I’m going to focus my (modest individual) contributions on them, and forgo races elsewhere that seem to me much harder to win.
Wally Reuther (a pseudonym) is a former campaign research director and press secretary who now works to support public schools.