Codebook by Kristen Soltis Anderson
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The 100 Facts You Need One Year From The Midterms

Many data points give us a multifaceted view of how things are looking ahead of next year's big U.S. elections.

Kristen Soltis Anderson

Nov 19, 2021
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A decade and a half ago, I started playing fantasy football. My college friends started a women's league, and I drafted a pre-Jessica Simpson Tony Romo to lead my very first team. As a competitive person who believes in the power of preparation and study, I started to get deep into the world of fantasy football analysis and became a regular reader of ESPN's Matthew Berry. Lo these many years later, Berry is still a fixture in fantasy football media land, and every year, his landmark pre-season column is his "100 Facts" column.

The purpose of this column, Berry first wrote back in 2012, is to establish that there are a nearly infinite number of data points people can use to make arguments that support their worldview (in this, case an argument that a certain NFL player is likely to over or under perform in the coming year). If you like a player, there are surely data points you can find to suggest they are on track for a season full of touchdowns. If you dislike a player, there are just as surely data points that suggest someone is injury prone, or likely to be overshadowed, or will drop off after a strong prior year, and so on.

As Berry puts it:

Instead of giving his opinion about whether a player will boom or bust, he provides the facts that are guiding his thinking and lets you shape your own view. I find this to also be a useful way of evaluating large quantities of data about the political environment (and wrote a column to this effect ahead of the 2020 election).

We are less than a year from the 2022 midterm elections. Here are the 100 Facts that are shaping my thinking.

  1. In the last eighty years, all but two midterms (1998, 2002) saw the President's own party lose seats in the House.

  2. A few weeks ago, Republicans won the Virginia Governor's race by two points.

  3. Republicans came within three points of winning the Governor's race in New Jersey.

  4. Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points in 2020.

  5. Joe Biden won New Jersey by 16 points in 2020.

  6. In 2009, one year after the historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency, Republicans flipped both the Governor's races in Virginia (Bob McDonnell) and New Jersey (Chris Christie).

  7. In 2009, one year before the "Red Wave" election that saw a net 63 seats flip Republican in the House, the ABC/Washington Post poll saw Republicans hold a 3 point lead on the "generic ballot" - the question of which party's candidate people would rather vote for.

  8. Their most recent poll has Republicans with a 10 point lead on that same question.

  9. You need 218 seats to hold a majority in the House of Representatives.

  10. On this day in 2009, Democrats held 258 House seats.

  11. Today, Democrats hold 221 House seats, with one vacancy in a likely Democratic district formerly held by Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL).

  12. 2022 will be the first election held with new Congressional district lines drawn based on the 2020 Census reapportionment data.

  13. Texas is gaining two seats in Congress, the most of any state, due to its population growth.

  14. The New York Times estimates that from just the twelve states that have completed their redistricting process for 2022, Republicans have added a net of five seats where they have the political advantage.

  15. Republicans need a pickup of five seats to take control of the House of Representatives.

  16. Seven in ten Americans describe the state of the economy today as "not so good" or "poor".

  17. In November 2009, unemployment was 10%.

  18. Today, unemployment is 4.6%.

  19. In November 2009, inflation was almost nonexistent.

  20. Today, inflation is at its highest rate since 1990, at 6.2% year over year.

  21. Asked what economic problem is the most pressing, 45% of Americans said it is inflation, compared to only 15% who say it is jobs.

  22. All the way back in March, my polling showed people's biggest hesitation around the American Rescue Plan COVID recovery bill was that it might cause inflation.

  23. 58% of Americans in that ABC poll support Build Back Better when described as "the federal government spending about two trillion dollars to address climate change and to create or expand preschool, health care and other social programs."...

  24. ...But only 44% support Build Back Better when described in a Fox poll as "President Biden’s social spending plan for programs such as health care, childcare, and climate change, [with the] federal government increasing spending on these social programs by more than a trillion dollars."

