Stephen Shepard, senior campaigns and elections editor at Politico, joins Cheddar Politics to discuss Politico's 2022 midterm election forecast.

Cheddar Politics

Predicting the 2022 Midterm Elections

and welcome back friends to gender politics of baker machado in new york were just a few months from the midterms and we're getting into prediction territory now. So who's gonna win the House? How big the majority of their gonna have and one of the biggest senate races for us to watch. But politico jumping into the fray, answering all those questions for us. They've released their midterm election forecaster earlier this week. So joining us now to break it all down is Stephen Sheppard senior campaigns and elections editor over at politico. Stephen. Always good to have you here on cheddar news. Obviously the past two presidential cycles and polling has sort of been difficult to sort of handicap a lot of races. So before we dive into maybe some of the projections here, how did you sort of construct the forecasting for this model here? Well, I think the key to accounting for that is just too, especially at the outset, we are 6.5 months away from Election Day, is to be a little bit on the more conservative side. Make sure uh, that were accurately to just depicting with this much time left to go the rough chances that both parties have in these races. And right now, there's A lot of uncertainty built into just how much how long we have between now and election day. And so keeping that in mind, you know, the election, everyone says, well, if the election were held today, what would happen if the election were held today? A lot of voters would be surprised the election is on November eight. And and our forecast takes that into account. Okay. And by the way, only 201 days away. So it's a lot of things can obviously change here Stephen, but let's dive into some of the big ones. Yeah, but exactly. But who's counting? You know, carry the three or whatever here. So let's talk about the House first here because obviously this seems to be if you talk to a lot of people on Capitol Hill, the one thing that seems as a sure bet as you can possibly get here. Republicans, likely the favorite, just based on his, on history here, likely to win the House here and we might be hearing Speaker Kevin McCarthy here. So you guys have this now as likely Republican. How sure of a thing is it here that republicans are going to take the House? I mean, it's a pretty sure thing, there are a couple of things that could disrupt this. You know, certainly if President biden has a political recovery over the next six months, that would go a long way to helping democrats, not just in congressional races, but up and down the ballot for other other offices as well. Uh, there's some uncertainty around redistricting. Still three states have yet to finalize their maps. There are other maps that are still in litigation. If one part democrats were to somehow kind of sweep the litigation fight around these maps they're gerrymanders in places like new york get upheld while republican gerrymanders elsewhere get struck down. That could go a long way. But by and large, With just five seats to make up for Republicans where the national environment is now, the traditional midterm penalty that the party in power usually incurs it's a pretty safe bet. Okay, so Kevin McCarthy has been pretty bullish about Republicans chances to win back the House of Representatives. If we go back to 2010 during Obama's first year, Republicans won 60 plus seats to get the majority for John Boehner then, are we expecting that big of a landslide here Stephen? No. And there are a couple of reasons why one in leading into the 2010 midterms, Democrats had just had two back to back wave elections in 2006 when they flipped control of the house. And in 2008 when thanks to the strength of Barack Obama at the top of their ticket, uh, they actually gained even more seats and padded their majority even more. They had historically large majority going into those 2010 elections. And so the 63 House seats that Republicans flipped. That November was, was basically kind of picking off a lot of low hanging fruit republicans made gains in the last election in 2020 at the congressional level. So they've already taken a lot of low hanging fruit away, it's difficult to see how republicans could pick up more than even under the most optimistic of circumstances for the GOP, more than 30 or 35 seats in this election where we're not talking about The kind of huge swing, but that's just because Congress is so closely divided right now. Where when we're getting started, Okay, let's now move to the Senate. You guys have, the house is likely Republican, you have the Senate as leans Republican here, which is interesting given the 5050 split dynamics here. And really, when you look at the toss up seats here, you have five states listed as sort of the priorities here. Arizona Georgia, Nevada, which, by the way held by democrats and pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which are currently right now being held by republicans. So why are those sort of the toss ups here and do what you do? You sort of anticipate with those states here? Well, if you follow the 2020 presidential election, you'll know that all of them were decided within 3% points at the top