The nation is just past halftime in the 2018 primary election cycle. Twenty states with a majority of House districts, 228 of the total 435, have held their primaries, and all but the three with runoffs have chosen their Republican and Democratic nominees.
The latest results, taken together with the generic ballot — polls asking which party’s House candidate you’ll vote for — tend to undercut the many gleeful predictions of a blue wave that produces a big Democratic majority in the House and perhaps the Senate as well.
The RealClearPolitics average of recent polls shows the Democrats’ lead over Republicans on the generic vote declining from a 13-point margin (49 percent to 36 percent) last December to a three-point margin (43 percent to 40 percent) going into Tuesday’s primaries. Given Democrats’ disadvantage of having so many of their voters clustered in heavily Democratic seats, that suggests a statistical tie. That would mirror the CBS News estimate of 219 seats for Democrats and 216 for Republicans, with a plus or minus 9-seat margin of error. Donald Trump’s 44 percent job approval, well above his 38 percent favorable rating in November 2016, points in the same direction.
Tuesday’s results tend to confirm this. Most closely watched was California, with 53 House seats and where the focus was on the seven seats held by Republicans but carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. These obvious Democratic targets represent almost one-third of the 23 net gains Democrats need for a House majority.
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