  25. Only 27% of people in that same poll think the Build Back Better plan will "help their family."

  26. A CNN poll from October also found only 25% of Americans think passing Biden's agenda in Congress would make their families "better off."

  27. Two thirds of voters say they think President Biden's administration has done "not very much" or less since he took office, according to the ABC/Washington Post poll.

  28. President Biden took office with a job approval of 55%.

  29. Former President Obama took office with a job approval of 63%.

  30. Former President Trump took office with a job approval of 44%.

  31. At this point in his presidency, Trump's job approval had fallen six points to 38%.

  32. At this point in his presidency, Obama's job approval had fallen seventeen points to 46%.

  33. Biden splits the difference - his job approval has fallen thirteen points, to 42%.

  34. In their first midterm after being elected, Trump and Obama both saw the opposing party flip dozens of seats in the House.

  35. Despite all this, as of press time, the PredictIt markets still gives Democrats an almost one-in-five chance of holding the House in 2022.

  36. PredictIt also gives Democrats a one-third chance of holding the Senate.

  37. Republicans only need to pick up a net of one seat to regain control of the Senate.

  38. In the Senate, there are 20 Republicans and 14 Democrat up for re-election this year.

  39. The last time this group of Senators were on the ballot was in the Republican-favorable 2016 election.

  40. Cook Political Report believes only nine of these 34 Senate races will be competitive or potentially see a seat change parties.

  41. Of the competitive seats held by Democrats, the most "at risk" are Georgia's Raphael Warnock, Arizona's Mark Kelly, New Hampshire's Maggie Hassan, and Nevada's Catherine Cortez Mastro.

  42. Joe Biden won all four of those states by varying margins.

  43. Cook Political Report lists Ohio's Senate race to fill the open seat left by retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R) as "lean Republican".

  44. Donald Trump won Ohio by eight points.

  45. There's just a lot going on in that primary.

  46. The other Republican Senators retiring are Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC).

  47. There's just a lot going on in that primary, too.

  48. The final "tossup" seat held by Republicans is held by incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) who has not announced yet whether he is running for re-election.

  49. 58% of Americans say that the Republican Party is out of touch with the concerns of most people these days.

  50. 62% of Americans say that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the concerns of most people these days.

  51. 63% of Americans say things in our country are off on the wrong track.

  52. Before COVID-19, the last time that "wrong track" number had been bad was in the fall of 2017 wake of Trump's comments on Charlottesville, Hurricane Maria, and the Las Vegas mass shooting.

  53. In the 2016 presidential election, 136.6 million votes were cast.

  54. In the 2020 national election, 158.3 million votes were cast - over twenty million more than the prior presidential - a 16% increase.

  55. In 2017 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey, there were just over 2 million votes cast. In 2021, there were 2.6 million votes cast - a 30% increase.

  56. In the 2017 gubernatorial elections in Virginia, 2.6 million votes were cast. In 2021, there were 3.3 million votes cast - a 27% increase.

  57. In the 2018 midterm elections, 115 million votes were cast.

  58. President Biden's job approval on the economy tends to be lower than his overall job approval, and is currently at 37% on RealClearPolitics.

  59. Biden's job approval on COVID-19 has been consistently higher than his overall job approval and today is at 47%.

  60. This is around twenty points lower than where his COVID-19 job approval stood when he first took office.

  61. On January 21, 2021, the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases was 188,000 according to the New York Times tracker.

  62. By June 21st, the seven-day average was 11,000 new cases.

  63. Today, the seven-day average is 88,000 cases and rising.

  64. Nearly seven in ten Americans over age 12 are fully vaccinated.

  65. A slim majority (53%) of Americans think that their area has gotten COVID-19 restrictions "about right", while of those who are dissatisfied, more say they think things have been "too strict" (25%) versus "not strict enough" (16%) according to ABC/Washington post polling.

  66. In September and October, Fox News polling found majorities of Americans supported a vaccine mandate for businesses that employ over 100 workers.

