As election day approaches, the typical journalistic bullshit just keeps circulating around. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Midterm elections intrinsically favor the GOP because younger voters are more Democratic than older voters, and younger voters are more likely to sit out the midterm. So, Democrats have an easier time in presidential elections, and the GOP does better in midterms. Sound familiar? It's pretty much bullshit.
It was a line concocted for 2010, and that held for 2014 for a set of reasons specific to the time period. Most importantly, the president at the time was a Democrat. What do we know about midterm elections? They favor the party opposing the president, meaning that they bring out the opposing party's base. So, for example, the midterm right before 2010? That would be 2006. This argument didn't hold any water at all in 2006. Massive Democratic landslide. The president was a Republican. Didn't work when Reagan or Bush Sr. held the White House. Nope. Bullshit. When the president is a Republican, that favors the Democrats.
Why? The Democratic base is more likely to turn out. Right now, age and partisanship are related, and age and turnout are always related, which created some interesting but specious causal claims in 2010 and 2014. Idiots who didn't know the history of midterm elections looked at 2010 and 2014 and decided that midterms, by virtue of not being presidential election years, would make the electorate older, which favored the GOP, and that would be why the GOP did better.
As opposed to the fact that the president was a Democrat, and the party of the president loses seats in the midterm because that motivates the opposing party. Occam? Help me out here, buddy!
So, the midterm-age-turnout thing is basically a specious argument for those who have the political memory of a goldfish, or at least could use a nice, close shave.
Of course, as I wrote yesterday, and have written before, the economy may be strong enough to dampen the midterm effect, and the specific seats up for the Senate make the Senate a difficult chamber for the Democrats to make any gains this year.
What does that mean? It means that our goldfish-brained observers may wind up with further spurious observations. The Senate landscape makes Democratic pick-ups very, very difficult, not because midterms intrinsically benefit Republicans with some mythical year-specific age/partisanship/turnout effect, but because of the specific seats up. The strong economy may insulate the GOP from Trump's unpopularity, but that economy is real, unless the stock market is currently picking up something truly ominous. Of course, as the saying goes, the market has correctly forecast 9 of the last 5 recessions, so...
Regardless, you either have read or will soon be reading about how the age effect in midterms means that the GOP has an automatic advantage in midterms, and that's why the Dems might not do as well as they hope this year. Oh, really? Why is it that the people who make this argument never look at elections other than 2010 or 2014? You know, when the president has an "R" after his name? Bullshit. Just, bullshit.
I'll try to get a few more mythbusting posts up before election day on midterms 'n stuff.