Elections analyst Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report pours a bunch of cold water on Democratic hopes in an interview with New York: “This is probably a Category 2 or 3 hurricane headed Democrats’ way, just not a Category 4 or 5.” The whole interview is worth reading, but he has some useful thoughts on framing the different dynamics between the House and the Senate:
There are three structural advantages that Republicans have in the House that Senate Republicans don’t. One is redistricting. One is retirements — we didn’t see Democratic retirements in key Senate seats, but we have 19 vulnerable Democratic open seats in the House compared to just six vulnerable open Republican seats. So that’s a huge difference between the Senate and House. The third, and this is key, is that Senate Republicans were at war with each other over who to recruit and nominate, and Trump took an interest in the Senate contests in a way that led to chaos. Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott are still playing a blame game three weeks from Election Day.
Whereas in the House, Kevin McCarthy has had a much more disciplined candidate-recruitment operation. He’s also been more successful in keeping Trump on the sidelines, to the extent possible. McCarthy’s M.O. has been to diversify the party. And on that metric, he’s been more successful than his Senate counterpart. Seventy percent of Republican challengers in the most vulnerable Democratic seats are women, minorities, and/or veterans. Thirty-eight percent of those candidates are military veterans, 34 percent are women, and 23 percent are nonwhite. There are even two nominees who are all three of those things. And that makes it a lot harder for Democrats to portray these nominees as the second coming of Donald Trump.
Now, there are some glaring exceptions at the House level where Republicans didn’t end up with ideal nominees. The first two that come to mind are J.R. Majewski in Toledo, Ohio, and John Gibbs in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And I would argue there are probably five or six other Republican nominees in House races who have significantly boosted Democrats chances of holding or picking up a seat. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that many, but it does lower the ceiling on Republicans potential gains. Earlier this year, we thought Republicans could maybe gain 35 seats. I think that’s a lot harder now because we know Republicans have problematic candidates in five to ten seats.