  67. By November, that support had fallen and only 49% supported such a mandate.

  68. Some of the places with the worst levels of COVID-19 transmission right now are colder northern states like Michigan and Minnesota.

  69. It will be winter soon.

  70. Spring is often when "encounters" - expulsions and apprehensions of undocumented migrants - along the southern border of the U.S. reach their peak each year, according to Pew Research Center analysis.

  71. 2021 saw the highest number of illegal border crossings since the government began tracking this data in 1960, according to the New York Times.

  72. While Donald Trump was president, each time the NBC News poll asked voters which party they trusted more to handle immigration, more chose Democrats by margins ranging from four to seven points.

  73. The most recent NBC News poll shows Republicans with a nine point advantage over Democrats on the issue of immigration today.

  74. That same poll also shows Republicans with a 27 point advantage on the issue of border security.

  75. Of the five metro areas that swung the most dramatically toward Donald Trump when comparing the 2020 election results to 2016, four of them are metros in Texas along the southern border.

  76. In recent years, Republicans have dramatically increased their advantages over Democrats in rural America.

  77. Large swathes of rural America have lost population since the 2010 Census.

  78. According to the 2020 network exit polls, a majority (52%) of voters in the presidential election were over the age of 50.

  79. Voters under 50 broke for Biden by sizable margins while voters over 50 broken narrowly for Trump.

  80. Midterms tend to have an older electorate than presidential elections, and in 2018, voters over age 50 made up 56% of voters that year.

  81. The oldest "millennials" - born in 1981 - will be over the age of 40 when the midterms arrive.

  82. In the 2012 election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney lost the Presidential Election by a four-point popular vote margin.

  83. The next year, in response to that defeat, the party produced a so-called "autopsy" to try to chart a path forward.

  84. In the 2020 election, Republican candidate Donald Trump lost the Presidential Election by a four-point popular vote margin.

  85. Republicans have not done any similar "autopsy" analyzing the causes of defeat in 2020.

  86. Two-thirds of Republicans do not believe Joe Biden legitimately won the election according to polling from NORC.

  87. In 2012, in addition to losing the presidency, Republicans lost a net of 2 Senate seats and 8 House seats

  88. In 2020, Republicans actually picked up a net of twelve House seats.

  89. With one year left before the 2018 midterms, 23 House Republicans had announced their intention to retire from the House compared to only 11 Democrats.

  90. With one year left before the 2022 midterms, 15 House Democrats have announced their intention to retire from the House compared to only 11 Republicans.

  91. This spring, a majority of Americans viewed Joe Biden favorably.

  92. This spring, only four in ten Americans viewed Donald Trump favorably.

  93. Today, Joe Biden is viewed unfavorably by 52% of Americans according to the RealClearPolitics polling averages.

  94. Today, Donald Trump is viewed unfavorably by 52% of Americans according to the RealClearPolitics polling averages.

  95. It has been over 300 days since Donald Trump was kicked off of Twitter.

  96. Joe Biden is 78 years old.

  97. Donald Trump is 75 years old.

  98. Only 40% of voters think Joe Biden is "in good health" according to a Morning Consult poll for POLITICO.

  99. Joe Biden turns 79 this weekend.

  100. Donald Trump would get more votes than Joe Biden if a rematch election were held today, according to a poll from Emerson College.

These are just facts. Come to your own conclusions.

(Cover image credit: Nora Carroll Photography/Getty Images)

(Corrections from original post include fixing a typo in fact 54, a missing citation in fact 23, and a duplicate of fact 95.)

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2 Comments

  • Antonio Mora
    Writes A View from the Center
    100 facts! Thanks for doing all that research for me 🙂. I’m writing a related piece and will cite this.
    • 26w
  • Francisco Castelo Branco
    the major issue is to understand if the GOP have enough seats to impeach Joe Biden
    • 26w
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