News Information and Media Site: America's politics have barely budged since 2016

From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Ben Kamisar, Bridget Bowman and Alexandra Marquez

Wednesday, November 02, 2022

FIRST READ

The 2022 midterms are just another battle in America's entrenched divide

Mario Tama / Getty Images file

If it's WEDNESDAY… Court documents reveal that the man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi told police on the scene that he was on "a suicide mission"… Barack Obama, after stumping in Nevada, campaigns for Democrats in Arizona… Fox News polls show tight contests in Arizona and Wisconsin… Muhlenberg College poll finds John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz tied at 47%-47% among likely voters in PA-SEN… And if you haven't yet seen our 2022 Election Book, check it out.

But FIRST... No matter what happens in next week's midterm elections, we know one thing.

It won't be a decisive outcome or realignment in our politics.

Instead, it will only shift the battle lines in America's political trench warfare since 2016.

Think about it: Donald Trump narrowly won the presidency in 2016 with states representing 306 electoral votes; Joe Biden won four years later with an identical 306 electoral votes.

Democrats took the House in 2018 and Senate in the runoffs of Jan. 2021; Republicans are on the cusp of winning back at least one chamber next month and maybe both.

The political map also remains mostly unchanged: The same states that helped decide the 2016 and 2020 presidential races – especially Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – are pretty much the same states that will determine Senate control.

(What has changed on the map is that Arizona and Georgia have replaced Florida and Ohio in being the true battlegrounds.)

And despite both parties racking up policy wins, sprinkled with some bipartisan activity and plenty of executive actions, gridlock has remained the dominant force on Capitol Hill.

Yet given all the money spent over the last six years (a combined $23 billion on ads in the '16, '18, '20 and '22 cycles) and all of the attention, there's been little actual movement.

What WILL change next week is the placement of the pawns on the 2024 chess board.

Tweet of the Day

Midterms haven't been kind to the party in power

Data Download: The number of the day is ... 43

That's how many House seats, on average, the president's party has lost in his first midterm election since the Truman era when that president's approval rating is below 50%.

It's been the case in seven midterm elections, per Gallup approval ratings — 1946, 1966, 1978, 1982, 1994, 2010 and 2018.

It's unlikely that Democrats will lose that many seats this fall for a variety of reasons, including the composition of the map, the Republicans' better-than-expected performance in the 2020 elections, and how redistricting has dwindled the number of competitive seats.

But remember, the GOP needs to net a gain of just five seats to take control of the House.

You can read more about what's at stake in this midterm election in the Political Unit's 2022 Election Briefing Book.

Other numbers you need to know today

The number of states where requests for abortion pills have risen since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, per a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

228

How many of the Fortune 500 companies have given campaign contributions to the 147 congressional Republicans who objected to 2020 Electoral College votes, per a new ProPublica report, despite many pledging to stop those contributions after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

How many House seats – all held by Democrats – that the Cook Political Report moved into the Toss Up category on Tuesday.

$165 million

How much Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams have raised in their campaigns, tripling the record amount they raised in 2018, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

$27 million

How much of his own money Republican Mehmet Oz has spent on Pennsylvania's Senate race. The Philadelphia Inquirer notes that's more than Philadelphia Phillies star Bryce Harper's annual salary.

How many seconds this new closing ad from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis goes before a single word is said.

At least how many missiles North Korea launched Wednesday, prompting an air-raid alert siren in South Korea, per The New York Times.

Blog / Meet The Press

Midterm roundup: Biden in a battleground

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

President Joe Biden has mainly campaigned in blue states in the weeks leading up to Election Day, but that changed on Tuesday when he traveled to Florida.

"This election is not a referendum. It's a choice. It's a choice between two vastly different visions for America," Biden said at a rally with Senate nominee Val Demings and gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist, per NBC News' Liz Brown-Kaiser.

Biden will also head to Pennsylvania on Saturday for a rally in Philadelphia with former President Barack Obama, Senate hopeful John Fetterman and gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro, per a press release from the Democratic National Committee.

