Odds are 96% Supreme Court will be 5-4 Conservative with 2 Trump picks
Published October 4, 2018
by John Davis, John Davis Political Report, October 1, 2018.
Only Twice Since 1914 Has a Party Won 80% of US Senate Races
Whether embattled US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed or not, political history overwhelmingly argues for the likelihood of a 5-4 conservative Court.
A new analysis titled The Senate: How 2018 Sets Up 2020, published on the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics website on September 27, 2018, notes the following compelling facts:
- Only twice in the history of US Senate popular elections (since 1914) has a party won 80% of the US Senate races: the 1932 Franklin Roosevelt landslide election (Great Depression era), and the 1964 Lyndon Johnson landslide election after President Kennedy’s assassination.
- In order to net two (2) additional seats needed to seize the US Senate majority in 2018, Democrats must win 28 of the 35 contested seats (80%).
- Democrats are disadvantaged in 2018 by the fact that they hold 26 of the 35 US Senate seats being contested, with 10 of the 26 Democrats running in states carried by Trump.
For emphasis: Only twice in the last 104 years (52 election cycles) has a political party won 80% of the US Senate races in any single election year; never in a midterm election year. That means the odds are 96% the US Supreme Court will be 5-4 conservative with two of President Trump’s nominees.
Since 1917, the first Monday in October has been the date for the beginning of the new term of the United States Supreme Court. Today, because the nation is so passionately divided over the suitability of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the following traditional words shouted by the marshal at the opening of the court have profound meaning:
“Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”
