SUMMARY
Turnout across the country and particularly in key Senate races is all that matters now, barring a significant unanticipated event qualifying as an early November surprise. What do any of us know? The last 2022 midterm votes will be cast in Hawaii by 1:00 a.m., EST. In the likely event of a runoff in the Georgia Senate race, we may not know the 118th Congress Senate voting margin until later in December if votes tabulated after the December 6th are contested. The Senate is impossible to call with conviction (though we haven’t changed our call for Democrats to maintain their control). Republicans are poised to take control of the House. We highlight governor races as they likely influence voter turnout in key toss-up states and decide Senate control.
OUTLOOK
We also know that consistent with historical trends of first-term presidents Democrats should lose seats in both houses of Congress this midterm. Senate Democrats operate with the slimmest possible majority, and their party leader has a mid-teens disapproval rating. Those headwinds are picking up in the final days of this election. Something we don’t know is whether a drop off in self-identified GOP passion is real or meaningful as measured in the following recent Gallup’s survey of voter enthusiasm.
PredictIt participants project a 52–48 Senate controlled by Republicans. FiveThrityEight’s Deluxe Model shows a narrow margin that could gap to 52–48 for Democrats. That’s a seat wider than we thought likely, but, in all the uncertainty, a close outcome seems probable.
From an issues perspective, a lack of loud support from Democrats for windfall profits tax likely pushes any political salience into the lame-duck session of Congress and away from the midterms. Headline reports as we write of an imminent Iran attack on Saudi Arabia would be different. An overwhelming swift US response to the story likely would help Biden, underscore to all the Saudi’s reliance on the US military, and complicate Iranian leaders’ already complicated lives. This would obviously fall under the category of a November surprise of probable benefit to Democrats, something neither country would seem to support.
We’ve updated the governors’ contests previously presented in our election updates. Governors can be successful get-out-the-vote agents either due to effective management or simply because their races are of a high-profile nature. Of the three toss-up states – Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania – Republicans have poll leads in two of three races. We include Nevada because incumbency should be a benefit protecting against a one-point disadvantage. The party carrying two of these three states in related US Senate races likely will control the Senate.
