I'm not going to shed a cheer over this.

Perhaps several dozen "hurray" cheers though.  Democrats are in trouble in 2026, and I think it's becoming clear, barring something unforeseen, the GOP majority in congress will expand. So too says Newt Gingrich, no slouch in the political analysis world.

SCOTUS finally fixed it (sorta)

Ending the race-based redistricting - the cheating that has been helping Democrats for 6 decades - has been fixed. That doesn't mean other forms of cheating won't continue and that nothing else in the electoral process needs fixing.  Far from it.  Nonetheless, this is very good news for fairness, for Republicans, and one more thing for Democrats to rant about.

Come the 2026 midterm election night, this will be brought up again and again by the mainstream media as the real reason for the expanded Republican majority and will by no means be a mandate for common sense, er Republican wins.  When that happens, remember to look at this: voter turnout levels and party support percentages. Don't be fooled.

This is what happens

This is what happens when Republicans actually play hard ball the way Democrats play hard ball. Let the Democrats whine  about this.  Republicans whined previously and it did nothing but cede territory. Republicans are looking good in house races for the midterms, thanks to rule changes they are making in places where they are winning. Redistricting, gerrymandering; who cares what they try to call it.  Is it clean? Not really. But is it going to be effective? Yes, very, very likely:

Sinema is good news, but not the solution

Democrats like Senator Krysten Sinema who leave the Democratic party to sit as an independent are a sign of the problem, and a reaction to the problem but they are not necessarily part of the solution. The problem, is that the Democratic party has over decades and decades continued to tilt so far to the left that they are in many if not most ways, socialists.  They want to to overhaul the fundamental principles of America and in large part they have succeeded.  That's the main problem, the real problem.  It was always the direction but it has accelerated dramatically since 2008.  Unravelling their mess is the challenge of our lifetimes.  

Thankfully their ship has listed so far to the left it now has all the makings of a capsizing in progress.  That's great.  But it's also not.  There are a couple of problems with the death spiral of the socialist Democratic party when you notice the likes of Sinema abandoning ship.  It's an indicator that there's a problem for sure.  But firstly, it's just one person.  Jeff Van Drew switched parties in 2019/2020 and now Sinema has done so in 2022, oh and Tulsi Gabbard also left the party this year (but she also bowed out of politics as a candidate at least).  That's not exactly a wave of departures.   It's a trickle, much like the expected but not materialized Red Wave of the 2022 midterms.  A departure here and a departure there are clearly good signs, and they should be applauded for awakening from their 'woke' stupor. But the Blue ship socialism continues to ride the seas largely intact and unchanged.

Secondly, these individual moves may signal a larger, longer term trend but they could also be for individual gain - Van Drew may have seen the signs on the wall in his particular district.  Gabbard may have been sick of politics or seen the opportunity for more money in the private sector. Sinema may have been sick of harassment from within her own party for her reluctance to groupthink the nation's way into insane deficit spending in light of the inflation monster that is still raging.  I'm not disparaging the motives of any of these individuals, simply questioning if it is indeed a sign of a real rupture in the party or just people being personally practical.  We don't know with certainty.  Our confirmation bias leads us to believe they have seen the light.  We want that to be true but we don't know with certainty.

Is the demographic wide shift to the right started?  Has the left gone so far they have finally started alienating sane people who were still left-leaning? Hopefully.  But these small pieces of good news are not the solution.  Sinema has not declared if she will caucus as a Democrat or Republican or neither.  Joe Manchin is still a Democrat. Sinema has not lost any committee position so far.  There is evidence this is still all just a trickle rather than an unstoppable wave. 

What then is the solution?  Short of a mass exodus of representative Democrats to the Republican party, the most appealing scenario I can envisage is a significant splintering of formerly moderate Democrats breaking away to form a new party.  It would most certainly suck more votes away from Democrats than from Republicans in future elections. The split would ensure Republican hegemony for at least a decade. That would be a truly significant amount of time that is needed to undo the massive cultural and geopolitical damage Democrats have done to the country. It's what's needed.  It's possible it could happen.  What would make it a much more possible outcome is if disaffected but seemingly unmovable Joe Manchin were to follow suit with Sinema in the very near future.  It's the not the first but the second person to join a movement that actually starts the snowball effect. 

This, THIS is the solution in action.  We need another high profile Democrat or two to follow suit soon.  Whether it's a new independent party or new Republicans or even standalones, the tipping point depends on Democrats more than Republicans now.

Arizona, what happened?

