Official A2K 2018 Congress Prediction Thread

It’s been beyond obvious for a while now that Republicans have a problem with female voters. Poll after poll have shown that white college-educated women, once a persuadable pool of voters, have abandoned the GOP. The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal survey found that these women support a Democrat for Congress by 22 points — 58 percent to 36 percent. In 2014, they preferred a Democratic Congress by just 2 points (46-44 percent). Republican strategists on the ground are seeing and feeling the same thing. A GOP strategist involved in a number of midwestern races emailed the other day saying, “we are losing independent women at a rapid rate.” Another GOP consultant involved in swing state races told me that these women voters’ are singularly focused on their dislike and disgust of the president, making it difficult, if not impossible, for Republican candidates to get a fair hearing from them.

The defection of these women voters are the reason why traditionally GOP, upscale, overwhelmingly white districts in suburban Chicago (IL-06), Kansas City (KS-03), Dallas (TX-32), Houston (TX-07), New Jersey (NJ-07) and Minneapolis (MN-03), are in serious peril.

But, what is worrying many Democrats is that the enthusiasm they are seeing among women isn’t being replicated among another group of voters that theoretically should be as motivated — or more — to vote for Democrats: Latino voters.

This isn’t a new concern. Democratic strategists, as well as political analysts like Ron Brownstein and Josh Krashaaur, have been sending up warning flares for a while now. Latino voter drop-off in midterm elections is nothing new, but the thinking was that President Trump's rhetoric and policies around immigration, especially the issue of separating children from their parents at the border, would be a catalyst for higher Latino engagement in 2018. At this point, however, recent polling by New York Times Upshot/Siena College and Monmouth University, suggests that's not the case.

Bottom line: Democrats are doing very well in the upscale, suburban districts where we’ve seen unprecedented engagement by women voters. But, in the diverse districts where Clinton ran up her biggest margins in 2016, Democratic candidates for Congress may not fare as well. Can Democrats win the House without winning those districts? Yes.

But, if Democrats are going to prove they have a broad base message and appeal, they need to do more than just run up the score in white, suburban America. They also need to make up ground rural/exurban America and prove that they can energize and turn-out Latino voters.