Feb.11

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

What's Going on in These Special Elections?

Yesterday, we had an item about the latest special-election disaster for the Republicans. Whether it's for Congress or for state legislature, there has been a consistent and pronounced shift in the direction of the Democrats. If we were talking about only 60% of elections, or if the shift was mid-single digits, then maybe it wouldn't be too instructive. But it's 100% of elections, and the shift from Trump 2024 to Democrat 2025/2026 is almost invariably in the double digits, and is often in the 20s or 30s. It certainly looks like the ground is shifting underneath the President and his party.

That said, we wondered if there might be a different way to look at things that might support (or falsify) this conclusion. And we think there is a useful one. One of the big lessons of the 2016 election (and we've written about this many times, too) is that college vs. non-college is an important dividing line in the electorate these days, with the former skewing Democratic and the latter skewing Republican (and skewing Trumpublican, in particular). In 2024, for example, according to Pew Research, non-college voters broke for Trump by 14 points, while college voters broke for Kamala Harris by 16 points.

There aren't too many exit polls for state legislature special elections, so we can't quite examine things that way. However, there ARE approval polls that look at Trump's approval through the lens of education level. Given what happened in 2016, and how overlooking this dynamic led many pollsters astray, you might think they would ALL be collecting this information. Most of them aren't, at least not right now, but we did find four major pollsters who have done recent polls, and who did have an "education level" cross-tab. Here are their results:

Among college-educated voters, 58% voted against Trump in 2024. Now, about two thirds of them disapprove of him. That's probably meaningful. Among non-college voters, 43% voted against Trump in 2024. Now, more than half of them disapprove. That's probably meaningful, too.

It's a different sort of evidence that suggests there's been a meaningful shift in the electorate. Due to the lack of exit polls, we don't know exactly what the dynamic is. Are the folks who appear to have moved into the "disapprove" camp actually flipping, and voting for Democrats? Or are they just staying home on Election Day? Either way, it almost certainly means a loss of support for Republican candidates.

And how about a third sort of evidence? In this case, it's not numerical. On Monday, the administration posted a remarkable document to the White House website, with the title "Don't Be a Panican. We're Winning — and We're Not Slowing Down." It is a summation of all the ways in which the Trump administration is allegedly "winning." Presumably readers don't need us to tell them that if you are actually winning, you do not generally need to persuade people that is the case. We were reminded of the fact that, while he was alive, and after his playing days were over, the public-appearance contracts for former Yankee Joe DiMaggio specified that he MUST be identified as the "greatest living ballplayer." DiMaggio was a fine ballplayer, no doubt, but let's just say that Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Henry Aaron never felt the need to make such a demand.

The upshot is that there are several pretty solid pieces of evidence that a blue wave could well be forming. It won't be as tsunamic (yes, that is a word) as some of the blue waves of the past, because the number of competitive House and Senate seats is smaller than it once was. The picture will get clearer as we get closer to Election Day, the candidates are known, and there begins to be substantial polling of the actual races voters will weigh in on in November (and in October, for early voters). (Z)