THE 93 PERCENT TURNOUT
Or, better, call it the 93 percent solution. We all know that Democrats captured the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms. What’s less widely understood is how they did it. Despite vote suppression and biased maps, they swept that chamber as their party hasn’t since 1932.
What happened was that 93 percent of the Democrats’ 2016 supporters turned out again twenty-four months later. That level of loyalty was both stunning and surprising.1 Pundits mused that Democrats might win the House. But none foresaw that so many Americans would show up in an off year. Simply as bodies lining up, it was the highest midterm showing for any party ever. It was all the more notable because it was Democrats who did it.
Much is made of the fact that Hillary Clinton ended 2,847,757 votes ahead of Donald Trump. But the Democrats’ 2018 margin, as expressed in House races, was 9,852,442, over three times Clinton’s in 2016. In itself, this was notable. Parties are supposed to show their best in presidential years. To do even better when no national figure is atop the ticket means something momentous is afoot.
In the last seven presidential races, Democrats have won the popular count in six of them. So they can bestir themselves if they want to, as they did twice for Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Yet for over a decade, they had been strangely somnolent in off-year elections. In 2010 and 2014, they could have come out to backstop the man they had put in the presidency two years earlier. Yet on both occasions, almost half of them chose to do other things on Election Day. As a result, Congress and most state capitols went to the GOP, giving the nation a rightward tilt, from which it’s still reeling. In those midterms, Republicans were driven by party loyalty, plus a focus on firearms ownership and antipathy to abortion. In 2010 and 2014, Democrats had nothing so singular to spur them to the polls. But in 2018, they would.
Two quotients, readily derived from the table, add to the mix. Between 2016 and 2018, the number of Republicans who bestirred themselves to vote declined by 12,225,230, a high abstention rate for their party. In vivid contrast, the Democratic figure was less than half that, 5,357,545.
While there were several reasons for the high Democratic turnout, one stood well at the top. But it’s not the one commonly cited. Or the one Democrats prepared for public consumption.
| THE BIG SWITCH | ||
| 2016 | Who Showed Up | 2018 |
| 136,787,187 | All Voters | 114,016,831 |
| 65,677,168 | Democrats | 60,319,623 |
| 62,692,411 | Republican | 50,467,181 |
| 2,847,757 | Democratic Lead | 9,852,441 |
| Midterm Turnouts Percent of Previous Presidential Totals |
||
| Democrats | Republicans | |
| 56% | 2010 | 74% |
| 52% | 2014 | 64% |
| 93% | 2018 | 81% |
The Democratic story was that 2018 was like all midterms, scheduled to fill lesser offices, with the president absent from the ballot. Hence candidates should appeal to voters locally, as if Donald Trump had vaporized. Here was Nancy Pelosi’s recounting. “We said to the candidates, ‘Don’t even mention his name. This is not about him.’” If she uttered this with a straight face—it was off-camera—she must have snuck in a wink. Everyone from Pelosi to county clerks knew that 2018 was a nationwide plebiscite on the personality and presidency of Donald John Trump. A total of 114,016,831 adults showed up—an all-time midterm high—ready to fill bubbles for whatever Republicans or Democrats they found on their local ballots.2
The best available study has found that only 37 percent of Americans can name the individual their district has sent to the House of Representatives. Fewer recall the losing challengers, including the person for whom they actually voted.3
Thus most Republicans who resided in New Jersey’s 11th District didn’t make the trip to vote for Jay Webber. As noted, it wasn’t a name on their mental Rolodex. Rather, they were among the 50,467,181 Republicans who lined up to record their confidence in the president.
The same applies for the majority of Democrats who supported Mary Jennings Hegar in Texas’s 31st district. They were among the 60,319,623 citizens who cast their votes for any Democrat, as their best way of saying that they wanted another president.
Nancy Pelosi’s script stressed the candidates’ expected agendas. Democrats would dilate upon health costs and gun control, while Republicans would hold forth on low taxes and unwelcome immigrants.
But it didn’t matter whether or not they did. Those 114,016,831 voters, by their own choice and volition, brought Donald Trump with them into the booth. And by marking their ballots for Jay Webber or Mary Jennings Hegar, they were transcribing their verdict on the nation’s chief executive.
So 2018 was a forerunner for 2020. As an ostensible plebiscite, it yielded 45 percent for retaining the president against 55 percent for removing him. Until the 2020 election eventuates, this is the best evidence we have of the mood of the nation.
One state told much of the story. Iowa was carried handily by Trump in 2016, with three of its four House seats also going to Republicans. In 2018, that ratio was totally reversed, with three of the four House seats captured by Democrats. Here’s how that happened. The Democrats’ 2018 turnout was actually higher—664,676 to 653,669—than in 2016, which is almost unheard of in a midterm. On the GOP side, fully 200,858 Trump voters sat 2018 out. Other Republican base states showed similar shrinkage.
Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, polls have uniformly shown disapproval of his personality and performance. But they didn’t capture how intensely the electorate felt about the man. People had their circles of friends; yet there was a huge nation out there. The decision to vote conveys far more than terse responses to interviewers. And a shattering 93 percent of Democrats made that effort. Nor is that engagement likely to ebb by 2020. Of course, Republicans will be turning out too. But if 2018 generally and Iowa in particular are previews, their party’s curve isn’t ascending. Quite the opposite.