Trump and Abortion are the issue for midterms

and that's bad for the GOP

About ninety-two percent of the total raw vote for Hillary Clinton showed up and voted Democratic in the 2018. And it was not a particulary creative midterm slogan that produced that level of turnout.

“Vote for me, I am anti-Trump.”

Opposition political parties out of power have been running that slogan for decades and it’s effectiveness is fairly obvious.¹

Clinton, Obama, and Trump have been lightning rods for their partisan opponents. And not that’s exactly encouraging with a Democrat in the White House and a thin Democratic Majority in the House.

It’s worth noting, however, that without an outsized party performance differential, as happened in 1994 (22.66 point difference) and 2010 (19.69 point difference), the GOP has not experienced huge gains in midterms. In 2002 and 2014, the party performance differentials were a mere 7.72 points and 11.73 points, respectively; and the results were middling.

The Democrats, 1990 notwithstanding, have achieved comparibably huge swings with comparabaly smaller raw vote differentials in midterms. In 2006 and 2018, it took the Democrats a mere 13.93 points and 11.23 points, respectively, of outperforming the GOP to win huge gains in the House at midterms.

That said — in the Spring of this year, the Republicans were sitting pretty. Inflation, due in large part to gas price increases that began with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine plus some festering supply chain issues, and President’ Biden unpopularity had the GOP as odds on favorites to take the House and possibly the Senate as well. But the end of Trump’s ill-advised deal with Saudi Arabia to cut oil production in 2020 expired in April and Biden’s recent legislative successes reversed that trend rather quickly.

Gas prices are lower — much lower. And the Inflation Reduction Act and the Semiconductor Bill added to a stretch of legislative successes² for President Biden.

Then Joe Biden did something truly brilliant. He went after Donald Trump.

The normally workaday Joe Biden spoke in prime-time to take on Trump and his MAGA minions as enemies of democracy.³ The speech came on the heels of a search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence where a trove of classified and top-secret documents were found.

Donald Trump, who could have taken the more seasoned sideline endorser and fundraiser approach, jumped in the the 2022 midterms as an active campaigner for himself and GOP candidates. Given Biden’s improving poll numbers⁴ and Trump’s never very good poll numbers⁵, Biden's move to pull Trump into the midterms looks positively masterful. The GOP, which centered its 2022 messaging on inflation, now has to do sell their views on abortion and authoritarianism instead.

If voter registration gains are a sign of increases in turnout, the Democrats may reverse the conventional wisdom on midterms — the party controlling the White House loses seats. Midterm House gains by the president’s party have happened twice in the last 30 years — 2002 and 1998. You’d have to go back to 1934 to find it’s recurrence⁶ before that.

Ohio⁷, Wisonsin, Pennsylvania⁸, North Carolina⁹, Texas¹⁰, and many other states¹¹ are experiencing surges in voter registration since the Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade.

How huge is is that surge?

Graph from TargetSmart¹²

In 1934, the Great Depression was the vote mover. In 2002, it was 9/11. In 1998, voters saw Newt Gingrich’s impeachment efforts as partisan.

If the Democrats make gains in 2022, Trump and abortion will be the cause.

1. The table represents the raw vote count for Democrats/Republicans divided by the raw votes for President the prior election.

2. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/09/joe-biden-legislative-wins-00050461

3. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/biden-accuses-trump-and-his-supporters-of-undermining-the-nations-democratic-values

4. https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/poll-biden-now-leads-trump-by-widest-margin-of-last-6-months-205506846.html

5. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-19/why-are-biden-s-poll-numbers-improving

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_midterm_election#:~:text=Historical%20record%20of%20midterm,-See%20also%3A%20Category&text=Roosevelt%2C%20John%20F.,%2C%20and%202002%2C%20George%20W.

7. https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2022/09/political-scientist-david-niven-speaks-to-increased-voter-registration-by-women.html

8. https://www.witf.org/2022/09/01/after-roe-v-wade-pa-sees-more-women-registering-as-democrats/

9. https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article264658199.html

10. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Texas-sees-a-surge-in-bright-blue-young-voters-17426125.php

11. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/9/4/23333329/roe-voter-registration-dobbs-midterms-democrats

12. TargetSmart is a Democratic polling firm.