Part 1: South Florida's Mid-term political landscape will shape the country
Bottom Line: 2018 is anything but a typical midterm election cycle in South Florida. We have a wide-open Governor's race, in addition to a high-profile Senate race that might determine the outcome of senate control nationally. Speaking of congressional control three South Florida races might determine who controls the US House. I'll start there.
Weekly in my mid-week, midterm elections update, I breakdown the historical picture of what typically happens in midterm cycles (party out of Presidential power gains 4 senate seats and 30 house seats) and what the current landscape is shaping up to reflect (Democrats gaining 1 senate seat and 30 house seats). As we get closer to our August primaries, data becomes more prevalent and relevant. Additionally, most states have already had their primaries at which point polling becomes far more reliable. Something has increasingly become pretty clear over the past month. Despite the big headlines and stories of the day – the political mood of the country hasn't moved much. Over the past six weeks we've not had a move of greater than two points in average polling. That seems to suggest that unless there's a massive event that happens between today and Election Day (which of course is possible), our political stage is setting up. It's one in which it's generally better to be a Democrat than not, sticking with midterm election history, but doesn't quite resemble a wave type of an election.
In a wave election Democrats would easily regain control of the house and despite the senate map, which is favorable for Republicans this year, they'd be able to gain control as well. Instead we have a landscape that's likely to produce a narrow margin of control to either party as Democrats are going to gain seats (there's only an 8% historical chance they wouldn't have coming into this cycle) and you can look right at Florida in terms of what congressional control will look like in 2019. As often has been the case over the past 26 years, as Florida goes, so goes the country. With that in mind as I've started modeling outcomes for this cycle over the past two weeks there are three races that are telling in South Florida and one big Senate race. Those races are the house races in three districts represented by Republicans. Those are...
- Florida's 18th: Brian Mast
- Florida's 26th: Carlos Curbelo
- Florida's 27th: Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
And Florida's senate race currently represented by Democrat Bill Nelson. In the second part of today's story I'll breakout the national implications for congressional control based on the outcome of these races.