Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the Presidential race upended the campaign, delivered a jolt of enthusiasm to Democrats, and turned what appeared to be a doomed effort to defeat Donald Trump into a true tossup. But the focus on the Presidential race has partially obscured the battle for Congress, which is why, with Election Day now less than two months away, I wanted to speak with Dave Wasserman, a senior editor and elections analyst for the Cook Political Report. Wasserman pays close attention to the contest for President, but one of his specialties is Congress, where he has access to a range of district- and state-level data from both parties. I wanted to understand how the House and Senate contests were shaping up, what a close look at state data can tell us about the Electoral College, how Kamala Harris’s coalition is different from Joe Biden’s, and the size of Trump’s gains with Hispanic and Black voters. Our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, is below.
Where do you see the race for Congress right now?
It’s a highly competitive election at all levels. I’ve become a believer in the Washington State-primary indicator. It’s a predictive phenomenon whereby, every two years, the results of Washington’s top-two primary have pointed in the direction of which party will gain ground several months later, nationally. A top-two primary is a ballot format where every candidate appears on the same ballot regardless of party identification, and the top two finishers advance to the general election, regardless of party. We are calculating whether the Democratic and Republican cumulative vote share in the primary, across all districts and candidates, goes up or down, versus the previous election. I am just looking at the directionality versus two years ago, not a raw number.
In 2020, Democrats won around fifty-seven per cent of the primary votes in Washington, and then fifty-two per cent of the national House vote several months later. In 2022, those numbers fell to fifty-five per cent and forty-nine per cent, respectively. The Democratic share of the Washington-primary vote this year was fifty-eight per cent.
Right. It points to roughly a 2020 type of environment. Washington has become bluer than the country as a whole, so a fifty-eight-per-cent Democratic showing this year versus fifty-seven per cent in 2020 doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bluer environment than 2020. But it points to a similar environment.
It’s been an uncanny predictor, not precisely in terms of which party is going to win a certain number of seats or control of the House or Senate but at least which direction the election is headed versus two years prior. In 2022, we all probably should have taken more heed of Washington’s top-two primary. It showed an environment that was just a little bit better for Republicans than 2020, but not by that much. And that’s more or less what we ended up seeing nationally.
The 2022 Washington primary showed Republicans doing better, but didn’t suggest a huge sweep of a midterm, which is what some pundits were predicting.
Right. The Republicans still picked up nine seats in the House, which was enough to flip control. So, yeah, the 2022 political environment was a pro-Republican year, just not by as much as many of us expected.
What the Washington primary showed this August was a slight uptick for Democrats, relative to 2022, of about three points. That basically puts the results on par with 2020. So, to me, we’re in a very 2020-like political environment with respect to the race for the House and for President. In other words, I see this shaping up to be a very tight race in the Electoral College—regardless of the national popular vote. I think Kamala Harris may be on track, if the election were held next week, for a narrower popular-vote win than Joe Biden, and the Electoral College would be very, very close.
And the House would be close, too?
Yeah, the House is poised to be close. If you really forced me, I’d give Republicans a slight advantage. And the reason is, across the board, we’re seeing incumbents do very well in polls of House races, and that includes some of the most vulnerable incumbents in tough districts.
We’ve seen that with a fair number of Senate races, too, where there are incumbent Democrats running in swing states, and, at least in the polls so far, they seem to be doing pretty well.
That’s right. But, in the last few months, the chances of a 51–49 Democratic Senate going to a 51–49 Republican Senate have increased a lot because we’ve seen some separation between Montana and the other vulnerable Democratic seats.
This is where the incumbent Democrat, Jon Tester, has fallen behind in some recent polls.
Right. The Senate effectively starts out at 50–50 because Democrats are going to lose West Virginia. So Montana and Ohio are the ballgame. Harris does a lot of good for Democrats in down-ballot races because she has energized nonwhite voters. But that has virtually no impact in Montana, which is an overwhelmingly white state. So that race looks like a strong opportunity for Republicans. Ohio is not a battleground Presidential state anymore. But there is a noticeable upside for Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown in Harris getting turnout up among Black voters in particular.
To go back to the Washington State primary—what makes it predictive?
A top-two primary is different from a closed primary, in which lots of races wouldn’t be contested, especially races with incumbents, and that would reduce turnout. In the top-two format, though, voters can essentially pick between the parties on a primary ballot. And Washington has had a strong track record, in part because it uses vote by mail and every voter is automatically sent a ballot. That means that turnout in primaries there is much higher than in most other states, which means you get a much more fulsome preview of the behavior of the electorate.
It’s interesting you say that about the voter turnout because we’ve seen, especially recently, Democrats do very well in lower-turnout elections and in off-year elections. My concern in terms of the Washington primary’s accuracy was going to be that primaries are lower turnout than a general election, which suggests that you are getting a more Democratic electorate than you would in the general. But you’re saying that the mail ballots and the top-two primary correct for that a little bit?
It diminishes the partisan skew you might see in other states with a much lower primary turnout.
And why is the top-two primary more important for this type of experiment?
It allows all voters a choice between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents on the ballot. You’re not locked into the party you identify with. It’s not a surefire way to measure how the nation’s going to vote in November, but it’s been uncannily accurate.
In your job, you see a ton of district-level polls—from super PACs, from congressional committees, from campaigns—that a lot of us don’t see because there aren’t that many publicly released congressional polls.
Right.
And, if I remember correctly, the numbers you saw at the congressional level in 2016 suggested that the race would be closer than people thought. And, of course, Trump ended up winning. A lot of the public polls turned out to be wrong.
Yes. And what stood out to me about 2016 was Trump’s strength in districts dominated by non-college-educated white voters. It showed up in these districts, even though we weren’t really seeing the same thing in national polls, because national polls get a broad cross-section of voters. And back then not a lot of pollsters were fixated on making sure there are the right number of college-educated and non-college-educated white people because the education gap had not yet become a canyon.
Are you seeing things that are different this year at the state or district level than the broader story that the public is seeing?
This year, the polling that we’re seeing from district to district generally lines up with what we’re seeing nationally. And there are a few fascinating trends in particular that I’m observing. First of all, it was apparent before Biden got out of the race that he had massive problems with Hispanic voters in particular. Now, I’ll be honest, we don’t have a ton of tossup districts where there’s a large Black population, but there are certainly competitive House districts where we have a sizable Hispanic population.