 Georgia was a bad enough situation but the circumstances in Arizona are outright appalling.

Hundreds, if not, thousands, of Maricopa County election workers have come forward with evidence of illegality in this election.

Katie Hobbs refused to debate, did not campaign, and had almost no following. No reasonable person would believe that she actually won this race. She ran against Kari Lake, one of the most popular Republican candidates in a generation.

But Hobbs ran the election, oversaw 30% of election day precinct machines breaking down, had the media in her pocket, and is working with social media platforms to silence her critics.

The power brokers on the left are laughing at you for allowing this to happen America. 

Georgia, what happened?

 Georgia decided to turn it's back on GOP senate candidate Herschel Walker. Yikes.

...The other Republicans in the statewide races won by 10 points. But Walker, a Trump-endorsed candidate, trails the radical leftist for the US Senate seat. Got that?

UPDATE: with 87% of precincts reporting Newsmax called the race for the Jeremiah Wright radical Raphael Warnock.

Democrats will now hold a 51 to 49 seat majority in the US Senate.

What happened to Georgia??? 

5 million more votes

I discussed this earlier, when the total votes advantage for Republicans in the midterms was just over 4 million.  Now it's 5 million.  Tim Pool and Dave Rubin share their takes.

Well, finally.

 It took long enough for Republicans to win congress.  Now what?

Take heart conservatives, and stop playing "fair"

I mentioned a while back that a poor midterm performance for Republicans had a silver lining for conservatives. Then more recently, I questioned whether it was time to devolve into chaos (before arguing not to do so).   But conservatives, there is reason to take heart.  Take a look at this latest House performance snapshot from RCP. What do you see?

I'll tell you what I see; Republicans won the generic congressional ballot vote. At least as of now. They won, not by a "slim majority" but by 4.1%.  In other words by 4.3 million votes.  

Now we can unfairly use the Democrats' own words against them: the majority of voters have been disenfranchised because the popular majority of voters is not reflected in congressional seats.  True, at that ratio the GOP would net out at about only 222 seats.  True, we do not  stand for majority rule but the constitutional concepts of a representative republic and avoidance of majority tyranny.  But so what?  Why play fair when we do not clearly get that from the other side?

We can also take hear that the RCP polling (or at least my interpretation of it), was pretty darn close to accurate.  What that means is more important than just interpreting poll results.  It means the country, at least for now, is drifting towards the right.  It's not surprising given how bad this administration, senate and congress have been.  In fact it should have been far better a performance, but the electoral wind is still at our back, we are less afraid to mix it up, we are less inclined to roll over and take it.  Given all that, given that the Democrats are bound to make things still worse over the next two years, 2024 is shaping up to give us the red tidal wave we wanted in 2022.

Red ripple silver linings?

The country is shifting red, slower than we would like but the shift is on. If Let's Go Brandon wants to ignore that, it's very good news for Republicans for 2024.  Especially since he won't be pushed out of running by fellow Democrats after a massive red wave.  He'll run and he'll lose, big. 

Red Ripple

Cue the fail music.  The Republican red wave didn't happen. It seems like they're likely to win congress, but the senate is up for grabs.  Governorships so far the GOP is down 2 from yesterday.  This is not to say that there's a mandate for Let's Go Brandon. This was not a red wave, it was a red ripple.

That's not to call it a horrible night for conservatives.  Bad?  Almost.  Sub-par?  Definitely.  Nevertheless there are positives to be taken away from this already.  I'm not talking here about individual races, though to be sure there are bright spots.  I'm not talking about the possibility that Republicans can still take the senate or do well in the remaining uncalled governor races, though both of those are still achievable. 

No I'm talking about 2024.  Two more years of misery may be just what the country needs to finish shaking off the swamp stew it has been ingesting for more than a decade.  Democratic control of key levers means the next two years will not get better as far as inflation, unemployment, wage stagnation, labor force participation, woke culture, crime, illegal immigration etc. That means the rot will fester, and that's bad for America.  But so too will the grassroots energy to do something about it.  By 2024 that ripple may turn into a tsunami.

If the GOP play their cards right. Mitch McConnell has to go, he left senate wins on the table for the Democrats, just to protect his own fiefdom.   The grassroots of the party needs to continue to support MAGA populists.  It does not have to be via Trump, though it can be.

The real potential here though are learnings.  What did Florida Republicans do right and how does that get translated to other states? Is Trump still the guy or has his window passed? Did Kari Lake's fail to appear to move to the center harm her in the Arizona governor general election and if so how can that be avoided?  Many Latinos have moved to the Republican column, how does the GOP grow that further?

