Starting today we will be tracking the Senate polls daily. Not to throw cold water on ourselves, but many of the key races will probably be close and announcing that (X) is ahead of (Y) by 2 ± 4 points is not terribly informative, but it is the best we can do. See the Map algorithm page.

The one "tie" shown in the score is Nebraska, where Dan Osborn (I) is leading Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) because the official Democrat dropped out. We will indicate "independent leading" by scoring it as a tie and coloring the tied state purple.

Today we have the Democrats' nightmare scenario. Mike Rogers (R) is leading Abdul El-Sayed (D) in Michigan. If the Democrats fail to get control of the Senate, which they would get if they win Michigan and all the other states go as on the map, the Party will tear itself to bits starting Nov. 4.

We don't use every poll that is published. The reality that the media rarely discuss is that most pollsters work for campaigns. Commonly, they poll a state, run an ad campaign there, then poll again. Candidates want to know whether the ad campaign worked. They need honest polls for that. However, what they publish may or may not relate to what they measured. They might also publish only those polls that suit whatever narrative they are trying to push. When a consultant publishes a polls, keep in mind that its only goal is to help its candidate client.

Interestingly enough, it is fairly easy to tell which pollsters are actually campaign consultants because they brag about it openly. When a pollster's website proudly announces: "We helped elect 18 Republicans," you kind of know which team they are on and what their business model is. We don't use polls produced by campaign consultants because we don't trust them. Many small universities have gotten into the polling business, mostly for the PR (Have you ever heard of Quinnipiac University in any context other than its polling?). We also trust companies like SurveyUSA and Mason-Dixon, which are hired by media companies to run polls. We also trust polls run by a (D) firm paired with an (R) firm. Interestingly, Fox is using the combination of Beacon (D) and Shaw (R) for its polling this year, so we will use their polls. Note that all the other pages, like the graphs, tipping point etc. should be live now, not just the map. You can click on a state to see a graph of its polls or use the Senate graphs" link to see all of them.

We are trying to be as transparent as possible, so we are making all the raw data available. Click on the "Data" link in the blue banner above the map to view or download it. If you spot a poll that we missed, please wait a day before telling us. Our cycle is to collect the polls each evening and publish them the next morning. If a poll comes out Tuesday morning, we run it Wednesday morning, not Tuesday morning, because we do only one posting a day, usually before 8 or 9 a.m. ET most days, although when there is a lot of news, sometimes we don't make it by 9.

We would appreciate your teling family, friends, coworkers, and others about the site. If you have a website or blog and would like a copy of our map that updates automatically on it, please look at our icons page. All you have to do is put three lines of HTML on your website or blog and the current map will appear there, updated every day by magic until the midterms are over.

More Primaries Tomorrow

Three states are holding primary elections tomorrow: Alaska, Florida, and Wyoming. Let's take a look:

• Alaska: There are primaries for both the Senate and governor tomorrow in the Last Frontier State. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) wants a third term, but 15 other people think that being a U.S. senator would be cool, so they filed. The top four in the all-party primary will advance to the ranked choice general election. This means that some random person who filed on a lark and who gets 50 votes in the primary, might end up on the general election ballot as a kind of consolation prize.
  
  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) got down on his hands and knees and begged former Rep. Mary Peltola (D) to run for the Senate, even though she would have had a much greater chance at winning if she had run for governor. Red states sometimes elect Democrats as governor (e.g., Kansas and Kentucky) and blue states sometimes elect Repblicans as governor (e.g., New Hampshire and Vermont). Peltola took one for the team and filed for the Senate. Better to be a small fish in a big pond than a big fish in a frozen pond, we suppose.
  
  Boy, have the rodents been reproducing in the short Alaska summer. Teacher Dan Sullivan filed to run, but the head of the Alaska Division of Elections, Carol Beecher (R), smelled a rodent and said Sullivan was a sham candidate. Sullivan said he was a serious candidate, running as a centrist Republican who is not MAGA. He appealed and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution has only three requirements for the Senate: (1) being 30, (2) being a resident of the state you are running in, and (3) being a U.S. citizen. It said anyone who meets all three, like Sullivan, can run. Beecher grudgingly put him on the ballot but listed the senator as "incumbent," something not normally done.
  
