The 2022 elections are returning to the baseline

 It is almost time.  Almost time for the ads in my youtube feed to be blessedly free of those goddamned Tim Ryan/J.D. Vance inanities.  I do not watch television, so I am sure that many in my vicinity are subjecting themselves to even more, and perhaps worse ads, but my students and I occasionally commiserate on the annoyance of those youtube ads, as nobody under the age of 25 actually watches a "television."  (Hipsters and kids apparently have more than a few things in common.)  So what is going to happen?  It is going to be a normal, political science-y election.  The aftermaths of many elections may be not-normal, but Tuesday and the counts?  They will be normal.  We have returned to baseline, by my assessment.

I write this for several reasons.  First, a little while ago, I wrote about the issue of polls, events and forecasting models.  There was a period of time during the summer when it looked as though the Democrats might be pulling ahead of the baseline fundamentals.  I said, ignore it.  Focus on the fundamentals.  If the polls diverged from the fundamentals, focus on the fundamentals.  The fundamentals have been as follows.  This is a midterm election, with a Democratic president, whose approval rating is net-negative.  As of this morning, RCP has Biden at an average of 42.3% approve, and looking back six months (as we must for forecasting purposes, blah-blah) to May 5, Biden's RCP approval rating was... um... exactly 42.3%.  That's [checks math] exactly the same.  The economy.  Q2 real GDP (meaning inflation-adjusted) was -0.6%.  Inflation, of course, is the big issue, although not the most consistent over-time predictor of elections.  Still, median CPI in May was 7.2%, and it is 8.3% at the last reading.  (By the way, I'm just pulling those numbers from Federal Reserve Economic Data).  Take all that together, and what does it mean?

OK, the general pattern we observe is called "surge and decline," although that also gets into theoretical gobbledygook.  In a midterm election, the party of the president loses seats, unless something really weird is going on.  Why?  Um... lots of reasons, but basically, when you look at Biden's approval rating and the economy, is there any countervailing force?  No.  The economy is not in great shape, and Biden is unpopular.  The labor market is great, if you want a job and don't have it, but for consumers, and generally most of the country, the economy sucks.  Throw the bums out, although most of the bums will keep their jobs.  In the worst election ever for incumbents-- 2010-- 85% of incumbents were reelected.  There's no such thing as an anti-incumbent year.  Still, this is all bad news for the Democrats, and the blips and bumps along the way for the GOP were just blips and bumps.

Say hello to Speaker Louie Gohmert.  (Not a 100% serious prediction, but not a 0% prediction.  I've never been fully convinced about McCarthy, who was crowned Speaker by the press when Boehner was run out of town, until McCarthy tried, with his one brain cell, to count the votes.  He didn't actually have them.  You see, that's the problem with being one brain cell short of a synapse.  This resulted in Speaker Paul Ryan.  What will happen this time?  Speaker Marjorie Taylor Greene?  Speaker Alex Jones?  You know, you don't actually have to be a member of the House to hold the gavel...  Speaker David DePape?  Hammer, gavel, whatever.)

Anywho, Biden is unpopular, and the economy sucks.  The Democrats' House margin is very narrow.  If the GOP picks up seats, the House flips.  The GOP will pick up seats.

The House flips.

Can we make such predictions about the Senate?  The margin is too narrow.  Nope, I got nothin'.

So what else?  Remember all that bullshit about how Dobbs was going to upend everything?  Yeah, that didn't happen, and I've been saying since the ruling that it wouldn't.  I've been doing the press circuit lately, because it is election season.  I did MSNBC about a week ago, and I did a long pre-interview with one of the producers, who asked about Dobbs.  But Dobbs will change everything, right?  Right?  I explained, again, that no, there is no precedent for any Supreme Court ruling, ever, changing an election outcome, and the producer was astounded by the observation.

And yet, here we are.  Except for a few people who are legally required to be Democratic cheerleaders, basically everyone admits that the House is going to flip.  Why?  Because there have been two elections in modern history that broke from this pattern.  In 1998, Newt impeached Bill Clinton because some intern was behind on her dry-cleaning, which is, admittedly, expensive, but less expensive than those abortions Herschel Walker paid for!  That was hard for the American people to swallow...

Yup, those jokes still work, and so Bill's poll...s rose.  The Democrats picked up some seats in '98, and Gingrich was run out of town so that he could leave his wife for the staffer he was boning at the time.  Then, Bob Livingston was supposed to be Speaker, until Larry Flynt's bounty on infidelity information on GOP politicians snared him, and he resigned, putting Denny Hastert in charge, but that was before we found out that the former high school wrestling coach was doing exactly what your worst imagination would imagine, while also paying hush money to keep it quiet, and since paying extortion is actually illegal, he eventually went to prison for that.

Oh, and as long as I'm doing this, I'm not done.  Remember Livingston?  When he resigned, his seat went to David Vitter, Mr. Family Values, and when the DC Madam scandal broke, Vitter's name popped up in her books!  Only Vitter said fuck you, I'm not resigning, while being supported by Tom Coburn, and fuck Tom Coburn, who was not only a hypocritical piece of shit, but also the guy who tried to cut NSF funding to Political Science.

But I digress.

Anyway, there was 1998.  What was the other election to break from the pattern?  2002.  George W. Bush still had a high approval rating, post-9/11.

Neither situation applies, although one may note that the GOP is already planning to impeach Biden.  They don't know what the offenses are, mainly because a) Biden hasn't done anything impeachable, and b) the real reason they want to impeach him is partisan retribution, but if you are putting odds on an impeachment, those odds are over 50% once Speaker Lauren Boebert calls to order the Committee of Voices In Her Head to figure out what the charges will be.

So what have we learned today, children?  Nothing matters, ignore everything.  Campaigns are bullshit and the House flips as a matter of absolute, mathematical necessity.  Also, I'm too much of a fucking coward to make a Senate prediction.

Let's all have fun watching the presidential election on Tuesday!  Yes, you read that correctly.  More on that soon.

Martin Simpson, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," from Grinning In Your Face.