Close, But No Cigar

 Yesterday, the special election in Tennessee's 7th District was intended as a bellwether for the coming midterms. Democrats ran an unapologetic progressive in an R+22 district and lost by 9 points. The usual circular firing squads were out on Twitter arguing about whether a candidate more suited to a deep red district might have won. I doubt it, and Republicans did come home when they nationalized the election in the last few weeks. It was unlikely that anything about Behn herself that alienated voters, aside from the D next to her name.

Still, the interesting pre-election hubbub was that a single digit GOP victory would set off alarm bells in the GOP caucus and might trigger a wave of retirements. That 9 point margin is juuuuuust at the edge of single digits. Maybe a Generic White Dude gets the margin to 5 points, and you get a bigger freakout, but this was never a realistic shot. It was a chance to see how competitive Democrats had become, and the answer is: pretty darned competitive.

Basically, elections have swing 11-17 points towards Democrats since Trump took office. At the link, Morris argues that a national ballot of D+6 gives the House to Democrats next year with about 235 votes. If it's a D+8 election, then they could very easily win the Maine, North Carolina and Ohio Senate seats and be competitive in Texas and Iowa. In the Senate, I do think candidate quality matters, and someone like Jasmine Crockett is a poor choice for Democrats in Texas, because she's a Black Woman and that's just not going to be appealing to swing voters. You don't have to like that to acknowledge that this is true.

What I would add is that the environment is pretty much locked in at D+8, maybe D+12. It's almost a full year until the midterm election and it's pretty unlikely that Trump will become more popular. If - as I suspect - we are teetering on the edge of a sort of stagflationary slump, then that number gets worse for Republicans. 

If it really becomes a D+10 election next fall the following Senate seats could be in play based on Partisan Voting Index: South Carolina, Alaska, Nebraska, Montana, Florida and Kansas. 

The key thing to keep an eye on is Republican retirements. Watch and see if the rats flee the sinking ship.