  But there is more. An unknown super PAC created a virtual office in Sarah Palin's home town of Wasilla and spent $770,000 to promote Green Party candidate Richard Grayson in a sneaky attempt to get lefty voters to vote for him instead of for the moderate Peltola. Another dark money group spent $240,000 to promote Democrat David Leslie. Two can tango, though. Another secret group spent $1.2 million supporting Alaskan Party candidate Earl Southworth and Republican Gerald Heikes in an attempt to dilute Sen. Sullivan's vote. Tomorrow, Sen. Sullivan, Peltola, and two others will qualify for the November ballot. Polls show Sullivan and Peltola basically tied in the general election.
  
  Rep. Nick Begich III (R-AK) is running for a second term in the House. Thirteen other people filed, We didn't know Alaska had so many people. Pastor Matt Schultz (D) entered the race but later withdrew and endorsed Bill Hill (I). He is the kinda, sorta, leading "Democrat," but upsetting Begich seems unlikely.
  
  Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R-AK) is term-limited and both parties are actively contesting the gubernatorial race. Twelve Republicans and two Democrats have filed. The Republican who has raised the most money is Matt Heilala, a member of the state medical board. Next is Alaska AG Treg Taylor. Third is the garbage candidate, Bernadette Wilson. We mean that literally; she owns a waste management company. The two Democrats are Tom Begich, former minority leader in the state Senate, and the uncle of Rep. Nick Begich III, and former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins. Begich has a famous name but Kreiss-Tomkins has the most money. This race is also a top-four primary. None of the candidates is over 20% in the polling, but with so many candidates splitting the vote, 15% could be enough to make it to the general election ballot.
  
  
• Florida: There is a hot race here in the Democratic senatorial primary. State Rep. Angie Nixon is running against Alex Vindman, who blew the whistle on Trump that led to his first impeachment. He is the brother of Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA). Nixon is very progressive, but does not have the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Rep, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Nixon has been endorsed by Reps. Ilhan Omar (DFL-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), though. Could Nixon be too far left for Sanders and AOC? The entire Democratic establishment is behind Vindman. Vindman has raised $15 million to Nixon's $625,000. Appointed Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) does not have any serious competition for the Republican nomination. Florida has become a red state, but appointed senators don't have a good track record winning on their own and in a very big blue wave, the guy who almost brought Trump down will turn out a lot of Democrats and might have a chance. Assuming he survives his primary, of course.
  
  Most of the House races are not very competitive due to the extensive gerrymandering. In the newly redrawn, FL-25 district, which Donald Trump would have won by 9 points, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) is being challenged by left-wing activist and proud DSA member Oliver Larkin. So far this cycle, leftist insurgents have a mixed record, most notably winning a Senate primary in Michigan but losing a gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin. Larkin has also not been endorsed by Bernie Sanders or AOC. Larkin is strongly anti-Israel. A quarter of the district is Jewish. Larkin's views may not go over so well with them. Another quarter is Latino. We are not sure how Latinos (particularly Cubans) feel about Israel.
  
  Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is term limited, so there is an open-seat race for governor. Eleven Republicans have filed to run in on that side of the primary. The main contenders are Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (R-FL), Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), Florida House Speaker Paul Renner (R), and investor, racist, white supremacist, antisemite and Christian Nationalist James Fishback. Donalds has been endorsed by Donald Trump and many others. Fishback has been endorsed by Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate and Carrie Prejean. Donalds has raised $11 million. Collins is second at $1 million. Donalds is also 40+ points ahead of the others in the primary polling. If elected, Donalds would be the state's first Black governor.
  
