Every two years, there is a national election that someone describes as the most important election since "Moby Dick was a guppie," Charlie Cook, the political analyst, election forecaster and editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report, told attendees at the Inside Alternatives & Asset Allocation conference earlier this week in Las Vegas.
At this moment, Republicans hold more seats in Congressional and state legislatures than they have at any time since the 1920s. Is there only one place for them to go? Maybe not, but they have "a lot of exposure," Cook said.
History isn't on the side of the GOP come November. Since 1902, the party in power, meaning the White House, has lost House seats in 26 out of 29 elections. In state legislatures, that same party in power has given back seats in 27 out of 29 elections.
The mid-terms, when one-third fewer voters typically go to the polls than in presidential elections, typically have morphed into referendums on the president. Who votes disproportionately? "People who are angry and people who are afraid," Cook said.
In 1994, 2010 and 2014, those voters were Republicans. As Cook sees it, this year the intensity is on the Democratic side.
If President Trump were a stock, he'd have a fairly narrow trading range. In Trump's best week, his approval rating was about 45 percent and in his worst week, it was about 35 percent.
That stands in sharp contrast to his predecessors, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who enjoyed high approval rates well north of 60 percent early in their first terms. Bush, in particular, had sky-high approval ratings following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Obama also had widespread public support when he took office in the midst of the financial crisis.
At this same point in their presidencies, Obama's approval rating was at 45 percent and Reagan's was 42 percent, according to the editor of the Cook Political Report.
Trump's approval rating averages about 40 percent, Cook said, while his disapproval ratings stand around 56 percent. But when one looks at intensity today, a different picture emerges. Cook cited a Fox News poll finding that 31 percent of the public strongly approves of Trump while 46 percent strongly disapproves.
At present, Cook believes the Democrats will gain between 20 and 40 House seats. "If I'm wrong, it's more likely to be more than 40 than less than 20," he said, noting that Democrats have been overperforming in statewide national elections.