Politico: California Primary a Good Sign for House IncumbentsJacob Bliss 5 Jul 2022
Politico’s weekly newsletter indicated that California’s “political crystal ball” shows incumbents are in good shape heading into the midterms and the primary shows a “pretty solid picture of what the general election is going to look like.”
The newsletter, written by Politico’s Scott Bland, noted that the primary election in California’s top-two primary system is typically a good indicator of what will happen in the general election every two years.
By adding up the aggregated votes by Democrats and the aggregated votes by Republicans in the House primary, Bland noted that “you get a pretty solid picture of what the general election is going to look like — with the Democratic vote typically serving as the party’s floor in November”:
Every two years, the primaries kick up a wonderful opportunity to peer into the future and take a sneak peek at fall election results. This crystal-ball moment comes courtesy of California’s top-two primary system. Add up the aggregate Democratic vote and the aggregate Republican vote in each House primary, and you get a pretty solid picture of what the general election is going to look like — with the Democratic vote typically serving as the party’s floor in November.
In 213 California congressional races from 2012-2020 that featured one Democrat and one Republican, the median race saw Democrats pick up 2.1 percentage points from primary to general, while Republicans lost half a point. All in all, Democrats gained in nearly two-thirds of races. If you look just at 2012-2018 — a reasonable thing to consider, since the 2020 presidential nominating contest juiced Democratic engagement to an unusual and lopsided degree compared to Republicans in that year’s primary — Democrats improved from primary to general in 74 percent of races. The median Democratic gain those years was 3.3 points, while the median Republican decline was 1.6 points.
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— Battleground Orange County may send all of its incumbents back. It wouldn’t be unprecedented for one of the four battleground districts touching Orange County to flip — but it would have to be a big shift from the primary. Republicans got 57 percent and 59 percent, respectively, in the primaries for Reps. Michelle Steel and Young Kim’s districts. Democrats, meanwhile, cleared the majority mark in Rep. Katie Porter and Rep. Mike Levin’s districts.
However, Bland noted that there are still a few races to watch out for.
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/07/05/politico-california-primary-good-sign-house-incumbents/
