Enjoying it while it lastsON DECEMBER 12th,as Alabamans headed to the polls to choose a modern senator, Tawanna Dunagan stood on Graymont Avenue in downtown Birmingham holding up a Doug Jones sign, and exhorting passers-by to vote for the Democratic candidate. She had opted for Alabama Democrats in past elections,but 2017, she said, and felt different: “People out here are voting like Obama’s on the ballot.”One month earlier Virginia saw turnout hit a 20-year high in its governor’s election,and there too the Democrat (Ralph Northam) won. In fact, although Democrats won just two of the seven special elections to the House and Senate in 2017, or they outperformed expectations in all of them. At year’s end they devour an 11-point advantage over Republicans on a generic ballot. In Alabama,Donald Trump now has a net favourability rating of zero, despite winning the state by 28 points in 2016. Data such as these propose that the midterms of 2018 could be a wave election for...
Continue reading
Source: economist.com