Washington Wednesday: Election Day approaches

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 2nd of November, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Today is Washington Wednesday and Election Day is less than one week away.

The odds seem to favor Republicans reclaiming control of the House. But what about the Senate and governors races?

Well, here to talk about it is Kyle Kondik. He’s an elections analyst and director of communications at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

REICHARD: Kyle, good morning!

KYLE KONDIK, GUEST: Good morning!

REICHARD: The last time we spoke, the Senate race appeared to be something of a coin flip. Now, we’ve seen some momentum for Republicans in recent weeks.

We’ll talk about some individual races in a moment, but just in a general sense, Kyle, what are your thoughts on where the Senate battle stands now?

KONDIK: I still think it’s overall pretty close and competitive. You'll also have a little wildcard which of course we dealt with in depth in 2020 and 2021, which is Georgia. There's only one Georgia Senate race this time, but it's the one race of the competitive ones that still could very well end up going to run off. And so as you try to kind of figure out the math in your head as to what we might expect in terms of net change, you might almost need to set Georgia to the side just in that we very well may not have a winner there until December. The runoff now will be December 6, as opposed to early January, which was the case last time, but based on a legal change there runoffs would be in December. But overall, I do feel like the environment has kind of reinvigorated for Republicans over the past several weeks. Things have just seemed to be moving in their direction. And so, you know, I think you probably rather be the Republicans than Democrats in the race for the Senate. But I think it's also fair to just categorize the overall race for control still as a toss up.

REICHARD: Pennsylvania appears to be a dead heat. I count 25 polls on that race dating back to June. And all but one gave Democrat John Fetterman the lead.

However, that one poll that gives Republican Mehmet Oz a 3-point lead … is the most recent poll. That came after the candidates debated each other last week. So what’s going on there?

KONDIK: Yeah, I don’t know if you’d expect the debate to have some sort of huge impact. You almost never would with candidate debates and Senate races, but I will say the overall trajectory has probably been better for Oz there although Fetterman has almost always had a lead. And so I think it's probably fair to say that the race remains extremely close. But if the debate maybe even helped Oz a little bit, well a little bit would be enough maybe to tip the race. One thing that Fetterman has going in his favor is that it does appear like Democrat Josh Shapiro has a pretty decent lead in the governor's race and so maybe Shapiro provides some coattails to help Fetterman get over the finish line.

REICHARD: You know, we don’t hear as much about the Senate race out of Nevada. That one’s also really close. Who are the contenders there, and what are your thoughts on that race?

KONDIK: Yeah, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, first term incumbent and then Adam Laxalt, who is the former State Attorney General out there. He lost the governor's race in 2018. Nevada, another really close competitive state. We do sometimes get some clues from early voting out there. Most places, early voting doesn't necessarily tell us much about what might happen. But in Nevada, there's a decent track record of that. It sort of seems like it's decent for Democrats, but maybe not as good as it was in 2020 and 2018. And, of course, Democrats want out there and ‘18 and ‘20, but not by some sort of huge margin and so just a little bit of erosion for Democrats could be enough to flip that states are Republicans. And so I think as you're looking at the data now, you’d probably rather be the Republicans but again, it's very tight. We're not getting like a super clear signal that Nevada is necessarily breaking one way or the other.

REICHARD: Okay, we’ll set Georgia aside as you mentioned, we’ll be focusing on that race tomorrow. So let’s talk about two races where challengers thought they had a better chance than it now appears they have.

In Arizona, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is the incumbent. He appears to be in control. And in Florida, it looks like GOP Sen. Marco Rubio is walking away with that race. Why did the challengers feel good about their chances in Arizona and Florida, and what happened — acknowledging it isn’t over until it’s over.

KONDIK: Well, look, I think the Arizona race is another one—and I sound like a broken record—but the Arizona race is another one that should be fairly tight. I mean, Democrats have won the last two Senate races out in Arizona but only by about two and a half points apiece in ‘18 and ‘20. And ‘22 seems like a more challenging environment for Democrats. Although Mark Kelly is the incumbent now. He was not the incumbent when he won in 2020. I do still think Kelly has a small lead out in Arizona. One little development out there is that the Libertarian candidate dropped out, although his name is still gonna appear on the ballot, but maybe that helps Blake Masters, the Republican candidate on the margins. So it seems like Masters has been getting closer, although I always kind of expected him to get closer. It's just a question of whether we can get over the finish line. At this point I'd say it would be a mild surprise of Masters won. So I still look at Kelly as a small favorite in Arizona. Florida, that state is just trending toward the Republicans and it's a Republican leaning year. Seems like Ron DeSantis is doing really well in the gubernatorial race. And even though the Democrats have fielded a strong challenger for Senate in Val Demings, a House member from the Orlando area who's raised a lot of money, it just doesn't seem like the right year for Democrats in Florida, which is a pretty common thing to say in recent years, but particularly this year.

REICHARD: Kyle, anything that’s surprised you at this point?

KONDIK: You know, I think that I guess what’s surprising is that the Democrats are hanging in as well as they are, because the environment is just bad. It's a midterm with an unpopular Democrat in the White House. Biden's approval rating is low, really across the battlefield. And it may be that at the end of the day, Republicans actually don't just get to 51, but they maybe get to 52 or 53 Senate seats in part because Biden's approval is so poor that it's just impossible for even the strong Democratic incumbents facing not great Republican challengers, it may just be too much of a hurdle for them to get over in the Senate races. But the Democrats have done a decent job of defying gravity, but that may not last through the election.

REICHARD: Well I know the University of Virginia where you work has given Republicans the advantage when it comes to reclaiming control of the House. Prognosticating is what you do. How do you think the numbers will fall when it’s all said and done?

KONDIK: I’m thinking, at this point, high-teens, low-twenties for Republican gains in the House. If I had to guess—we'll do a final projection the day before the election—my guess is that that number is likely to go more on the higher end of that as opposed to the lower end. Often when it feels like the environment is in favor of one party as I think it is in favor of Republicans at this point, you sort of pick up on more of that the sooner you get to the election. But there are still a few days to go here and a few more things to try to figure out. But yeah, I think the Republicans look pretty good in the House.

REICHARD: Final question here, Kyle, and this is about state-level politics. What is the balance of power right now with governorships? And how’s that going to look like on November 9th?

KONDIK: There are 50 state governorships. Republicans have 28. Democrats have 22. A slight majority of Americans live in states with Democratic governors. So it's kind of a pretty close balance there, even though Republicans have more governorships than Democrats do. The Democrats are very likely to pick up open seats in Maryland and Massachusetts. However, there are a bunch of toss-up races in places like Oregon, Nevada, Wisconsin, Kansas, where the Republicans have decent chances to win. And so it may be that even though Democrats are probably going to pick up Maryland and Massachusetts, Republicans might be able to make up for that and maybe even get a net gain themselves depending on how well they do in the rest of the playing field.

REICHARD: Kyle Kondik is with the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Kyle, thanks so much!

KONDIK: Thank you!

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