Analysis: Do Political Underdogs Stand a Chance?
Image from The New York Times
NOAH VINOGRADOV: Dr. Oz. Stacey Abrams. Tim Ryan. Lee Zeldin. If you had to take a bet today, you’d probably guess that those four individuals won’t win their races in the upcoming midterm elections.
On every political junky’s favorite polling site, FiveThirtyEight, Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican Dr. Oz have a 12% and 45% chance of winning their respective senate races (Edit: Oz now has a 57% chance of winning). As for the Governor’s races, Democrat Stacey Abrams only has a 6% chance of beating Brian Kemp in Georgia, whereas Republican Lee Zeldin only has a meager 5% chance of becoming New York’s next Governor. At one point or another, all of these individuals have served as the “underdog”: the candidate who, as seen by both sides, will likely not win. But what role do these underdogs have in elections, and in particular, what might they reveal about the political winds at any given moment?
For context, it’s useful to look into electoral history. As it turns out, there are many reasons to explain how underdogs overcome their disadvantage and win in what’s generally known as an “upset” victory. In 1948, facing a slew of predictions that had him losing in every one, President Harry S. Truman performed a staggering upset victory, carrying the popular vote by 3 percentage points and sweeping the electoral college.
More recent upsets have had closer outcomes, and the odds against the winning candidates might have been even more stacked than they were against Truman. The case we all know, of course, is former President Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Although conservatives claim that they “all knew” Trump was going to win, pollsters on either side agreed that it was a longshot. Despite a few controversies during President Obama’s tenure and the last minute probes into Hilary Clinton’s emails, there was little reason to suspect that the Democrats would lose to a businessman turned reality TV host with no political experience. And although the polls tightened by the end, Trump’s controversial “locker room talk” and “Build the Wall” policies had many saying “There’s no way this guy could actually win.”
Other recent upsets had even less indications that the election would go any differently. In a famous 2018 New York primary, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez beat highly ranked House Democrat, Joe Crawley, in a feat that shocked the country. AOC supporters attribute her win to the vast “grassroots” organizing that she did in advance of the election (she was outspent 8 to 1), but very few could have guessed that organizing alone could unseat such a powerful incumbent.
When underdogs win elections, it sends ripple effects through political circles and the electorate after the fact. Upsets tell pollsters that something about their predictions was off, which prompts them to reassess the variables that gave rise to their mistaken predictions in the first place. With Pennsylvania in 2016, alongside other swing states that went to Trump, pollsters adjusted their models to account for educational divides, “hidden” Trump voters who didn’t explicitly express Republican support, and key suburban areas that swayed more towards Republicans than the polls had predicted.
Based on what we retroactively conclude about upset victories, can we say anything about our current 4 underdogs and their upcoming elections before those elections occur? I think the answer is yes — but it’s complicated.
First of all, there are varying degrees of “underdog status.” While Dr. Oz might have been the definitive underdog after barely winning his primary this past May, the nearly neck-in-neck race between Oz and Fetterman now has many questioning Oz’s underdog status. Tim Ryan and Stacey Abrams have stayed relatively the same, as popular democrats running in unfavorable political environments. In New York, a state that all but guarantees a Democratic victory at a national level, Rep. Lee Zeldin’s chances pretty quickly went from none to a longshot. Clearly, that longshot is enough to scare current Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY), who called herself the “underdog” in the race just two weeks ago (even though she is the incumbent, has a massive fundraising advantage, and still carries a solid 7-point lead in the polls).
Even then, the direction of these swings in underdog status point towards a national political climate that has, in the past few months, increasingly tilted towards Republicans. Fetterman, a current Lieutenant Governor, was favored well into double digits in the polls against Oz, a reality TV star who has never before held political office (see the pattern here?). Even after Fetterman got a stroke in May, he enjoyed a summer of more good news from the polls. But as Oz worked to paint Fetterman as weak on crime and part of Biden’s “failing” national agenda, the race tightened significantly.
The same phenomenon happened in New York. Even with Hochul’s prompt emergence on the national stage after former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation in August 2021, her campaign has done nothing to lessen her chances. But the increased crime in places like New York City — including a few national incidents this past summer — allowed Zeldin to attack Democrats on two fronts: nationally and statewide, where Democrats hold total power in all of New York and Washington. After all, it’s easy to score political points by blaming salient issues on the majority party with the alleged power to deal with those issues.
Our Democratic underdogs, meanwhile, have had arguably compelling reasons to swing their races in their favor — but that simply hasn’t been reflected in the polls. Ohio’s Tim Ryan (D-OH), an experienced Congressman, has attacked opponent Republican J.D. Vance on numerous fronts, including his extremist views and his outward support of Trump, in a state that’s potentially still on the moderate side. Ryan is even convinced that his race will be the “upset of the night.” Still, the Ohio presidential races in 2016 and 2020 with similar margins of error, or even smaller, conclusively went towards Trump and Republicans: there isn’t much evidence to suggest that will change now.
In Georgia, Stacey Abrams, who gave current Governor Brian Kemp a run for his money back in 2018, hasn’t been able to pick up the steam she wanted this time around. Despite the remarkable work she did for Democrats in 2020, that momentum stopped short with her current race against Kemp, who has been ahead by an average of 5-6 points in every major recent poll. Again, Abrams’ campaign has seemingly done all the right things — including courting black male voters, who would be crucial to her winning — but with the environment she’s facing, it just hasn’t seemed to stick.
Inevitably, all four of these races are going to be close. It’s quite plausible, including in New York or Georgia, that we’ll see one of these underdogs perform an upset victory. As many have already argued, the national political environment might make Republican upsets more feasible, and as upsetting as it would be to find out that some dude from Jersey got elected as my Senator, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised. That being said, there might very well be some upset factor that we don’t know about yet, which, retroactively, will be revealed to us after the election.
Do you live in a state where an upset is possible? If you’re in one of the many states with a competitive Governor, Senate, House, or even local statewide race, you probably do. Next time you’re outside, stick out your nose and try to sense which way the political winds are blowing: maybe you’ll sniff an upset that the pundits and pollsters haven’t quite figured out yet.
Noah Vinogradov is a Staff Writer for On the Record studying International Political Economy and Music. He encourages you, regardless of political party, to VOTE this November at IwillVote.com