Ignore the polls. Nobody knows who will win the US midterms

Nobody knows. If there is one indisputable fact about the US midterm elections in a fortnight, it’s that nobody knows what will happen. Pollsters will predict. Pundits will pontificate. That’s what they’re paid to do. If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that surprise is the only constant.

The political news media is an industry unto itself. Reporters and commentators promote a relentless cycle of spin, drama, outrage and fear to garner ratings and make money. Much of their collective focus zooms on the horse-race aspect of politics, with more attention given to who will win than what they will do afterwards. Democracy, or what passes for it, is degraded to novelty.

Yet the herd is often wrong. Few expected Donald Trump to triumph in 2016. No one foresaw Theresa May’s cliffhanger victory in 2017. Scott Morrison was given Buckley’s chance to prevail in 2019. His party’s drubbing in 2022, and the teals’ sweeping gains, were likewise a revelation to the “experts”.

Don’t hold your breath for any humility, much less apology. The caravan always rolls on.

Now they’re at it again for the midterms. They parse the latest polls like tea leaves, even though we have seen over and over that such projections are patchy at best. Evolutions in communications technology have disrupted historic polling methodologies, and the big firms still haven’t found a reliable remedy. They won’t admit this, though, because that would crush their income. So the pollsters soldier on, while the pundits pretend they are still oracles. Then they spoon-feed us their findings.

Here’s what you need to know:

Dobbs is a game changer

The Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v Wade should not be underestimated. Abortion has been a hot-button issue for so long that it became background noise in US politics. Conservative women were willing to vote for anti-abortion politicians because they figured their rights were constitutionally protected, so the fiery rhetoric was meaningless. Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization has changed this. There is a chasm between a hypothetical threat and the reality of government-mandated forced birth.

Female voter registrations have surged nationwide. Young women, with the most to lose, are leading the way. The only polls that matter — actual elections — reflect this shift. In five congressional races since the ruling was handed down on June 24, there has been a considerable swing to Democrats. Democrats picked up a seat in Alaska that they had not held for 50 years. 

In ruby-red Kansas, an anti-abortion referendum cynically timed to exploit a sleepy primary runoff went down in flames as voters turned out in droves to defeat it. Pollsters missed this result too.

President Biden and the Democrats have made abortion rights a centrepiece of their campaign. As Biden said, Republicans “have no idea of the power of American women”. They may soon find out.

The electorate is in constant motion

It rarely gets mentioned, but the voting pool fluctuates every election. Seventeen million eligible voters have died since Trump won the White House in 2016. Meanwhile, with teenagers turning 18 and the naturalisation of new citizens, 26 million eligible voters have replaced them. The white share of the US population has continued to decline. All these factors have moved the electoral needle by subtle margins, which could make the difference in a tight finish.

Redistricting was a wash

In 2010, Republicans spent $30 million on an election strategy called REDMAP. It was a stunning success. By targeting winnable districts and governorships in 16 states, Republicans were able to gain unified control of swing states including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This gave them full control of redistricting for US House of Representatives seats following the 2010 census, which they exploited with sophisticated partisan gerrymandering to cement their electoral advantage.

They were also able to pass a raft of voter suppression laws to further stack the deck in their favour. These measures helped them maintain control of the House until 2018, when the blue-wave backlash against the Trump administration swept Democrats back into the majority. Given the monumental sums spent on US election campaigns, REDMAP gave the GOP an extraordinary return on investment.

Following the 2020 census, Republicans attempted to game the system again using a similar playbook. This time Democrats were ready for them. With a two-pronged strategy combining legal challenges to GOP machinations, and hardball redistricting of their own, the net outcome was more or less a standstill.

Turnout is the whole ballgame

It’s hard enough to forecast election results when voting is mandatory, as in Australia. With voluntary voting, who shows up to the polls can be decisive. Swing voters, or “independents” in American parlance, receive outsized scrutiny from the prognosticators, especially three white guys in an Ohio diner. Swing voters aren’t the main contest. Turnout is what matters most.

Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. Republicans have typically been more competitive in the midterms, because voter turnout in off years has lagged substantially. Over the past half-century, midterms turnout hovered around 40% of eligible voters. However, in 2018 it surged to 50% as voters on both sides of the political divide flocked to the polls. This was the highest turnout in more than a hundred years. Buoyed by the throng, Democrats won convincingly by almost 10 million votes. The takeaway is that higher turnout helps Democrats more than Republicans. This is why Republicans do everything they can to make voting difficult. Lower turnout and voter discouragement benefit the GOP.

Early indications for the 2022 midterms are that turnout will break records again. History shows that the party in control of the White House nearly always loses seats in the midterms. With Democrats clinging to a four-seat majority, analysts assume this pattern will hand the House to Republicans. But if women and young voters show up in numbers, all bets are off.

Cable news loves talking to “real Americans” in what they deem the heartland. Ignore them. Much like Australia, 86% of Americans live in urban areas. This is where the election will be won and lost.

Republicans expected they would cruise to victory. Now they’re nervous and Democrats are hopeful. Whatever the result, the midterms are a lot tighter than anyone would have guessed six months ago. In 2016, Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore spurned the crowd by predicting Trump would become president. This year he believes the Democrats will defy history and retain control of Congress. We’ll know soon enough whether he’s right.