  Democrats have no bench in Florida anymore. Six people have filed for the Democratic primary. The strongest one is former Rep. David Jolly, who used to be a Republican. He is crushing it in the Democratic primary polls. In the general election polls, Donalds is leading Jolly, but if enough bigots refused to be polled and vote for Jolly, the white guy, he could win in an upset. Still, people don't like turncoats. Charlie Crist discovered this the hard way in 2014 when the former Republican ran (and lost) as a Democrat. The main difference with Donalds is that Crist is white and Donalds is Black. There could be voters who are telling the pollsters they will vote for the Black Republican but on the secrecy of the polling booth will vote for the white former Republican, or won't vote at all.
  
  
• Wyoming: Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) is retiring so there is an open-seat election for the Senate. Wyoming's lone representative, Harriet Hageman (R-WY), is going for a promotion and will very likely get it. She has no serious primary competition. Former state Rep. James Byrd filed for the Democratic Senate nomination. He raised $19,575 and spent $18,476 so far. His only competition is a landscaper, Billy Benavidez. Hageman will crush Byrd in the general election by 40+ points.
  
  Hageman's seat in the House is being fought over by 10 Republicans and two Democrats, Three Republicans have raised serious money. They are Stephen Friess, son of Republican megadonor Foster Friess ($2.2M), businessman Reid Rasner ($2.0M) and Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray ($1.3M). Despite being behind moneywise, Gray is ahead in the polls. Former state Senate minority leader Lisa Kinney (D) will almost certainly win the right to be crushed in the general election.

Next week we have the Oklahoma runoff. In September, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Delaware wrap up the primaries. (V)

Nate Silver's Model Looks Good for the Democrats

There are many ways to look at how an election might go. There are polls, prediction markets, fundamentals, how it went in previous years, presidential approval, candidate quality, the generic House poll, the inflation rate, the change in the Dow Jones this year, direction-of-the-country polls, expert predictions, and many other options that have some predictive value. It is possible to make a probabalistic model that takes all these factors into consideration and weights each one to come to a prediction for each race. Earlier in August, we discussed a model made by G. Elliott Morris, who replaced Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight after ABC News did not renew Silver's contract.

Now Silver, like Morris, has struck out on his own and made a new model. He calls it FLIPR. If done right, it can be more accurate than just looking at one factor. Some of the things that matter, like candidate quality, are hard to quantify and feed into a computer, but candidate approval ratings can serve as a proxy. Other factors like the inflation rate, Dow Jones direction, and presidential approval are numeric to start with.

The tricky part about these models is how much to weight each factor. Is presidential approval more or less important than the generic House poll? What model makers do is start with some guesses then run the model on past elections. If using the data available on Aug. 17, 2020 doesn't do a good job predicting the (now known) 2020 Senate results, time to tweak the weights. It may take tens of thousands of trials to find the best set of weights. Then it is time to try the model on other years until the model maker is satisfied this is the best he can do. The use of different factors and different weights accounts for potential differences between different models. Also, unique events in a given cycle—wars, pandemics, mid-cycle redistricting, candidates dropping out in July, unpopular Supreme Court decisions, etc.—mess up all models because there is no way to calibrate how they affect the elections based on history.

Using the model, it is possible to ask questions like: "What is the probability of the Democrats controlling the House based on some assumed House popular vote?" Here is how Silver's model answer's that question now. He runs the model every day with the then-current inputs, so this can and will change over time as Donald Trump's approval, the economy, and other inputs change:

As you can see, if the Democrats win the House popular vote nationwide by at least 5 points, the probability of their capturing the House is 97%—that is, all but certain. But if the House popular vote is a tie, the probability of the Republicans keeping the House is 96%. This is largely due to the House Republican bias due to excessive gerrymandering. Democrats need to win the House popular vote by about 3 points to make the House a tossup.

