Received wisdom is that voter participation falls off in midterm elections; perhaps someone would feel motivated to summarize. State-wise outcomes are surely important, but a national view has separate importance. The number 128.6 million seems worth remembering.
For comparison, about 78.3 million votes were cast for the House in 2014. Crudely (ignoring several compounding factors), if my state's 28% registration boost this year follows through at the same voting rate as then, that suggests about 100 million house votes to be this year. Would need a 64% bump from 2014 to beat the 128.6 million figure. But this extrapolation is rather crude, there should be better approaches.
During off-year elections people who are basically happy pretty much stay home. NOBODY seems to be very 'happy' these days, and the latest two inappropriately/appropriately timed "issues" (SCOTUS Migrant caravan) seem to be raising manifold pressures for people who SHOULD be happier and staying on the sofas. After all.....POTUS approval rates for 10-2018 > 10-2014. 6-5 and pickem. Keeping this as non-partisan as possible I'm thinking that 2018 turnout will be > 2014 but for 'slightly' different reasons but not quite 2016-ish. In 2014 only one side was torqued off. Several of my co-workers (now up to 3) will be doing hurricane restoration on the first Tuesday in November because....as always...politics are local. People are more prone to have other things to do during the off-terms.
That is comparing 2nd year to 6th year. A more direct comparison, 2nd year to 2nd year, is: POTUS approval rates for 10-2018 < 10-2010.
That's actually fairly easy....if you've ever spent any time overseas or were an adult before late 1991. YMMV I was comparing this midterm to the last midterm......not cherry picking data to make a political point. There's already too much of that in the non-adult section of the forum.....
A buddy and I were looking for a way to offer transportation to the local poll for anyone who needed it. Even thought about signing up as lyft for the day. But then I done went and got hired for a gig out of state during election week. So I've already mailed in my absentee ballot, but my pal is still trying to figure out ideas to help drive. Anyone else looking into driving the public?
Unfortunately, this was disallowed at a certain Georgia senior center. Not surprisingly, these seniors are not white: Dozens of black senior citizens ordered off bus taking them to vote | TheHill Black voters ordered off bus; Georgia county defends action
Nevada offers early voting, and I voted today. So many people have voted so far that they've run out of "I Voted" stickers. One anecdote is not indicative of a trend, but I contend that more people voting is better.
I averaged coattails for previous 3 House midterm elections, R and D separately. Multiply those By R and D 2016 Presidential vote totals. This would constitute a 'no-wave' scenario. Estimates 43.8 million R House votes and 37.5 million for D. Interestingly I also see that more R House votes were cast in 2016 than R presidential votes. Perhaps no one pointed that out before.
While I don't recall that, it certainly sounds reasonable. Despite giving up numerous seats from the previous election, Rs won the majority of House seats, and R districts average higher turnout percentages than D districts. So in the absence of major nationwide gerrymandering, they should also have had a significant majority of the popular House vote, quite unlike their popular vote loser at top of the ticket. And a lot of normal R voters I know where never-Trumpers, abandoning the top of their party's ticket while still leaning R down-ballot. On the conservative side of my close family, one switched to D at the top, while her spouse used the write-in space to vote for a different R. From other commentaries, I believe there was a lot of this in 2016.
Washington State is now entirely vote-by-mail, dropped in either a regular postal box or in any of the numerous ballot box bins. We returned our ballots yesterday. From a news blurb this evening, votes already cast this year are running well over triple the number at this time in 2016. (7 million vs 1.8 million??)
I thought that many people pointed that out before.... Seems that a bunch of folks on both sides of the political chasm could not be forced to vote for either candidate, and simply did not do a write-in or vote third party...... As far as turn-out? It will be yuuge for a first term, midterm but it will still likely be smaller than a POTUS election, which means that it will be.....a small turnout. Shellackings generally only happen when one side is mad. These days? Everybody is mad.
+1, but then we here in PC represent probably the one percent of the one percenters where political working knowledge is concerned. The only thing that most people know about the Electoral College is that it isn't in their conference.
"Voters who could not support either Pres candidate" is frequently invoked. However House R candidates got 190 thousand votes more than Trump. However House D candidates got 4 million votes less than H. Clinton. When frequently invoked strays from actual counts, frequent invokers might consider pulling back just a tad.