of the ticket between joe biden and donald trump in the last national election. They're all, you know, premier swing states in this country. You mentioned democrats are defending slightly more of them than republicans. That's one of the reasons why republicans have a slight edge democrats have pretty strong incumbents in Arizona and Georgia and Nevada income into raising a lot of money, the republican Senate fields and some of these states is still a little unsettled. These are really the five seats that are going to decide control of the Senate, There are a couple of other seats on the periphery. New Hampshire uh in a democratic defense and state republicans are defending a seat in north Carolina. Those will come into play when it would probably be close on Election Day, but when it comes down to the five seats that are going to decide control of the Senate, it's going to be the party that wins the majority of that bucket of five. If republicans win 345, that's when you're talking about a Republican controlled Senate and Senate majority Leader, mitch McConnell again. Uh and then currently we think that's slightly more likely than democrats keeping control, but democrats are still in the ball game and that's, it's still within their reach to keep control of the Senate, they need a couple of things to go. Right, okay. So mitch McConnell recently said in an interview, the only way and by the way, this is something he has said many times in the past as well. The only way republicans will not take the majority, especially the Senate is if we if they select bad candidates essentially in their primaries here and look, you can make the case potentially about herschel walker without having any political experience in Georgia. You can make the case in Ohio and Arizona as well. So could bad and even in Missouri by the way, which is one of the safest areas for republicans as well. If former governor eric Greitens wins that seat as well. So how much would bad candidates potentially put republicans in a bad space here? I mean, certainly, I think it's it's an issue across the map. You know, Mark kelly in Arizona has nearly $30 million saved up for his campaign. Republicans nominate a weak candidate, a gaffe prone candidate, candidate who struggles to raise money, that's going to make it more difficult to hold that seat for them uh, to win back that seat rather for them. Uh, Ohio is probably okay, no matter what, I don't think there's a candidate in Ohio with the kind of baggage and eric Greitens has in Missouri, but certainly a lot of republicans think you saw donald trump jr just recently say some positive things about eric Greitens. If Greitens were to win that primary, uh, there are a lot of republicans in Washington, you think he would struggle to win a general election. And if republicans are giving away a Senate seat in Missouri uh, in when it's currently 50 50 these five toss up races are the core of where that gets decided. Well, that's one more seat, they need to pick up elsewhere. That's one more Democratic incumbent, they need to unseat and the math gets a little bit harder for them. And so that's one of the reasons why mitch McConnell who saw in 2010 in 2012 and 20 14 republicans lose winnable senate races in places like colorado Nevada indiana Missouri Delaware giveaway Senate seats. He thought the party should have had that. He's worried about those primaries again. Absolutely. Because I feel like a lot of us are getting Christine O'donnell. You know, Sharon angle flashbacks here with all of these names here. Uh, Stephen, I only have about a minute or so left. Let's talk governor's races here. Who do you feel like his best positioned here to really capitalize on these governors races here? But the Republicans look at a lot of the same states that we just talked about. Arizona and Georgia. They're trying to defend their, trying to flip governorships in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan again, a lot of overlap of the 2020 and likely 2024 presidential map. Uh, they look at this as an opportunity to claw back some of the power in the state houses that they lost in 2018 in the democratic wave. That's the last time a lot of these seats were up for election democrats. On the other hand, they finally got some power back at the state level after getting wiped out in 2010 and then losing again in 2014, they finally flipped back places like Wisconsin and michigan, uh, they're hoping that the parties on the march in Arizona and Georgia with joe biden winning those states for the first time as a democrat since the 19 nineties That they hope to gain more power in the state houses. They look at the role of governors play not just in state policy, especially in the divided Washington. If Republicans win back control of at least one Chamber of Congress, but also the role in administering the next 2024 presidential election, the state elections for governor and for other statewide offices. Attorney general and states that elect their secretary of state. So important, uh, we we were were paying close attention and I hope your viewers are too Well, the good news is Steven. We have 201 more days to continue to talk about it. So I know we're going to have you back to do it Steven Shepard, senior campaigns and elections editor over politico. Thank you so much.