Some vulnerable Democrats, though, are still trying to distance themselves from the president. New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan doubled down on that strategy, telling NBC News' Ryan Nobles and Julia Jester, "I'm always going to look out for New Hampshire first, which means I will criticize the president when I think he's wrong."

Her GOP opponent, retired Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc launched his closing TV ad of the race Wednesday, tying Hassan to "career politicians in Washington, D.C.," and adding, "We need an outsider." A new St. Anselm poll showed the Senate race in a dead heat.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail…

AZ-SEN: A Fox News poll released Tuesday showed a close race between Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and Republican Blake Masters, with 47% of registered voters backing Kelly and 45% backing Masters.

NC-SEN: Former Vice President Mike Pence is hitting the campaign trail with GOP Rep. Ted Budd on Wednesday, joining Budd for a "fireside chat" at the state GOP headquarters, per the Budd campaign.

OH-SEN: Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan and Republican J.D. Vance participated in a Fox News town hall Tuesday night, where they discussed a range of issues. Also on Wednesday, Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney endorsed Ryan, saying at an event in Cleveland that she would vote for Ryan if she was an Ohio voter.

PA-SEN: In a ruling that could affect this race and others on the ballot, NBC News' Tom Winter and Maura Barrett report that the state Supreme Court told election officials to separate out and not count mail-in ballots received with incorrect or missing dated outer envelopes, even as the justices deadlocked over whether not counting those ballots would violate federal law.

UT-SEN: Independent Evan McMullin is up with a new ad, in which he tries to push back at the attacks against him, saying "I'm not a Democrat, or a liberal, or woke, or financed by the Democratic Party," and featuring two former colleagues at the CIA.

WI-SEN: The race between GOP Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has centered on personal attacks in the final stretch, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

AZ-GOV: The Republican Accountability PAC has launched a TV ad in Tucson featuring Gladys Sicknick, the mother of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, NBC News' Vaughn Hillyard reports. "My son died because of people like Kari Lake," Gladys Sicknick says in the ad.

NY-GOV: Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin is up with a new, minute-long ad featuring the family members of an elderly woman who was brutally murdered in 2021 by a woman who had been arrested weeks before on a robbery charge and released without bail.

PA-GOV: Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro had a 14-point lead over GOP state Sen. Doug Mastriano in the Muhlenberg College/Morning Call poll, which was outside the survey's 6-point margin of error. NBC News' Allan Smith reports from Clarion, Pa., that Shapiro is framing the race as a contest about democracy and "our fundamental freedoms."

IL-6/NY-4: Politico reports that the GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund is making last-minute ad buys of $1.8 million and $1.5 respectively in these two blue seats.

TN-6/7: Some early voters in Nashville cast their ballots in the wrong congressional district, the Associated Press reports.

Ad watch: Luria leans into Jan. 6

Democrats have largely avoided referencing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in ads during this election cycle. But not Virginia Rep. Elaine Luria. A member of the committee investigating the attack, Luria is up with a new TV ad that features footage of the riot at the Capitol.

"If standing up for what's right means losing an election, so be it," Luria says in the minute-long spot, where she criticizes Republican state Sen. Jen Kiggans for recently sidestepping questions about the 2020 election's legitimacy and name checks former President Donald Trump.

"If you attack the FBI and defend Donald Trump, I'm not your candidate," Luria says. "And if you believe the 2020 election was stolen, definitely not your candidate.

Luria and Kiggans are locked it in a tight race for the 2nd District. Both are Navy veterans, and Luria has tied that service to her work on the Jan. 6 committee.

The best of Meet the Press NOW

Misinformation around attack on Paul Pelosi is 'disgusting': S.F. district attorney

ICYMI: What ELSE is happening in the world?

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that would have allowed him to avoid a subpoena in a Georgia prosecutor's investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Despite opposition from students and some faculty, leaders at the University of Florida unanimously backed the selection of Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., as the institution's new president, Politico reports.

Nevada's state GOP chairman told NBC News he testified in front of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

Regardless of which party wins Congress, there may still be investigations into Twitter and the company's new owner, Elon Musk, NBC News' Scott Wong reports.