Beyond the top line takeaways, the obvious tactical takeaways that I have been arguing since 2008; the core things the GOP must do are (1) engage (2) listen and (3) persuade.

Engagement means reaching out to disaffected communities go to various constituencies (e.g. college educated women, Latinos, African Americans, people with addiction issues).  This is a long term, big tent approach to broadening the reach of the party.  These groups cannot listen if you don't even talk to them. 

Next, listen to their concerns.  Understand what it is they want and need from government.  This does not mean abandoning conservative values, it means finding out what matters to voters.  If you are offering solutions to voting irregularities when gas prices are the issue of the day, you are not understanding the battlefield that is taking shape in front of you.

Lastly once you have engaged and understood (both have to be ongoing processes by the way),  you must tailor your solutions to the problems of the day.  You do not give up your principles, you determine how to solve the problems, within a conservative, common sense framework.  Then, and only then, do you try to persuade the audience that your solution is better than the alternative.  And you do so in a positive vision sort of way. If you do not have your own realistic and workable solution you cannot argue that the other guys are wrong because the response will (and should) be "so what, you don't offer an alternative".  

All three of these require a well-oiled and robust infrastructure which is something the GOP seems to be lacking at times and in places.  So this too must be addressed.  Fund raising, intra-party messaging and communication.

The final takeaways are more tactical.  We laughed when Let's Go Brandon was in New York stumping for governor Hochul.  But they understood their firewall, and shored up a defensive path to victory in key places. This was our mistake.  We should have read the room and adjusted our own strategies accordingly.  It seems conservatives were just too busy gleefully anticipating a red wave; our mistake.  

We believed the polls.  Why?  Because it looked heavily tilted in our favor. Relying on polling is a mistake we too often make (myself included in trying to account for bad polling).  Some of the best pollsters from 2020 did the worst with respect to 2022.  Oops. The great Rush Limbaugh often opined that the only poll that matters is the ballot box.  Run like you are in a dead heat.  Run like you need more votes. Otherwise you turn a red wave into a red ripple.

Get this right America

Every election is "the most important election of our lifetime" nowadays. There's an inherent sound of hyperbole when you hear some pundit say that. The Democrats this midterm cycle are going on about how this is about democracy versus a facist far right takedown of America or some such nonsense.  The thing is, every election back to and including 2008 have been the some of most important elections in our lifetimes.

Back in 1980, with Jimmy Carter singlehandedly bringing America from a weakened superpower to near also-ran, 1980 was a supremely important election that allowed Ronald Reagan to become president and not only avert a catastrophic Carter re-election, Regan also reinvigorated America. With his relection and the echo of the Republicans' Contract with America, the country enjoyed a remarkable period of growth and strength. From WWII onward, 1980 had become the most important election of the post World War era. Indeed that stood until 2008.

2008 and 2012 were massively important elections that sadly America got wrong.  Obama did a great deal of damage to the country all while being praised for his supposed dizzying intellect and having his lack of experience ignored. Meanwhile 2010 and 2014 were important to counteract Obama's woeful policy positions, and America got those right. It got so bad that during the Obama era that all 4 of those election cycles were critically important, along with the 2016 election of Donald Trump, which of the 5 was the most important and stands as a rival to the 1980 win of Ronald Reagan, but came as much more of a surprise to many people.  I thought Trump stood a decent chance win but I thought it would be close electorally. His success there surprised me, in a good way. That period marked 5 critical elections in a row, where the country became more and more left leaning and more and more partisan in both directions as it became clear the Republicans could no longer work with Democrats who had drifted far too far to the socialist, dystopian and Orwellian left.

Where America failed between 2016 and 2018 was limited to Congressional Republicans not aligning with the president during their two year bicameral majority and doing as much meaningful work as they could. America got 2018 wrong thanks in large part to a biased media and an energized left.  And in 2020, an election where America needed president Trump to win, despite a miassive increase in support he somehow, mysteriously 'lost ' to a man with the intellectual horsepower of a turnip.

Somebody got that one wrong massively, because Let's Go Brandon is Jimmy Carter 2.0 incarnate. That brings us to now. The country desperately needs a brake pedal applied to this guy.  Like Emergency Brakes, brake pedal, thrust reversers and anything else you can throw at him. It's important to not just America, but to the entire world that this be halted until 2024 when an actual leader can step back into the void and take the helm.  2024 will then become the most important election of our lifetimes.  But until then, you have to get this right America.

