Kentucky’s 6th is currently represented by Andy Barr, Republican. Democrat Amy McGrath is neck and neck in polls averaged over time. A recent Republican biased poll puts Bar ahead by 2 points. A recent Democratic biased poll puts McGrath ahead by 7 points. An early September Siena/NYT poll puts Barr ahead by 1 oint, and a somewhat later Pulse poll put them even. So, independent polling says it is a tossup, and biased polling is biased… Can’t call this one a turnover.

Maine’s 2nd district is currently represented by a Republican, Bruce Poliquin, who is being challenged effectively by Jared Golden, Democrat. The two are neck and neck with a slightly higher chance of Golden winning. What is interesting here is that the contest has been a bit of a horse race, with some back and forth. The Siena/NYT poll put Golden well ahead in mid September, and the same source puts Poliquin slightly ahead right now. Too volatile, and close, to call.

Michigan’s 8th district has a Republican incumbant, Bishop, challenged by Democrat Elissa Slotkin, with the two running neck and neck and Slotkin doing slighty better on average over time. The most recent poll, Target Insyght, puts Bishop way ahead, and the turn of the month Siena/NYT agrees. This is one to watch, but it is not a chicken to expect to hatch, as it were.

Michigan’s 11th district is currently represented by Republican David Trott, who is not seeking re-election. Republican Lena Epstein is being challenged by the formidable Haley Stephens, who has been ahead consistently across several polls. The Target Insyght poll, most recent, has them even. Siena/NYT of early october had Stevens ahed by nearly 8 points. 538 puts this race as very likely to be taken by the Democrat, but given the recent shift in polling, I’m not so sure. I’ll count this as a takeaway for now, but we need to look closely at this race.

And now we get to my favorite state, at the moment, Minnesota.

After a tumultuous and uncertain period, we are starting to see some clarity. It is both good news and bad.

Most people are putting Minnesota’s first district, currently represented by Time Walz, who is leaving that seat to run for Governor (and he will likely win the gubernatorial contest), as a tossup. I’ve spent a little time in the district, and I think the Democratic candidate, Dan Feehan, is great. But I do not trust the first district. At present, I have to put this in the turnover category, but going from Democrat to Republican.

Minnesota’s 2nd district is currently represented by the Truly Deplorable Jason Lewis. He is getting his butt kicked by the second time challenger Angie Craig. This is a situation where the good people of the 2nd district went for the Republican during the last election, and are now having serious buyer’s remorse. Last time it was close, Craig almost won. This time, it won’t be too close and Craig will be representing that district. This will be a turnover.

Minnesota’s 3rd district is where I am. The seat is helt by perrenial “he’s not so bad, if you can find him” Erik Paulsen, the Republican incumbent who actually is so bad, and who has contributed materially to the lack of oversight of Trump’s administration (Paulsen is on the committee that could be looking at Trump’s taxes, but they won’t). He is being challenged by Democrat Dean Phillips. Phillips is running a spectacular campaign, and is currently positioned to wipe the floor with Erik

This will be a turnover.

Minnesota’s 4th district is held, by the much loved Betty McCollum, who is beating Republican Greg Ryan and Legalize Pot Susan Sindt by something close to 65-30-whatever’s left.

Minnesota’s fifth district is currently held by African American Muslim Man Keith Ellison. But he is now running for Attorney General of Minnesota (likely to win that race) so the Democrats have selected Somali Muslim Woman Ilhan Omar. I only emphasize gender, ethnicity, and religion here because, well, it is tremendously significant.

Omar is much loved in this district and is beating the other candidate, whom no one can remember, buy a huge margin and can’t lose. So, no turnover, but I thought you’d like to know about the race.

The sixth district is our big problem district. This is the district that put Michele Bachmann in the House of Representatives for as many terms as she wanted to be there. Republican Tom Emmer is there now. Ian Todd, a really nice guy who I hope gets elected for something some day, is trailing way behind. Not Ian’s fault. This district is at present very heavy on the deplorables. The good news, though, is that this district is also now experiencing a pretty serious demographic transition, so in one or two election cycles from now, that 30 point margin between Democrats and Republicans running there will be seriously narrowed. We hope.

Minnesota’s 7th district is solid Democrat. It is a very Republican electorate that has decided to send a Democrat to Congress and likes him (Colin Peterson).

The Eighth District of Minnesota is the great disappointment. The DFL (Democratic party) itself is in shambles in that district. Senseless and brutal infighting allowed for Labor to shove a non-winnable candidate down their throats, with labor now being unable to deliver the votes. Republican Pete Stauber will beat Democrat Joe Radinovich, turning this Democratic district over to the Republicans.

So, in Minnesota, two Democratic districts will become Republican, and two Republican districts will become Democratic. In this way, Minnesota will not be contributing to the Blue Wave in the House. Shame on us.

There are a lot of things right and wrong with our election system, but I’m going to propose that a particular problem, if solved, would make many of the other problems go away.

