After all the sturm und drang, not to mention the plethora of polling calls, political mailers and commercials, and emotional outbursts, the 2018 election is over and in the bag.
My predictions for 2018 were broadly accurate, but I was too conservative in many regards as to the magnitude, especially in Nevada. As predicted, Democrats flipped both the U.S. Senate seat and Governorship, though by much larger margins than predicted, abet still a plurality with rather than an outright majority. However, the Democrats ended up doing far better, not only picking up the Lt. Gov. seat, but also the state Controller seat by a decent margin (both with Democrats winning a majority of the vote). The Republicans lost the Treasurer’s and Attorney General’s race (both of those being open seats), by less than 1%. The only silver lining for Republicans is the reelection of Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske who won a slim plurality victory of less than 1%; she is now the front-runner for the Gubernatorial or Senate nomination in 2022, assuming she doesn’t opt to run for the 3rd Congressional district in 2020 or 2022. Ominously, the Democrats did even better in Washoe County that in 2016, with their early vote results far in excess of the Democrats early voter edge, making it clear that it was all over for Republicans before Election Day even began.
Speaking of the down-ticket races in Nevada, as predicted, Democrats kept both the 4th and 3rd Congressional seats. In the legislature, it was an absolute disaster for Republicans. Not only did they fail to pick up a winnable seat in Washoe County, they lost two in Clark County, giving the Democrats a supermajority. Worse yet, was their performance in the state Senate. By the early votes, it seemed like the Republicans were in a good position to keep SD08 and SD20, while only being at risk in SD09, since though they were behind, in previous elections independents and election day voters helped counter that early vote lead. In 2018, the exact opposite happened. The Democrats’ early voter lead underestimated their eventually victory in not only SD09, but also SD08. This means that the Democrats are only one seat away from gaining a supermajority in the state Senate too, which would give them a degree of power not seen in many people’s lifetime, and the hard Left a degree of power that they’ve never had in Nevada. How close was this supermajority in the state Senate? The Republicans won by twenty-eight votes. For the state Senate, this means that the Democrats will have complete control for redistricting in 2020, since Republicans would have to pick up three seats to regain a majority, while there are only to potential pick-up opportunities (SD05 and SD06).
In the 3rd Congressional district, which Republican nominee Danny Tarkanian lost narrowly in 2016, and a district that Trump won that same year, Tarkanian lost by an even greater margin than Republican Crecent Hardy did in the 4th Congressional district (~26K vs. ~19K). More on Danny Tarkanian, a professional loser, below.
What happened in Nevada was not unique. It was about the suburbs and how they are shifting towards the Democrats after long default control by Republicans. In Nevada, independents as well as many Republicans repudiated “MAGA”. This was widely seen nationally, as the Democrats won Congressional and legislative races in the suburbs, picking up a majority in the House of Representatives and flipping many legislative houses nationwide. This shift also contributed to Democrats winning over a dozen governorships and losing none (the Republicans picked up the Alaska governorship from a formal independent who had dropped out of the race earlier this year). It is also fair warning that the unique orgy of Black Swans that ushered in 2016 is over.
After the 2016 election, I considered why I had been off on the Presidential election. My conclusion was that I, as had others, underestimated the sheer degree to which Hillary Clinton was toxic. I had previously noted that Hillary was the only Democrat who could lose to Donald Trump, and she indeed managed to somehow due so by less than 100,000 votes across a few states. In those states, the Republicans were devastated, doing horribly in Pennsylvania and losing governorships in Wisconsin and Michigan, while being devastated in neighboring Minnesota. Only in Ohio did the Republicans manage to keep the governorship while the Democratic incumbent kept the U.S. Senate seat. This is fair warning for Republicans that they can not rely on these states as default entries into the Republican/MAGA column.
Indeed, much of the 2018 election looks like 2016 would have been in the absence of Hillary Clinton. The success of the Democrats in the suburbs during those special elections, primaries, and general elections over the past two years since the Nov. 2016 election were fair warning that the GOP was going to do poorly in the suburbs. But of course accepting that fact would run counter to the MAGA narrative that it was the “establishment” who were the problem and that the suburbs punished them for not being “MAGA” enough. This ignores that only the at least somewhat squishy GOPers can get elected to many of these swing suburban districts, and that suburban “soccer moms” et al. with college degrees and a middle class lifestyle don’t take kindly to being belittled and attacked for what they are.
