I was browsing around Facebook and came across a link to this 2018 midterm forecast from The Crosstab, whose proprietor also works at Decision Desk. As such, it is basically a December update to the November Decision Desk forecast, which is nice because it allows us to make direct comparisons. As before, it has a table containing numbers for each Congressional race, so as before let’s take a look at the relevant ones for Texas:
Dist Dem 2016/14 % Clinton % Dem 2018 % Dem W Prob Nov Prob
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TX-02 37.3 45.1 49.9 49.6 45.8
TX-03 36.1 42.6 47.4 33.5 29.6
TX-06 40.1 43.6 48.5 40.0 15.0
TX-07 43.8 50.7 50.1 51.0 46.3
TX-10 40.1 45.2 46.1 22.4 18.6
TX-14 38.1 39.8 42.9 8.1 6.1
TX-17 36.7 40.8 42.7 7.7 5.7
TX-21 39.0 44.7 49.6 47.4 43.4
TX-22 40.5 45.9 46.6 25.2 20.9
TX-23 49.3 51.8 53.0 72.2 69.2
TX-24 41.2 46.7 47.2 29.3 24.9
TX-25 39.3 42.2 44.5 14.1 11.0
TX-27 38.3 37.8 42.8 11.5 4.5
TX-31 38.5 43.3 44.6 14.6 11.3
TX-32 36.4 51.0 47.0 27.5 23.1
TX-36 22.5 25.9 30.1 1.0 1.0
I added the “Nov Prob” column to compare the Democrats’ win probability as given in this December article to the win probability in November. In all cases, it has improved over the last month, mostly as the approval ratings for Donald Trump continue to sink and the generic Congressional preference polls favor Dems more strongly. The single biggest change is in CD06, thanks to the nude photo-fueled retirement of Smokey Joe Barton. The overall numbers may continue to move in a Democratic direction, they may plateau, they may fluctuate, it’s hard to say. But as long as these updates keep coming out, we can at least track them.
You may wonder why the percentage of the vote Hillary Clinton received in 2016 is greater than the projected Democratic percentage in 2018 in CDs 07 and 32. I’d say the main reason for that is that Clinton ran so far ahead of the baseline in those districts, picking up numerous Republican crossover votes. What those folks may do in 2018 is a bit of a mystery, and will likely be dependent to some extent on who the nominees are in those districts. Still, CD07 is now ever so slightly tilted towards the Democrats, with CD02 on the verge of following. The numbers look so good even I have a hard time really believing them. We’re still talking a coin flip, of course. It will be easy to begin to think that these races are in the bag – I already see people on Facebook posting as if Dems had all but already won in CD07. These races are and will be hard and expensive, and there are absolutely no guarantees. What we have is opportunity. What we do with it is up to us.