People are not in the habit of voting, and therefore, don’t get into the habit of voting. Many think (correctly, actually) that some elections matter more than others, and they use that as a handy excuse to not bother to vote. We see this clearly in the off and on pattern of voting during presidential vs. “off” years. See? We even call them “off years.” Take a year off! Don’t bother to vote!

If there was more equivalence between election years — if most of them were considered important for some reason — then more of the years would be higher turnout years, and those years would be feeders, potentially, for later years, so over time the overall turnout would go up and up, rather than up-down-up-down. In other words, our current system involves alternating between taking steps forward and taking steps backwards, rather than forward progression.

But this was not always true. This is a bit complex, but I’ll give you a provisional explanation. In the old days, such as the 19th century, state elections were much more important than they are today, to national politics. If you were running for President, it mattered a lot which party was in control in each state, and the composition of the senate was controlled by state politics, not voting (legislatures sent US Senators to Washington, not voters). That meant that state elections were very much part of the national election process. This was even more important, and complex, when two other thing were true. First, there were more than two parties, even if most states really had only two going at once. Second, the parties were not perfectly aligned with platform. So, for instance, prior to the Civil War, southern Democrats were mainly pro-slavery, while northern Democrats were split on slavery and their main interest was something else. For several decades a century, also, we tend to have a party turnover, where one party eats itself (and is ultimately finished off by other forces) while a different party takes over. (This may be happening now.) During those periods, the two party system is obviously a three party system for a while.

Between the greater heterogeneity in political orientation of parties, with that variance structured by state and region, and the importance of state elections to the presidential election process and the Senate, people watched the state elections outside of their own states, and within the states, much more closely.

This all probably made each election year more interesting to everybody than it is now, but a second factor, much more important but potentiated by the aforementioned factors, also pertained. Today, most Governor’s races are done in a four year cycle, with over half (36) being during the so-called “midterm” year (two years offset from the POTUS election) and most (but not all) of the rest being during the POTUS cycle.

This guarantees that almost all governor-level election activity is done on a two year cycle nationally. The POTUS election and the governor’s elections are therefore in sync with each other, as well as with Congress. This is because the US Senate elections are, effectively, every two years as they are never held on “off years” and the US House is voted on every two years, again, in sync with POTUS.

For this reason, every two years there is something to do, every two years there is almost nothing to do. And, those two year periods, synced as they are with POTUS, are divided into two parts, POTUS years and midterm years.

For this reason, a double-digit percentage of the voters get three years off and a similar number get two years off, by their own way of thinking about what is important. So hardly anybody goes and votes one, two, or three out of four years.

This pattern of being almost perfectly in sync with POTUS and Congress is new. Many states, in the 19th century, had three year governor terms, or two. There have been states with four year terms but on odd years (at present I think there is only one of these).

Given a) the greater importance, as a national story, of state elections, and b) the nearly chaotic pattern of elections, where there was alway something going on, meant that the difference between one year and another was not so great and this, because of the effect I propose above, meant an overall higher turnout.

Starting some time after 1900, state by state (and probably in cities as well, for mayor, etc.) elections lined up in the two year pattern, and terms for governor changed to four years across the board. As this happened, US citizen participation in elections fell.

Consider this graph, from PEW:

The overall pattern shows a huge increase in voter turnout from the early days to the Federal era. That is not the subject of discussion here. Subsequently we experience a high rate during presidential election and a lower but still high rate during midterm years. The midterm years during this period are higher than some presidential years now, and represent an 85% or so fraction of the presidential years. Then we see a drop, from around 1890 to the 1930s, followed by a new pattern with two features. First, the overall participation is way down, with midterm elections being well below 50%, and second, the drop during midterms is greater, with midterms being about 66% of presidential years.

I think both of these patterns can be explained, at least in part, by the normalization of elections to be on a 4-year/2-year cycle synced nationally.

There, I connect details of timing of election with a major overarching pattern, using a beautiful hypothesis. What remains is testing the hypothesis in several cases where we can see the details, to see if it works out as expected. I have one case for you. The following graph shows Minnesota primary turnout over time for presidential and midterm years.

This is the observation I stumbled on last night that prompted me to write this post. Here we see the large binary oscillation between POTUS and midterm years, as expected, from the early 1960s to the present. We aslso see that over this time there is a steady decrease in participation. The break point, 1960, when the pattern changes, is the year Minnesota went form a two year to a four year governor term. Boom.

We also see a diminishing in the up and down cycle since 1994, and some interesting anomalies. That is for discussion another time. At this point, we can say that with respect to this hypothesis — syncing elections ruined turnout — that the center holds.

One solution to this problem would be to unsync the elections. I can think of several ways to do this.

1) Keep the two year term for the US House, but give half of them one three year term once, so about half the house races are happening every year.

2) Move around the Senators so there are senatorial races every year.

3) Move all gubernatorial races to one of the other odd year that is not a POTUS or Midterm year.

I predict that if we did all of that, participation in our elections would spring to 80%. Well, not spring. Move. It would take a decade, but it would get there.