If polls are right, Democrats project to win the popular vote by 8-9 points on Tuesday. That's a lot; bigger than the GOP margins in 1994 and 2010.
Because of how voters are distributed (and in the House, gerrymandered) and which Senate seats are up this year, that probably won't be enough for Ds to get it done in the Senate, and the House is far from a sure thing. But that would be a fairly impressive showing.
The reason I say "pretty impressive" is because opposition parties usually do well at the midterms. Democrats are on track for an above-average but not spectacular performance (again, if polls are about right).
Indeed, a good argument about Trumpism as an electoral strategy is that it's decidedly below-average, but not so below-average as one would have thought, especially given that the House, Senate and Electoral College all reward a party that overperforms among working-class whites.
Anyway, a lot of hot takes are going to be written based on whether Democrats wind up with 22- or 23+ House seats next week. And if you're trying to forecast the horse race—as I'm trying to do—that's the most interesting thing to keep track of.
But if you're a pundit and you want to be at all literate and numerate about evaluating the intrinsic popularity of Trumpism, that's maybe not the best metric. You'd want to look at, well, the **popular vote**. You'd also want to factor e.g. governorships into account.
p.s. Don't mean to imply that any outcome on Tuesday would constitute a repudiation of Trump. But there's a highly plausible world in which, e.g. Ds win the House popular vote by 6-7%, 21 (but not 23!) House seats and a lot of gov races. Be careful with your 🔥 takes on that one.
