JD Vance makes a recommendation on who to vote for in the midterms: "Vote for the people who have solutions to lower the cost of gas, don't vote for the people who made the problem to begin with."

Announcing @WisconsinElects, a new site providing precinct-level results for the 2026 elections in Wisconsin! Most outlets only give a vague idea of what's actually going on under the hood in each county on election night, but this is the full picture. sites.google.com/view/wi2026

What makes a wave? To me, the biggest unanswered question about the midterms is what happens to Republican turnout over the next 15 days, particularly among voters who have participated consistently in past elections. At this point, the early vote data increasingly suggest that voters who sat out 2024 but are turning out in 2026 are disproportionately Democratic. That's certainly encouraging for Democrats, but we're talking about a relatively small share of the eventual electorate. In a midterm, when overall turnout is substantially lower than in a presidential election, the much bigger question is which voters who participated in 2024 will stay home in 2026. And that's something I think will have a huge part in deciding an ordinary Democratic victory and a blue tsunami. To understand why, it's worth looking at "3 of 3" voters: people who voted in each of the previous three elections. These are the most reliable voters in the electorate, but even their turnout can vary substantially between parties in midterm years. In fact, one of the interesting parts of the 2022 midterms was how differently these voters behaved across states (as seen in the graphic). Democrats held up pretty well in places like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Kansas, and Maine, while Republicans enjoyed enormous turnout advantages in New York and Florida. Those differences among otherwise highly reliable voters were an important part of the very different electoral outcomes across states, even against the backdrop of the same national political environment under the Biden presidency. That's the dynamic I'm watching most closely right now: Republican 3 of 3 voters are lagging considerably behind their Democratic counterparts in early turnout across a number of states, most notably Georgia and North Carolina. But what that means for November is still far from clear. I see two broad possibilities. The first is that Republicans' early turnout problems reflect something more fundamental. Lukewarm feelings toward the Trump administration, combined with the absence of Trump himself from the ballot, could be translate into a big enthusiasm gap. If those problems extend to voters who normally participate in every election, Republicans could easily end up facing turnout deficits of 6-10 points among their most reliable voters in some key states, as we saw in places like New York and Florida in 2022. That's the kind of turnout dynamic that can turn Trump's low approval and a favorable national environment into a total tsunami. The second possibility is that Republicans are simply voting later. As I've said in past posts, Republicans have a lot of time to recover. GOP voters may be less enthusiastic and less inclined to participate early, but still broadly show up. Under this scenario, the substantial partisan gaps we're seeing in early voting could narrow considerably, looking much more like AZ and PA from 2022 than NY and FL. Of course, the eventual outcome could fall somewhere between these scenarios. And, it could differ enormously by state—that was the big story in 2022. Democrats were able to maintain strong turnout among their reliable voters in Kansas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Maine, winning a number of important races even as their party got totally squished in California, Florida, and New York. There was no single national turnout story that adequately explained what happened everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if 2026 produces similarly large geographic differences. And while the early evidence raises legitimate concerns for Republicans, I don't think we have nearly enough information yet to know how persistent those gaps will be. One important note is that this phenomenon is largely unique to midterms. In presidential elections, nearly all 3 of 3 voters turn out regardless of party. In 2024, the partisan gap was less than two percentage points in every state. Wyoming had the largest gap at 1.7 points, followed by Kentucky at 1.5. New York, Florida, and Nevada were all at 0.9 points, Iowa was at 0.8, and the remaining states ranged from 0.0 to 0.6. There isn't much room for high propensity partisan turnout differences in presidential years; nearly every habitual voter votes. But in midterms, when even reliable voters are more likely to stay home, those differences can become much more consequential. And that's why I'm paying so much attention to lagging Republican 3 of 3 turnout in states like Georgia and North Carolina. As we saw in Florida and New York in 2022, an early partisan turnout advantage doesn't necessarily disappear as voting continues, even if it narrows. Whether Republicans can eventually mobilize their habitual voters at acceptable rates is an open question, and the historical precedent for this is very mixed. And finally, an important caveat that I try to emphasize whenever discussing turnout: persuasion remains an enormous part of the equation, and often the most important one. If you told me today that the 2026 national electorate would have voted Harris+2 in 2024, I wouldn't have the faintest clue who would win the Senate. Even perfect knowledge of the eventual electorate wouldn't necessarily tell us the election result. But turnout can still absolutely help explain the difference between a close election and a wave. And over the next two weeks, I think one of the most consequential questions will be whether Republicans with a history of consistently voting end up coming out in large enough numbers.