Getting it right and getting it wrong: Taking stock of 2020

Year end is the time to take stock. I’ve written 100 columns and co-hosted over 50 podcasts; most have focused on politics. The track record is ok at best.

My reporting suggested a banner Democratic year; outside of the presidential race, it didn’t happen. On most levels other than president, it was the Republicans who had a banner year. There still are conflicting explanations on why.

But let’s start where I got it right. For eight months I had no doubt Joe Biden would win the presidency, that Donald Trump was a loser.

I also thought Biden would pick Kamala Harris as his running mate.

In an election-eve pool, I predicted Biden would win 306 electoral votes. Full disclosure: It wasn’t the exact 306 — as I saw Biden losing Georgia, which he won, and winning North Carolina and one Maine congressional district, which he lost.

Nationally, I thought he’d thought he’d win by close to seven points. He won by 4.5 points. The difference was rather than close races in Ohio, Florida and Texas, Trump won those decisively, getting larger than expected Hispanic votes in the latter two states.

On the congressional and state legislative races, to paraphrase boxing great Joe Louis, I can “run but can’t hide.”

On the Senate, I projected Democrats would win at least half of the dozen competitive contests, to take control with a minimal gain of four seats, perhaps as many as seven or eight. With two Republican-held seats to be decided next week, the Democrats so far have a net gain of only one, and — unless they lose both Georgia seats — the Republicans will retain the majority.

I saw the Democrats picking up five to ten House seats, adding to their 233-202 margin; instead, they lost close to a dozen seats, barely holding a majority.

I cited a half dozen especially strong challengers with a chance to win Republican seats: Kate Schroeder in Ohio, Cameron Webb in Virginia, Jill Schupp in Missouri, Jackie Gordon in New York, Eugene DePasquale in Pennsylvania and Hiral Tipirneni in Arizona. They all had impressive credentials and were running against some second-rate incumbents, one with ethical problems.

All six lost.

None of the races were close. All were simply Republican districts.

Similarly, it seemed reasonable to expect that Democrats, after years of building, would score big in races for state legislatures, reversing much of the GOP’s huge gerrymandering success in 2011. The Texas House, North Carolina Senate and Minnesota Senate were prime targets.

Democrats didn’t even come close.

Republicans in states like Texas and North Carolina will again be able to dominate gerrymandering districts after this year’s census. Democrats may pay the price in the House and state legislatures for another decade.

There are a lot of post-mortems about why the election didn’t go according to expectations and the polls. (Some surveys like Ann Selzer’s Iowa poll got it right; most media and campaign polls didn’t, understating Republican support.)

Democrats, due to the Pandemic, didn’t engage in voter canvassing, a problem in a few down-ballot races.

More significant, Republicans did an effective job painting — often inaccurately — Democrats as “radical socialists” who wanted to defund the police. “Relatively few Democratic challengers aired ads inoculating themselves against these attacks,” says the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman. He cited one Republican operative noting that in 2018, when Democrats ran the table, they were “seen as normal,” adding that with the rise of a handful of vocal left-wingers in the House and activists calling for defunding the police “it was easier to paint them as radical.”

Wasserman also credits Trump. Two years ago, Democratic voters turned out in heavy numbers in contrast to Republicans. Last month, Trump brought out low propensity voters who stayed with Republicans down ballot, while some independents and disaffected Republicans “could vote directly against Trump but still vote for a for a conventional Republican.”

Republicans are confident, given the usual off year gains made by the party not occupying the House and gerrymandering, that they will win control of the House in 2022. Conversely, Democrats see several vulnerable Senate Republican-held seats in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The central questions are whether Republicans can turn out Trump voters without him on the ballot, while cutting into some of the support they’ve lost in the suburbs — and for Democrats whether they can energize their voters without the specter of Trump and effectively fend off the attacks on being radical socialists.

Much will depend on events, the economy and the Biden presidency. There are, however, a couple good early indicators that will test these questions: the two Senate races in Georgia next week.

Al Hunt is the former executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for the Wall Street Journal. For almost a quarter century he wrote a column on politics for The Wall Street Journal, then The International New York Times and Bloomberg View. He hosts 2020 Politics War Room with James Carville. Follow him on Twitter @AlHuntDC.