Why Some Democrats Are Sure They'll Keep the House | Opinion

Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu can't say it enough: "We will hold the House." He's said it in tweet, after tweet, after tweet, and I've seen him say it in private, too. History says Lieu must be smoking some of the funny stuff—the president's party almost always loses in the midterms in the president's first term. But a closer look at polling and voter registration patterns gives reason for Democrats to feel like there's a real chance at bucking history. They better beat the odds, because too much is at stake.

In FiveThirtyEight's polling average, Democrats currently lead in generic polling; that is which party voters plan to vote for in their own district. At the time I'm writing this, Democrats lead by a point. In Real Clear Politics' average, which is calculated a bit differently, Republicans lead by under half-a-point. For contrast, in former President Barack Obama's first term, when he took a self-described "shellacking" in the 2014 midterms, Republicans were up by over 2 points, on this date, in the RCP average. In 2014, trends in the polling also favored Republicans. By late summer, Republicans started to make gains in polling, while Democrats more or less flat-lined. This year, it is Democrats who have been making steady gains since the summer, while Republicans are the ones who have flatlined.

Now, a slim polling lead for Democrats is not enough to hold Congress. Because Republican states have drawn districts in a way that allows more Republicans to win than Democrats, the country could vote more for Democrats, but end up with a Republican-controlled House. It's for that reason that FiveThirtyEight says Republicans have a 69 percent chance at taking control, while Democrats only have a 31 percent chance of retaining the majority.

Given all of that, why do Democrats like Rep. Lieu and top Democratic consultants like Simon Rosenberg and Tom Bonier see some glimmer of hope?

First, remember that in 2016, Donald Trump had about a nearly 29 percent chance of winning the electoral college, in FiveThirtyEight's forecast. Nate Silver, who runs the site, wrote back then about why his site was more bullish on Trump than others (even if it still gave Hillary Clinton around a 70 percent chance of winning). There were a number of reasons, but one that's relevant now is the assumption that there could be a small polling error that kept getting repeated in other polling. Essentially, in a race as close as that one was, small, consistent polling errors that got voter turnout wrong could flip the entire election. And that's exactly what happened.

This cycle, there's an argument to be made that pollsters are having a problem modeling voter turnout in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that struck down Roe vs Wade. In Kansas, for example, pollsters predicted a close vote on a Constitutional amendment that would lead to an abortion ban. Yet, when election day came, it wasn't close at all. It was defeated by almost 20 percent. In a special election to fill a House seat in New York, polling had Democrat Pat Ryan losing the swing district he was running in. Indeed, history would have said this is exactly the kind of race Democrats would lose, on their way to losing the House majority. Yet, Ryan went on to win that race by a couple of points.

So what's going on? The Dobbs decision that struck down the right to choose opened up a Pandora's Box of other extreme measures that Republicans are targeting. Clarence Thomas, in his opinion, essentially invited those who would try to pass bans on contraception, same-sex marriage, and more to come before this extreme Supreme Court.

Despite all the assurances that they merely wanted to return the abortion question back to the states, Republicans moved ahead with a national abortion ban, which would overrule any less stringent state laws. Winning the 2022 midterms is another step toward creating a government that closely involves itself in private decisions, and overturns elections if it has to, to keep government in your private life. Voters—young women, in particular—can see the writing on the wall, and are getting more involved, when they normally would not be, in a midterm.

The aforementioned Bonier has devoted much of his Twitter feed to tracking big spikes in new voter registration among women across the country, post-Dobbs, which likely favors Democrats. As Bonier notes, usually you will see new registrants turn out at a high rate. People don't register to vote and then forget to vote. Thus far, Democrats have overperformed in nearly every race, since the Supreme Court ruling. Yet, Bonier is consistently seeing polls that predict a lower-than-normal turnout among women, despite what we've seen thus far.

This could represent the small polling error that gets replicated repeatedly, that caused FiveThirtyEight to give Donald Trump about a 30 percent chance of winning in 2016, and gives Democrats a little over a 30 percent chance of winning, in 2022.

Despite the title of this piece, Republicans may yet win the House. That said, this race is close. It's unlikely we'll see a "Red Wave" that gives Republicans an overwhelming majority. There's almost no chance that Democrats will expand their majority. But if Democrats turn out more than pollsters think, they might just defy history and hold the House.

And then Ted Lieu can tweet out the sweetest of tweets: "Told ya so."

Eric Schmeltzer is a Los Angeles-based political consultant who served as press secretary to Rep. Jerry Nadler and former-Gov. Howard Dean.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.