Election Turnout Is Surging. Who Will Benefit?

(Bloomberg) -- Surging turnout has both Republicans and Democrats proclaiming they stand to benefit, as polls show tight races up and down the ballot that will determine control of Congress, state houses and governors’ mansions nationwide.

Some 34 million people have voted in the 2018 general election already, and at least 28 states and the District of Columbia have already surpassed their total early-vote tally from the last midterms, said University of Florida professor Michael McDonald. There was unusually high turnout in special and primary elections this year and that’s continuing. “People are engaged and voting in this election.”

One has to be careful when looking at early voting. In many cases, it can just simply be a shift in timing by people who would otherwise head to the ballot box on Election Day. However, there are indications that this year’s surge isn’t just cannibalizing Tuesday voters, but instead bringing out new voters who wouldn’t normally vote in a midterm election.

Put simply: Voters are motivated to turn out, and more of them will this year.

Midterm elections tend to have two notable trends: the incumbent president’s party almost always loses seats, and Republicans tend to turn out more than Democrats. This year, those two forces collide. “It’s a real open question as to what ultimately that enthusiasm gap turns out to be,” said Kathryn Pearson, a professor at the University of Minnesota.

The biggest test of who benefits from sky-high turnout may come in Pearson’s home state of Minnesota, with four competitive House seats and where early voting is on pace with that seen in the presidential election of 2016. “Minnesota typically leads the country in turnout, and my guess would be that this election will be no exception,” she said.

In the suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Republican Representatives Erik Paulsen and Jason Lewis are vulnerable because of a backlash to President Donald Trump, Pearson said. Still, Republicans have a chance to pick up two seats in rural Minnesota -- an agricultural belt along the state’s southern border, and another up in the ancestrally-Democratic Iron Range where Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs are seen as a populist defense of U.S. industry. Additionally, Pearson noted, the state has both its Senate seats up for election this year, and an open race for governor at the top of the ticket.

Democrats have a narrow lead over Republicans nationally in early voting, but the GOP has the lead in some key states, including Arizona and Florida. Early vote data can show who voted, but not who they voted for. Which party will reap the benefit of the high turnout in this year’s midterm is still an open question.

Two good signs for Democrats: Women are voting at a much higher level than men in early voting, according to The Hill’s Reid Wilson, and turnout among voters aged 18-29 (who historically don’t vote at nearly the level of older voters) is way up in swing states -- more than 400% in Georgia and Texas and more than 700% in Tennessee.

In Nevada, political sage Jon Ralston says he thinks Democrats have banked enough of an early vote edge (23,000 votes statewide) that Senate challenger Jacky Rosen has an edge on Republican incumbent Dean Heller. In the Texas Senate race, both candidates -- Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke -- say the high turnout will benefit their campaigns.

“We’re getting general confirmation where we can get data that the polls are correct that we have some very close Senate and gubernatorial races out there. The early vote looks very close,” McDonald said. “Maybe in Florida things are a bit closer than what the polls suggest,” including in the governor’s race where Democrat Andrew Gillum has had a slim but persistent lead in the polls over Republican Ron DeSantis.

How then to read the tea leaves? “I would go with the high turnout model at this point, I think that’s a safe assumption,” McDonald said. “We are not seeing a 2014 election, we’re seeing a cross between a midterm and a presidential election.”

BALANCE OF POWER

SENATE

HOUSE

GOVERNORS

STATE RACES/BALLOT INITIATIVES

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