5 Things To Consider As The Midterm Elections Get Closer

In a little more than eight months, Americans will go to the polls, where every seat in the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate will be up for election.

These midterm elections will occur at a time “when it seems like whenever we turn around, there is something flashing to get our attention,” said Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of Cook Political Report. Walter was the keynote speaker at Monday’s opening session of the National Association of Health Underwriters Capitol Conference in Washington.

Between a geopolitical crisis sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, rampant inflation and a waning of the COVID-19 pandemic, “I am feeling unmoored,” Walter admitted. Still, she added, the fundamentals of elections continue to matter and may matter even more when other things are trying to distract the voting public.

Walter listed five things to look at in the months leading to the Nov. 8 election.

1. Who is in charge in Washington? Democrats currently control the White House and Congress.

“Being in charge can be awesome – you decide what the agenda is,” Walter said. “But when you’re in charge, you also get the blame when things go wrong, whether it’s 100% your fault or not. When things go well, you get the credit, whether it’s 100% your responsibility or not. The voters say, ‘You’re in charge – you fix it.’”

Walter said in the post-World War II era, there were only two times when the party holding the White House didn’t lose seats in the House during the midterms. You have to go back to 1978, when Jimmy Carter was president, to find the last time a party that controlled the White House and both houses of Congress didn’t lose their majority in the midterms.

2. The president’s job approval rating. Midterm elections are not choice elections, but presidential elections are, Walter said. “Midterms are a referendum of the person who is in charge,” she said. “Just like when you were in school, the midterm exam was about what you learned so far. The midterm election is about, how do I think the party in charge is doing? Voters look to how they feel about the president and that’s how they feel about the party.

Walter said it is difficult for an individual member of Congress to distance themselves from the White House when the president is of their own party. The lower a president’s approval rating, the more difficult it is for members of the president’s party to rise in approval.

3. Who is voting in the midterm election? Midterm elections attract a smaller voter turnout than presidential elections do, Walter said.

“Those who are running for election need angry people to be on their side,” she said. “Angry people show up to vote. Who’s angry? People who lost the last election. You saw it in 2018 – a lot of Democrats or people who don’t like Trump hate-watched TV, not because they loved it but because it fueled them. We had a record voter turnout in 2018.”

Walter said one issue in this year’s midterms is what she called “the enthusiasm gap” among voters.

4. Independent voters have soured on President Joe Biden. Walter said most independent voters side with one party or the other, “but they’re just not passionate about it.”

The economy and COVID-19 are still driving voter sentiment, she said. “The public isn’t feeling optimistic. We’re still feeling a sense of division in this country – people are fighting over everything. An umbrella of gloom is over us.”

5. Midterm elections do not predict what will happen in the next presidential election. Walter cited former presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as examples of presidents whose party took a beating in the midterms during their first terms in office but went on to a decisive re-election victory two years later.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine further complicated any prediction of the midterm election outcome, Walter said. She offered some reasons why.

• We don’t know where this is headed.
• The biggest challenge for the president right now isn’t rallying the country around this. Support for punishing Russia is very high. “But the president starts off with a very shallow well of good will among voters,” she said. “With the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the favorable opinion of the president dropped. It’s difficult to get that back.”
• The fact that the most harm we can inflict on Russia comes not from military involvement but from sanctions will be hard on Biden, Walter said, “because it comes back to us in terms of higher prices. For a public already feeling very pessimistic about the state of economy, the fact that the best things we can do to punish Putin eventually come back to hurt us don’t look positive.”

Susan Rupe is managing editor for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at Susan.Rupe@innfeedback.com. Follow her on Twitter @INNsusan.

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Susan Rupe is editor in chief, magazine, for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at susan.rupe@innfeedback.com.