What happened? Expectations, polls and the ‘red mirage’

President Biden said the day after the midterm election, “The Democratic Party outperformed anything anyone expected.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, “House Democratic Members and candidates are strongly outperforming expectations across the country.”

Every election is a game of expectations. Voters make up their minds based, in part, on what they expect to happen. Politicians and pundits interpret the results by how closely they conform to what was expected.

Every election includes a candidate called “expected.” It’s not enough to win the election. You have to do “better than expected.” If you do “about as well as expected,” it’s no big deal. If you do “worse than expected,” you lose, even if you win.

I once figured out a way to formalize the expectations game. It was during the 1998 midterm election, at the peak of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and President Clinton was facing impeachment. I decided to canvass about 50 columnists, pundits, political reporters and talking heads. They are the people who set expectations. With the help of CNN’s staff, I asked each of them one question: What do you expect to happen in the midterm?

The people we canvassed lived in a bubble. They read each other’s columns and watched each other’s commentary. We discovered after a handful of calls that everyone was saying the same thing: they expected the Democrats to lose between five and ten House seats in the election. They all knew that the president’s party loses House seats in a midterm. That had been true since 1934. With President Clinton in disgrace, it was bound to happen again.

At the beginning of the evening, I announced, more or less officially, what the chattering class “expected” to happen that night. The final result would be measured against those expectations. Would the Democrats do better than expected, worse than expected or about as well as expected? “Stay tuned.”

At the end of a long evening, CNN announced that Democrats had made a net gain of five House seats. For the first time in more than 60 years, the president’s party had gained House seats in a midterm election. It wasn’t a big gain, but Democrats did “better than expected.” The election result amounted to a rebuke of congressional Republicans who were determined to defy public opinion and impeach President Clinton.

The unexpected result shocked the political establishment. So what happened? Within a few days, Newt Gingrich resigned as Speaker of the House. He was the victim of the expectations game.

What determined expectations this year? More than anything else, the polls. They showed President Biden’s job approval rating dipping to a record low for all recent presidents at this point in their presidency. A president’s job rating is always a key factor determining the outcome of a midterm election. Below 50 percent approval means losses for the president’s party. Biden’s numbers were dipping below 40 percent.

Biden is widely seen as a “weak” leader. That perception became widespread after the humiliating spectacle of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

Twenty years ago, Democrats were shocked at their failure to make gains in the first midterm election under President George W. Bush, which was also the first time Americans went to the polls following 9/11.  Asked for his explanation of what went wrong for Democrats in 2002, former President Bill Clinton said, “Strong and wrong beats weak and right.”

What drives the perception of Biden as weak? In all likelihood, his age. On Nov. 20, Biden will be 80 years old. So what saved Democrats this time from the perception of Biden as a weak president? Simply this: The 2022 midterm was driven by views of two presidents, not one. Former President Donald Trump is still the leading force in the Republican Party. His MAGA (‘Make America Great Again’) movement defined the Republican opposition in this year’s midterm.

Trump, who is 76, calls attention to Biden’s perceived weakness at every turn. Trump calls Biden “Sleepy Joe,” and has said, “You’d blow on him and he’d fall over.”

In the television networks’ 2022 exit poll, 57 percent of voters nationwide had an unfavorable opinion of President Biden. And Donald Trump? 58 percent unfavorable.

Polls shape expectations. In 2016, when voters faced the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, I asked Democrats whether they were planning to vote for Clinton. Many of them were unenthusiastic about the former senator and secretary of state, a familiar figure in the Washington establishment. Crucially, the national polls all showed Clinton leading Trump. (They were not wrong. Hillary did win the national popular vote in 2016.)

The response I heard from many Democrats was, “The polls say she is bound to win. She doesn’t need my vote.” The polls shaped expectations. And expectations shaped the vote.

Just as they did this year, when the polls were reported to be showing a “red wave.”

For Democrats angry about abortion rights and MAGA extremism, the party needed their vote — and got it.

Bill Schneider is an emeritus professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of “Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable” (Simon & Schuster).