Election Forecast: Is the Red Wave a Tsunami or Puddle?
Poll results based on exit interviews during the 2020 election. The poll shows Trump had more support from minority voters in 2020 than he did in 2016. (BBC News 2020)
Editor’s Note: This article entirely reflects the political, social, and economic opinions of one individual writer and not the Grace Gazette as a whole.
The Biden administration has been an abysmal failure on level with the Hindenburg. The president’s administration has been marked by rising gas prices, rising inflation, recession fears, a bear market, military failures, increased aggression from our enemies like China and Russia, increased illegal immigration, increased crime in our major cities, and finally, utter incompetence from the man himself who seems to be as aloof as a deer caught in the headlights of a big rig.
This incompetence becomes painfully more evident with every passing day as he continues to refer to dead people, shake hands with invisible entities, and walk into the unknown. None of this is helped by his elementary school-level instruction cards on how to act like a functioning human being. All of this, and more, has culminated in Biden having the lowest approval rating, currently sitting at 36 percent, of any president at this stage in his presidency.,
However, Biden’s friends in the media, like Superman, came to his rescue ahead of the midterms and made these failures go up, up, and away (emphasizing the away). He himself has tried to shy away from these failures ahead of the midterms, often blaming his failures on external reasons, or even changing the definitions of certain terms to better fit his image. Recently, Biden released 15 million barrels of oil from our strategic petroleum reserves, which are already dangerously depleted, to hopefully decrease the price of crude oil (NPR 2022). This is power politics at its finest.
The most significant issues in this midterm election cycle to regular voters seems to be increased crime, immigration, inflation, and the protection of abortion rights (Gallup 2022). Republicans, I believe, are trusted to deal with the first three issues substantially more than Democrats. If this were a typical election year, Republicans would be poised to retake both houses of Congress in a sweep on level with the 1894 midterms. Still, because of numerous issues, this may not be as big a red wave as everyone initially thought.
Regarding the House of Representatives, Republicans still hold an advantage over Democrats to retake the House, as over 71% of likely voters are voting Republican in their local house elections (CNN 2022). Both look poised to keep critical areas of support. However, Republicans have been making significant headway with minority groups as shown in the 2020 election, as well as early polling.
(BBC;US and Canada Bureau; Nov. 22, 2022)
These headways seem most evident with the Hispanic community, as more Americans who identify as Hispanic or Latinx seem to be supporting Republican candidates (NBC 2022).
The Senate, if you believe most generic media sources, is leaning towards staying in the hands of the Democrats, but the answer, as is with most concepts, is not that simple, as Republicans still hold a more than solid chance to take back control.
The two parties look ready to retain their strongholds, such as New York and California for Democrats and Oklahoma and Utah for Republicans. However, the battleground states this time seem to be North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, which, if you have followed election news in previous cycles, are very predictable as well as newly minted purple states, states almost evenly split between party lines. The two most heated of these races seem to be Pennsylvania and Georgia, both of which Biden won narrowly in the last election.
In Pennsylvania, we have a television surgeon who doesn’t even live in the State facing off against a man who was mayor of a small town not even large enough to be on a map, and who recently had a stroke that he has not gotten over; these are the best options each party can muster. Polling suggests that John Fetterman, the small town mayor and Democratic nominee, as well as former lieutenant governor of the state, is leading in the polls despite the questions on his health, which he refuses to answer. However, this lead in the polls has been more than halved in recent months, thanks to Mehmet Oz’s vigorous campaigning around Pennsylvania’s swing districts.
Pennsylvania has become an increasingly purple state largely due to the Democrats abandoning blue collar jobs. However, Pennsylvania tends to have Democrat-leaning polling, but the same polls that have Fetterman up by double digits leave out large swaths of western Pennsylvania that consistently vote Republican (Washington Post 2022). An example of this can be seen in the Republican primary year.
Dave Mcormick, The candidate with the most support in western Pennsylvania, was initially polled to only get 13 percent of the Republican vote but ended up getting 35 percent mainly due to western Pennsylvania voters who do not appear on traditional voter polls; Oz only narrowly beat him (Washington Post 2022). However, this uncounted vote against him will now be forced to vote for him over far-left Fetterman, who has suggested we release up to a third of all convicted criminals (RNC 2022). It’s these voters that gave Trump the state in 2016 and narrowly the state in 2020.
In comparison, the other major race is in Georgia, where we have two men with equally terrible relationships with their families racing in a state that cares about family values more than anything else; again, these are the best options each party can seemingly muster. Similar to Pennsylvania, the Democrat, Raphael Warnock, is leading over the Republican, Herschel Walker, in most polls, which is an increasing trend in the state (CNBC,2022).
Georgia was once a reliable Republican state; in 2000, Bush won the State by 12%, and in 2004 won it by 17%. Even as recently as 2016, Trump won the State by 5%; however, this has shifted in recent years (FiveThirtyEight 2020).The potential cause for this shift has been increased immigration to the Atlanta area. The people immigrating to Atlanta tend to come from more Democratic-leaning states, most commonly New York, and Illinois and bring their values with them. This had tipped the scales of power in the state to lean blue but by only a razor-thin margin, as Biden won the state by .23 percent. This Senate race will by most means decide the lean of the state in the 2024 election.
Both Parties have again proffered even more extremist candidates than ever before, and the American people are becoming increasingly tired of this charade. This November, Americans need to take back America and bring the country back to a mindset of common sense legislation, something both sides have not propelled in decades.