AR Intel

AR Intel takes you beyond the news to give you the full picture of what’s going on in the political world.

The Political Edge: The Republican Response To ActBlue

A couple of weeks ago, AR Intel provided an overview of ActBlue, a fundraising platform for Democratic candidates and left-leaning groups that helped them raise $1.6 billion through the 2018 election cycle. At the end of the piece, we noted GOP challenges in creating a similar fundraising infrastructure and highlighted that its success would require buy-in across multiple Republican Party groups and processing vendors.

In this week’s edition of The Political Edge, we provide an overview of the GOP’s recently announced platform designed to compete with ActBlue and recap the initial House ratings provided by the political forecasters at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

The GOP’s Answer To ActBlue

This week, Republican officials announced they had come to an agreement to create a new platform dubbed Patriot Pass. A Republican answer to ActBlue, Patriot Pass will be used to cultivate and process online donations. Below is a brief overview about Patriot Pass and how it will work in the Republican ecosystem.

  • Patriot Pass is expected to be a joint venture between Data Trust (the RNC’s designated clearinghouse of voter information) and Revv, a donation processor used by the Trump campaign.

  • As part of the agreement, Victory Passport, a small-dollar platform used widely by Republican congressional candidates, is expected to eventually shutter and encourage its clients to use the new platform.

  • Patriot Pass has received the explicit blessing of party leaders and is expected to launch next month.

  • Candidates will not be required to use Patriot Pass and are free to use any other payment processors on the market.

Final details of how Patriot Pass will function are still being worked out. However, it’s expected to have many of the same features as ActBlue. Per Politico:

  • “Visitors will be able to send one-click donations to their candidate of choice. Afterward, their screen will repopulate with suggestions of other campaigns to contribute to.”

  • “Designers intend to create the capability for tandem fundraising, a mechanism that allows candidates to split their donations — and essentially tie themselves to — others who have widespread grass-roots support. House contenders, for example, will be able to send out solicitations asking for contributions for themselves and Trump.”

  • “Givers will be asked to pay a small processing fee comparable to the 3.95 percent-per-transaction fee imposed by ActBlue. Party officials say Data Trust will use revenues to make improvements to the platform.”

  • “Once a contribution is complete, the donor’s information will be appended to their voter files stored at Data Trust.”

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball Initial House Ratings

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball became the second political forecaster to release its initial House ratings, joining The Cook Political Report this week in providing their take on the 2020 cycle. Although the two sites have similar ideas of which races may be competitive in 2020, they disagree on several classifications. For example, unlike the Cook analysis, Sabato’s managing editor, Kyle Kondik, believes both Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) are in “toss up” races. Sabato’s Crystal Ball also believes there are fewer Democratic “toss ups” in 2020; they rate 10 races as “Democratic toss ups” compared to the Cook Political report, which rates 16 races as such. More background on Sabato’s House ratings is below.

  • Sabato’s Crystal Ball believes that Democrats are favored to hold their House majority. Republicans need a net gain of 18 seats to take back the House, and President Trump’s reelection coattails may not help. The last five reelected presidents saw their parties fall short of that net total in their election years, and the House hasn’t switched from one party to the other and then back again in consecutive elections since 1952-1954.

  • The 10 Democratic Toss-ups are all first-term Democrats in districts Trump won in 2016 by at least 3.5 points (and, in some cases, by double digits). The GOP Toss-up column includes the vacant NC-09, two of three remaining Hillary Clinton-won districts held by Republicans (PA-01 & TX-23), and two Trump-won suburban districts (GA-07 & NE-02) that were also very close in 2018 and that could break against the president in 2020.

  • Sabato’s Crystal Ball is starting with more Democratic seats (27) than Republican ones (20) in the very competitive ‘Toss-up’ and ‘Lean’ categories. That’s in large part because Democrats now control 31 Trump-won seats while Republicans only control three Clinton-won seats.

  • They do not list any of the Democrats’ newly-won California seats among the Toss-ups, even though several were decided only by a few points, because Hillary Clinton carried them in 2016 and it’s reasonable to expect the Democratic presidential nominee to once again carry them in 2020. The opposite is true in MN-01 and MN-08. Both voted for Trump by double digits, and if that repeats itself, it’s hard to see how Democrats can win those districts back.

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