Now on to the Senate. Here is the table:

This is a tougher hill to climb for the Democrats because to get control of the Senate, they have to win deep into red territory, in places like Alaska (R+6), Iowa (R+6), Ohio (R+5) and Texas (R+6). For the House, all the Democrats have to do is win the competitive races. For the Senate, that is not enough. They have to beat Republican incumbents and challengers in heavily Republican territory. At a D+7 popular vote, the Democrats are the Senate favorites, but to get to a 90% probability, it would take a 9-point win in the popular vote. That is not impossible, but a steep hill to climb. For the Senate, however, candidate quality matters much more than for the House. A loathsome candidate like Ken Paxton (R-TX) could lose even if the Democrats don't run the table nationally. Predicting the Senate is trickier than predicting the House because the character of the individual candidates matter much more than for the House. Also, the model doesn't account for specific local factors, like the bribery scandal in Ohio that will soon be back in the news (due to a new trial) and may haunt Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH).

All in all, Silver's Senate model predicts a 57% chance of the Democrats capturing the Senate. This is close to the 55% Morris' model predicts. The details of the models are closely guarded secrets, but both Morris and Silver understand what factors are important, even if their simulations have produced somewhat different weights.

Silver's model also predicts individual Senate races. Here are the most likely pickups for both parties:

Clearly the polling plays a big role in the model. That is why Roy Cooper is almost a shoo-in in North Carolina while Troy Jackson is not in Maine, despite Maine being bluer (D+4) than North Carolina (R+1). In the model, Dan Osborn (I) in Nebraska counts as a Democrat since there is no actual Democrat in the race.

As an aside, Silver has three versions of the model roughly as follows:

• Deluxe uses all relevant factors.
• Classic uses polls, national averages, and historical fundamentals.
• Lite uses only polls with some corrections.

Today and going forward, we will cite only the deluxe model. The "Lite" model just uses polls, which doesn't add much to our model and map. The "Classic" model throws in more, but as time goes on and Silver gets more data and experience, why not take advantage of it and use his most recent model? (V)

What Was with the Polling in Michigan and Wisconsin?

As long as we are talking about models and polls, let's look again at the question of what happened in Michigan and Wisconsin. The Senate primary polls in Michigan and the gubernatorial primary polls in Wisconsin showed progressive candidates doing vastly better than they actually did. Why? The New York Times very own Nate (Cohn) took a stab at figuring out what went wrong and whether any polls can be trusted anymore.

Let us begin with some general remarks. First, primaries are always hard to poll because people aren't really tuned in yet and it is very hard to guess who will actually vote and who will not. People who answer the poll may say they will vote, but in the end don't vote because November is far off and they have better things to do now. This could lead to an actual electorate that is very different from the sample.

Second, in the general election, many people know exactly who they will vote for because one has a (D) and one has an (R). If they are operating in good faith, they tell the pollster the truth. For a primary, these markers are absent and people may genuinely not know much about the candidates and could change their mind easily later based on new information. Primary choices are not as deeply ingrained as (D) vs. (R) general elections.

Third, telephone response rates are dreadful nowadays. The old model of just dialing phone numbers at random simply doesn't work anymore. Many people have their phone set up to reject all calls not from people in their contact list. Pollsters are trying to deal with this by contacting potential respondents by text message and online. This definitely increases the response rate, which is good. But it strongly overweights people who respond to unknown text messages and people who are terminally online. The people who do respond tend to be younger, better-educated, more highly engaged, and more progressive than the average Democrat. This introduces a strong progressive bias into the sample. This is related to the "non-response" bias we saw in 2016, when many Trump supporters hung up on the pollster instantly but Hillary Clinton's supporters politely answered all the questions. Cohn has some recent data on this. In the NYT poll of the mayoralty race in NYC, 70% of the respondents who were polled by text message supported Zohran Mamdani but only 54% of those polled by a telephone call supported him.

Cohn also notes that Michigan and Wisconsin were very different. One size does not fit all. In Michigan, there were no neutral primary polls in the final days (because Abdul El-Sayed was ahead by 15+ points, so why spend the money?). But there was a Glengariff Group general election poll released a week before the primary that had Mike Rogers (R) crushing El-Sayed 49-39 but had Haley Stevens eking out a narrow win. That could have shocked some El-Sayed supporters into thinking: "I want to send a message, but even more, I want a Democrat to be elected." Many voters could have changed their minds days before the election and there were no late primary polls to capture that shift.

