November, 2022
Washington — Being a political scientist, I am sometimes asked for election predictions. This has become more frequent since I correctly forecasted both the 2016 and 2020 presidential race outcomes. Most others missed badly on at least one of them.
My success could be the result of what I hope is careful attention to empirical evidence, rather than randomness. If I have any bias, it is an overabundance of willingness to seek out views contrary to my own to determine what might be resonating, for good or ill, with the voting public.
The main prediction I'll make for the 2022 midterm elections is that many Democrats will lose races they should have won, because of faulty campaign strategies. Their failure to be competitive in culturally rural precincts will doom many of them. It is not that they will lose in these areas, but that they will lose by such wide margins that they cannot make up for the losses elsewhere.
A corollary prediction is that post-campaign analysts and pundits will either blame other factors, such as not campaigning more ideologically to the left or to the right, or that it is impossible to compete for such votes anyway.
They are wrong. Many voters do not have a firm grasp of left and right, but make their candidate choices on the basis of factors that do not match up with what they profess ideologically. Attractive candidates who listen and relate to voters will be competitive, because remarkably few voters pay much attention to political theory. Intentional, anti-ideological pragmatism would go a long way toward closing these election gaps, if offered.
As to the impossibility of Democrats competing in culturally rural areas, such thinking needs to be challenged by candidates who know where Republicans are vulnerable. Republican shortcomings are truly profound throughout culturally rural areas. Their failed agricultural policies have driven farmers off the land, weakened small towns, closed hospitals and nursing homes, increased cancers and dietary diseases, and led to alarming numbers of deaths of despair. Democrats who don't understand this and neglect to address these weaknesses have sealed their own fate.
A final prediction is that Democrats will once again fail to understand that pushing policy positions before their time has come, before groundwork is carefully laid, can be counterproductive to achieving the election victories necessary for their adoption. Many worthy Democratic goals and causes will be going down to defeat in this election because of counterproductive strategies. This is not a call to go slow, but to learn how to get things done successfully.
Because I make these predictions doesn't mean I like them, or that I'm unwilling to entertain contrary views. I'd welcome analyses that challenge any of the above.
