Actually, my reference was to the House of Representatives and not the senate. Only 2/3rds of the states have a senator up for reelection in any one election cycle. The total vote there doesn’t mean anything as a third of the states don’t cast a vote for senators. Now the House is different, we can take it nationwide as everyone can vote for a representative. The Democrats won the nationwide vote 50-48. The democrats won 222 seats, which is more than the 50% of the vote they received.
We’re back to perceptions of the voters. I haven’t studied the union vote outside of just looking at the numbers and who they voted for. The last 3 elections 60% of the union household vote went to Obama in 2012, Clinton received 51% in 2016 and Biden 56% last year. Outside of that, I’ll pass on commenting further. I pay most of my attention to independents. Their perspective today is Biden and company are ignoring what they think is this nation’s most important problem. Because of that, independents are leaning toward voting Republican in the midterms. Most independents aren’t political junkies like you and me or those on this site. They’re casual fans and voters for the most part. They’re like super bowl football fans who don’t pay one iota of attention to the regular season until the super bowl. The same for many, perhaps most independents. They don’t pay any attention to politics until election time. They do however, decide elections. Neither party’s base is large enough to win elections without independents. The GOP needs a majority of them, the Democrats can win by losing independents by a small amount. But no more than 5 points.
Today the two major parties are about even, if Gallup is correct, the democrats has a 2-point advantage 28-26. This is a far cry when the democrats average 45% of the electorate from FDR until Reagan. They average 35% until Obama. The GOP’s 26% is close to their average of the electorate from FDR to today. This is the first time both major party’s base has dropped below the 30% level.
I’ll say this about independents, they usually vote for the most charismatic candidate or the candidate/party with the best bumper sticker slogan. First and foremost, though, is their wallet. A fat wallet, they’ll go with the party in power, a thinning wallet, it’s the party out of power that’ll get their vote.
Yeah, so what were we talking about? I don’t know if I addressed that or not.