Wisconsin was a different kettle of fish cheese. First Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez (D-WI) was in, then she was out. Then Mandela Barnes was in, then he was out. David Crowley was in, then out, then in again. It is not hard to imagine that with the moderate candidates coming and going like flies, they wouldn't poll well. The results bear this out. Polls had the progressive Francesca Hong at roughly 44%. She got 39%, so her number is pretty much on target. What was surprising is that David Crowley did far, far better than predicted. But his polling could have reflected many voters' uncertainty about whether he was in or out. Still, by Primary Day, he was the only moderate left, so all the moderates voted for him in the end. Also, in the final week, the resurfacing of Hong's old tweets about canceling Thanksgiving (too colonial) probably cost her some votes. And remember, Wisconsin is the mother of all swing states, so there are a lot of moderates. The kids in Madison are noisy, but they don't represent the entire state well. The moral of the story here is that when there is one progressive in for the duration and the moderates keep coming and going, the polls are not likely to capture the support for the moderates well. It might be true in the other direction, though there aren't any clear-cut recent cases of progressives shuttling in and out of a major election. Usually, the left coalesces around a candidate pretty early, and that candidate stays the course. (V)

Trump Is Salting the Earth

Donald Trump won't admit it in public, but he seems to realize that he is not going to get a third term. Even if the Supreme Court rules that term limits are unconstitutional, Barack Obama might well decide to run again. Facing Obama would be Trump's nightmare. So working on the assumption that he is out on Jan. 20, 2029, Trump is busy salting the earth so a potential Democratic successor cannot undo his handiwork. On Day 1, a Democratic president could order the Army Corps of Engineers to destroy Trump's ballroom and the Arc de Trump, but that is not what Trump really cares about. He wants to keep the grift going and money flowing as long as possible. (As a sidebar, Keep the Grift Going And the Money Flowing would be a pretty good title for the definitive book on the Trump presidency, whenever it gets written.)

Accordingly, and under the radar, Trump is making preparations. In Jan. 2021, Congress decided to do something about money laundering and other financial crimes, so it passed a law, the Corporate Transparency Act, ordering the Treasury to create a database of shell companies and who the beneficial owners are. This makes it more difficult for financial criminals to hide behind shell companies. Trump didn't like the bill and vetoed it, but it was part of a larger defense bill and Congress overrode his veto. The bill had bipartisan support. Maintenance of this database is not something Joe Biden concocted. Congress passed a law and it is mandatory.

But we are now in a post-law epoch, so Trump has decided not only to refrain from updating the database, but also to destroy everything already collected. This is payday for money launderers, but also for tax cheats, scam artists, sex traffickers, drug lords and terrorists. And the good thing (for them) is that they didn't even have to pay him to do this. He did it on his own, out of the goodness of his heart.

The Panama Papers revealed something few people knew. The U.S.is a key node for international money launderers. It is not just Panama, Monaco and the Cayman Islands. When the database is gone, it will be much harder for future administrations to crack down on people using shell companies to hide crimes. Trump seems to be fine with that. After he is no longer president, enforcing the law will be somebody else's problem, not his.

If you are a financial crimes nerd, here are more details. (V)

Top Democrat on Two Major Senate Committees Will Change in January

Maybe the Democrats will control the Senate in January, maybe they won't, but in both cases, two key committees will get new top Democrats due to retirements.. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) is currently ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee. She is retiring and is likely to be replaced by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE). The current top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), is also retiring. His probable replacement is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Formally, each party selects which (new) members will be on which committee and who the top dog will be in a party caucus in December. Most of the time when the #1 position is open, the #2 moves up. Coons and Whitehouse are both popular within the caucus, so, there is no reason to think they will be passed over, especially if they are in line to become the chairmen.

Coons is widely admired by members of both parties and believes that diplomacy is an American issue, not a partisan issue. Foreign leaders who know Coons like and trust him. If he is chairman, he will have a large say in the confirmation of nominees for State Department and diplomatic positions. He is very unlikely to allow confirmation of unqualified Trump lackeys. Also on his plate as chairman will be any ongoing wars, such as in Iran or Ukraine. If the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee has little or no foreign policy experience, the nominee may well draw upon Coons' expertise in foreign affairs. He is also a potential future secretary of state in a Democratic administration.

