September 11, 2018

Republicans Are On Track to Lose 50 Seats

So how’s the election going to shake out in November? Beats me, but in February Seth Masket put up a chart showing what we could expect based solely on two fundamentals: the president’s popularity and the growth in real per-capita disposable income since last year. Those two numbers now look pretty well set in stone: Trump is consistently polling between 35-40 percent, and income growth since last year was 1.9 percent. That means we just have to plug them into Masket’s chart from February:

It looks like Republicans are going to lose about 50 seats. There are no guarantees, of course, and maybe Trump will annex Baja California and suddenly become the most popular president in history. At the moment, though, this is a fairly reliable model and it predicts a big loss for the GOP. All that’s left is for the Democratic Party not to blow it.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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