Nate Silver Just Responded To Trumpcare’s Passing With A Bold Prediction
In the wake of the passage today in the House of Representatives of Trumpcare and the repeal of Obamacare, as many as 85 Republicans are vulnerable to being voted out of office in the 2018 midterm election, according to an analysis by noted statistician and journalist Nate Silver.
The Democrats would need to win close to 50 seats to become the majority in the House once again. If the incumbents win special elections between now and November 2018, the Democrats would need a swing of about 24 seats to become the majority, according to Silver’s analysis as reported by PoliticusUSA.
Silver projects that there are 27 seats where the Republican could be vulnerable because of the Trumpcare vote, and 23 more districts where Hillary Clinton won in 2016, making them potentially fertile ground for Democrats to pick up seats.
If Democrats took control of the House, it could be part of a strong reaction to the health care switch and to other movies by President Trump which would impact the Senate as well as state and local races as well.
“With Trump’s approval ratings already in the dumpster and with House Republicans getting less popular by the second,” reports PoliticusUSA, Democrats are moving from a favorable political climate to the sort of election that results in a true Blue wave.”
“Democratic voters are already motivated,” adds the analysis, “active, and paying attention. The Hosue Republican vote on Trumpcare only serves to add fuel to an already raging fire.”
Silver points out there are a lot of things that could change in the next year and a half. Trump may do things which make him more popular, that make people forget about the health care vote.
However, Silver says that what happened after the 2010 vote for Obamacare, when Democrats saw major losses in the House, could be played out again with Republicans who voted for Trumpcare the losers this time.
“If Republican members should suffer a similar penalty for voting for AHCA – somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 [percentage] points – it could put dozens of GOP-held seats in play,” according to Silver.
In the 2016 election, the total popular vote for Republican candidates was only one percentage point greater than Democrats, explains Silver: “Democrats currently have a 5-to-6 point lead in polls of the 2018 House vote.”
Silver adds that it is typical for a sitting president’s party to lose votes in a midterm election as more voters pay attention to the political process.
“There could easily be an overall partisan swing of 5 to 10 percentage points against Republicans,” estimates Silver, and the Trumpcare penalty could make it even worse.
“That should be enough to make a lot of Republican incumbents nervous,” says Silver.
It doesn’t matter if Trumpcare is passed in the Senate or not, and signed into law, according to Silver. A lot of voters who are unhappy with the vote, along with Democrats already motivated by other Trump actions, could have a huge impact on that election.
If the Democrats took back the House and elected the Speaker, it would open the door to a lot of new investigations into the activities of Trump, his supporters and even his family, which have been delayed or blocked by Republican control of Congress.
It could set the stage for a scenario that Trump would not like, but which could restore the balance to the national political dialogue and set the stage to restore many of the things around the environment, medicine, science and international policy that Trump has changed in his first few months in office.
If Silver is right, the future could be golden for the Democrats.