Whitehouse is a former prosecutor and much more aggressive than Coons. Republicans have term limits on committee chairmanships, so Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) will end his time as top Republican on the Judiciary Committee in January. He will most likely be replaced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), an extremely conservative and partisan Republican. One Republican who wished to remain anonymous said of Whitehouse and Lee: "If the two of them don't physically fight, I think that's a win." (V)

House Races to Watch

The New York Times has compiled a list of House races that it considers to be tossups. Here is its list:

District	Incumbent	PVI
AZ-01	(None)	R+1
AZ-06	Juan Ciscomani (R)	EVEN
CA-22	David Valadao (R)	D+1
CO-08	Gabe Evans (R)	EVEN
FL-25	Jared Moskowitz (D)	R+3
IA-01	Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R)	R+4
IA-03	Zach Nunn (R)	R+2
MI-07	Tom Barrett (R)	EVEN
NJ-07	Thomas Kean Jr (R)	EVEN
NY-17	Mike Lawler (R)	D+1
OH-07	Max Miller (R)	R+5
OH-09	Marcy Kaptur (D)	R+5
PA-07	Ryan Mackenzie (R)	R+1
PA-08	Rob Bresnahan (R)	R+4
PA-10	Scott Perry (R)	R+3
TX-34	Vicente Gonzalez (D)	R+3
VA-02	Jen Kiggans (R)	EVEN
WA-03	Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D)	R+2
WI-03	Derrick Van Orden (R)	R+3

We beg to differ on one of these. In OH-07, all the domestic violence charges against Max Miller (R-OH) are surely going to come back to haunt him. We'd say this race leans blue, especially since the Democratic candidate, Brian Poindexter, is a perfect fit for the working-class district.

Keep in mind that these races are not really independent. You might think what is going on in sunny Tucson (AZ-06) doesn't have much to do with what is going on in the Lehigh Valley (PA-07), but if the mood of the country is foul, it affects all races. Often, a majority of the tossups go the same way, although the candidates do matter to some extent (but less than in Senate races). (V)

Rural America Is Not What It Used to Be

Many people think of rural America consisting almost entirely of conservative working-class white men and their wives. That's not as true as it once was. Below is a map showing all the counties in America:

The ones colored in pink are majority-minority counties right now. Together, they are 13% of all counties. More than half of these (55%) are rural, the vast majority of which (93%) have fewer than 50,000 residents. Demographers predict the entire country will be majority-minority by 2046. Many (white) Americans sense this, even if they don't know the exact date, and that is why they support Donald Trump despite his many flaws. He is doing his best to turn back the tide.

The demographic change is being driven by immigrants working at meatpacking plants in the Midwest, Latinos along the border, Black residents in the South, and Native Americans in Alaska, with young whites leaving these places for better economic opportunities in cities. As a result of this, the percentage of whites in many rural counties is dropping. In many cases the work of Father Time is also playing a role.

This rapid change is causing problems for local governments that are not used to this and can't deal with it—for example, people who don't speak English, schools that are not equipped to deal with this change, etc.

Some of the minority residents in rural areas are undocumented, but their U.S.-born children are U.S. citizens. Even the Supreme Court agrees now. That has obvious political implications in the long run. In the South, which is largely rural, immigration isn't the main driver. Demographics is doing the heavy lifting. Look at these two graphics.

On the left is the percentage of Black residents in every county. Clearly, the counties with the highest percentages are in the old Confederacy, a remnant of plantations full of enslaved Black workers. On the left is the median age of Americans, by race. Half of Black Americans are under 35 and half are over. For whites, the median age is 44. On the whole, Black Americans are 9 years younger. Many white Americans are largely past their prime childbearing years; Black Americans, not so much. These two graphics show that the percentage of Black people in the South is going to increase in the future. Virginia is already gone for the Republicans. Georgia and North Carolina are next. Deporting millions of Mexican immigrants isn't going to change that. There is nothing Donald Trump can do about that since most of the Black Southerners have been U.S. citizens for about six generations now, thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment that he and Stephen Miller hate so very much.

