Democracy's downticket hope

Will state candidates pay a penalty for election denialism?

Many people are focused on the federal picture. Analytics at the Princeton Election Consortium show the House as likely Republican, with a meta-margin of R+4%, (i.e. 4 points above threshold for control). The Senate could go either way; 47-51 D seats, with a meta-margin R+0.4% from toss-up. Six races have polling medians within 5 points – New Hampshire, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin. All of these could go in the same direction…but which direction?

Put that aside. There’s interesting and hopeful stuff happening at the state level.

Fair elections in key legislatures: Like I said on NPR the other day, redistricting has leveled the playing field in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Thanks to anti-gerrymandering efforts, those states will likely be majoritarian, giving control to the party that gets more votes - whichever that is.

Election deniers on the defensive? Hope for democracy in 2024 lies in state-level races. Key candidates for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general deny the honesty of the 2020 election, want to drastically change how votes are counted, and want to game rules to guarantee results for their own party. As it turns out, they are not doing well in pre-election surveys.

In the table above, the “polls” column shows final opinion polls for the first office listed and where available, the second race. “2020” indicates the Biden-Trump margin. “Shift” indicates which way things have moved.

Across these states, contrary to the general movement against an incumbent President, these denier candidates appear to lag the 2020 Presidential result by a median of 1 point. If these numbers hold up in today’s election results, it suggests that maybe a denier stance is not great for electability.

Secretary of state races are tilting Democratic in Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona, as well as governor’s races in Pennsylvania and Maine. Those are all good news for holding normal elections in 2024. The same is true for the Georgia governor’s race, where Brian Kemp (R) oversaw a normal count by post-2020 standards.

There’s an apparent near-tie in the Wisconsin governor’s race. Because of a heavily gerrymandered General Assembly, the governor is the way for the popular will to constrain the legislature. Candidate Tim Michels promised that if he wins, Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin. Wow.

Trouble in state supreme courts: In two state Supreme Courts, routes to effective enforcement of voting rights may be closing. North Carolina was key in undoing a gerrymander, but a change of even one seat will flip the majority. In Ohio, the court attempted to enforce fair districting laws, but was unable to. In that case, the only way to improve redistricting is by citizen initiative to amend the constitution. In the meantime, let’s hope that disputes in these two states in 2024 will be few.

Now it’s time to vote, and then wait.