 

Push Polling the polls the day before?

I haven't talked about persuasion polls much (if at all).  Unlike typical push polls, a lot of political polls are not intended to sway those being polled but rather those viewing the results of the polls. That could be what's happening right now.  The RealClearPolitics average of generic congressional ballots has seen the Republican advantage slip back to +2.5% since pesking well above that mark last week.  Why?

It is coming from the Economist/YouGov poll (which has historically had a Democrat tilt in it's results) showing only R+1%, the outlier NBC poll showing D+1% and the ABC News/WaPo poll showing R+2%.  These all have dragged down the Republican advantage and all come out in the final days before the midterm election.  All of these outfits are pro-Democrat.

In my filter above I've left them in and am still seeing R+3.2%.  What if we take them out as dubious inclusions?

Even leaving the ABC/WaPo poll in, it still rises to R+4.2%.  But then what about Rasmussen which has a slight Republican tilt? If we remove that, Republicans still lead by 3.5%:

There's no bad way to slice this but it makes predictions difficult.  Here's my take on final numbers:

Senate: Republicans 53 or 54.

House: Republicans gain 28-48

Governors: Republicans 30-32

It's optimistic compared to some, but the polls, even the likes of YouGov are still shifting towards Republicans, and hopefully, that's not done yet.

RCP is getting closer

As of this morning, RealClearPolitics is edging closer to my weighted percentage interpretation of their results.  They currently are averaging the results at R+3%.  I currently have it as R +4.4% with my filters and weighted averages factored in.

Governor Series: KS - Derek Schmidt

How does Kansas even consider a Democrat for governor?  There hasn't been a lot of polling I've seen for this state but where there has been, the incumbent Democrat has a 2 to 3 point lead. Derek Schmidt would be a solid governor for Kansas.

Governor Series: NY - Lee Zeldin

New York is a tough tough road for any Republican, but Lee Zeldin does have a shot at the governorship and he'd be a good governor.  Even a fire hydrant would do a better job than you-know-who.

My latest take on RCP polling

Previously, my take on Real Clear Politics (my rationale explained briefly here) showed Republicans up by a whopping 5.5% on the average of their polls I felt were worth inclusion.  That's slipped a little bit but still showing a healthy GOP lead in the generic congressional ballot.

Here's my latest take on the available polls, 3 new ones have been added by RCP - NPR/PBS/Marist (R +3%), CBS News Battleground Tracker (R +2%) and CNN (R+4), with the largest sample being the CBS News poll and also having the smallest Republican advantage.  All three have brought the average Republican lead down.  

Keep this grain of salt in mind: all three newly added polls are from Democrat-favoring institutions.  This could be damage control.  I actually don't mind that as long as conservatives and like-minded independents do indeed get out and vote.  Why?  Because the alternative false narrative they could provide would be worse and the Left is missing that opportunity (unless the idea is already in play on a broader scale than we realize).

Here's what they would do if they were not so blindly and bitterly partisan;  start inflating the Republican advantage in these polls to ridiculous levels (R+12%, R +9%, R+11%) and then when it inevitably comes in short of that range, say at R+5%, the narrative could become that voters wanted change but at the last minute realized that they really didn't want a Republican majority and many voters pulled back and as 'reason took over' decided to revert to their true inclination to vote Democrat.  That narrative would keep the Democrats are the true majority notion alive, whereas sayin it's R +2% and then it turns out it ends up as R +5%, they will have to admit they took a deserved drubbing.

Or of course, they could just start to blame Biden. 

Governor Series: MI - Tudor Dixon

Tudor Dixon would make a great governor for Michigan, unlike the train wreck in the role right now.  Dixon is a bit of a longshot but some polls have her tied.  This is a state where every vote will matter.

Governor Series: OR - Christine Drazan

Oregon could have a Republican governor for the first time in seemingly forever.  Despite having some vitriolic replies to her tweets on Twitter, Christine Drazan leading in the polls in a three way race.

Oregonians are tired of politicians who put their personal agendas ahead of hard-working families.

I'm running to provide a new direction for Oregon.

Check out our campaign's first TV ad of the general election ⬇️ #orpol pic.twitter.com/gmzWD12tuP

— Christine Drazan (@ChristineDrazan) July 25, 2022

Governor Series: NV - Joe Lombardo

 This is a tight race, but Joe Lombardo is the right guy for Nevada.