After the 2030 census, the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York are projected to lose a total of four House seats and four electoral votes. California is projected to lose another four. Texas will gain four and Florida will gain three. To remain competitive in the 2032 presidential election, Democrats have to turn growing states like Arizona (+1), Georgia (+1), and North Carolina (+1) blue. With growing minority populations, that might be doable. Stuff changes. Remember how George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes in 2000? (V)

Democrats Are Introducing Bills to Reform the Supreme Court

Confidence in the Supreme Court is at an all-time low and many Democrats see the justices as simply partisan hacks who have little to no interest in the law or the Constitution. Accordingly, Democratic members of Congress are now introducing a slew of bills to reform the Court. Some are probably unconstitutional, like limiting justices to an 18-year term, but others are perfectly legal if the votes are there. Of course, no reforms are going to happen in this term of Congress because Republicans love what the Court is doing, with some minor exceptions. If Democrats get the trifecta in 2029 and either abolish the filibuster or create more carve-outs to it, some of the reforms are possible. The flurry of bills now is not intended to pass any legislation. If is intended to energize Democratic voters and get them to the polls this November. If the strategy works, it could be reused in the 2028 campaign.

The "reform" most often talked about is expanding the Court to 13 justices, to match the number of federal circuits. Then each justice would get one circuit as his or her very own. However, since many people consider 13 an unlucky number (and many large hotels do not have a 13th floor), Congress could redivide the states into 15 circuits and raise the number of justices to 15 to match.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) expressed the view of many Democrats when he said: "There's constant and building dismay about the increasingly appalling record of the Court. And I think the continuing interest in reform springs from continued dismay and concern about the court's misbehavior."

Expanding the Court is not the only thing Congress could do by law, without needing a constitutional amendment. We have discussed some of the possibilities before and won't repeat that here. The current bills are mostly different, though. Rather than structurally changing the Court's power (as we proposed), a number are intended to keep the justices honest, such as having binding ethics rules and rules requiring justices to put their assets in blind trusts. None of the bills address the burning question of who vacations with whom, however.

Another target is the shadow docket, in which justices make summary rulings in cases that don't go through the regular order of a district court trial, then appeal to a circuit court, and then an oral hearing before the Supreme Court. In these cases, the Court just gives a decision and sometimes a short explanation. The goal here is to reduce or eliminate the shadow docket.

A core problem that is hard to fix is the nomination process for justices. It used to be that presidents would nominate outstanding lawyers with a deep understanding of the law and Constitution. These justices would sometimes rule the way liberals liked and sometimes the way conservatives liked, depending on the facts and the law. Now presidents nominate only justices who have a proven track record of supporting views the president likes. And then usually they pick ones who are quite young, so they can serve 30 or 40 years.

Another proposal is make the Court transient. For any year, nine justices would be chosen at random from the pool of appeals court judges. The next year there would be a new set of nine. This could make justices more likely to avoid far-out partisan decisions that next year's crop will throw out. By adhering closely to the law and the Constitution, decisions would last longer.

In any event, it seems clear Democrats are going to run against the Court this year and probably in 2028 as well. Then if they get the trifecta, the rubber will hit the road and we will see if they actually take any action. (V)

---

Previous report         Next report

---

If you wish to contact us, please use one of these addresses. For the first two, please include your initials and city.

• questions@electoral-vote.com    For questions about politics, civics, history, etc. to be answered on a Saturday
• comments@electoral-vote.com   For "letters to the editor" for possible publication on a Sunday
• corrections@electoral-vote.com To tell us about typos or factual errors we should fix
• items@electoral-vote.com            For general suggestions, ideas, etc.
• Guidelines for questions (Saturdays) and letters (Sundays

To download a poster about the site to hang up, please click here.

---

Email a link to a friend.

---The Votemaster and Zenger