MIDTERMS? YES, WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT MIDTERMS! — There will be a moment, maybe tonight, when we'll know who won the Virginia governor's race. That's when the 2022 midterms will have begun. Reporters and political junkies will be watching congressional races from across the country, trying to divine the will of the voters on which party should control the House and Senate. If the polling from right now holds into next November, Democrats would likely be swept out of power in both chambers. There will be plenty of unforeseen events before now and then. But quite a bit of it is foreseeable. Nightly talked to campaigns reporter Ally Mutnick over Slack to see what the messaging, money and maps tell us about who's got the early advantage in 2022. No matter who wins in Virginia, what if anything did this campaign tell us about the national mood heading into the midterms? The campaign in Virginia has been all about the suburbs and to what extent those voters are still up for grabs this cycle. Democratic gains in the Virginia state Legislature in 2018 — and their capture of it in 2020 — were powered by well-educated, affluent voters disgusted by Donald Trump. Now Republicans are trying to stage a comeback: Trump is out of office, Biden's approval ratings are sagging, and the GOP has a plethora of timely issues with which to persuade suburban voters: how to teach racial issues and American history to students, school closings, inflation and taxes. If that strategy works for Youngkin or GOP statehouse candidates, that's a really concerning sign for Democrats across the country. As Dan Sena, who led the DCCC in 2018, told my colleague Elena Schneider last month: "If Democrats are bleeding in the suburbs now, no way you're not bleeding the suburbs next year." Trump seems to want to be a factor in the 2022 elections. How do you expect Democrats and Republicans to deal with him? I think both parties see some sort of role for him in the midterms. But they both want the good without the bad. Republicans want him to boost base turnout, especially in rural and heavily Latino areas, and bring out low-propensity voters — but not turn off those well-educated affluent swing voters. Democrats, meanwhile, want to brand the GOP as the party of Trump and baseless conspiracy theories like QAnon but not at the expense of crafting an actual message on the tangible impact their policies could have on the lives of average Americans. Does there seem to be a money advantage or trend as we gear up for '22? Trump's election in 2016 spurred an absolutely massive fundraising windfall for Democrats, powered by small-dollar donors via the ActBlue platform. Before this era, top-tier House candidates were raising a few hundred thousand dollars a quarter but by 2018 House Democrats were raising well over $1 million. Republicans were flabbergasted and couldn't catch up. Fast forward to today: This fundraising revolution never went away for Democrats. Their candidates are still doing well. But over the last two quarters, Republicans have closed that gap, thanks to their newly created fundraising platform WinRed and a greater investment in digital fundraising. Here's a telling stat: In the third quarter of 2019, 49 House Democratic candidates raised over $500,000, compared to 23 House GOP candidates. By the third quarter of 2021, 45 House Democratic candidates still raised over $500,000, but there are now 48 Republicans. States are going through the process of redrawing their congressional districts based on the census now. What are we seeing as the first crop of states finishes their maps, and how will redistricting affect the midterms? This is a hard question to answer because of a delay in the census data that's meant redistricting is happening much later than usual and in a compressed timeline. But a few early trends have emerged. Democrats have ceded control of the redistricting process to independent commissions in a few key blue states and those commissions have been mired in dysfunction. In Colorado, the commission approved a map that could result in an even split of the state's eight congressional seats between Democrats and Republicans — a result Democrats say is not representative of a state that's turning rapidly blue. In Virginia, the commission couldn't even agree on a redistricting starting point and punted its work to the state Supreme Court (which leans Republican). Another trend worth watching: In states where redistricting is controlled by one party, we've seen each side creating more deep blue or deep red seats. That means we're going to have a much smaller battlefield. Take Texas as an example — There were about a dozen seriously contested races in the state in 2020. This cycle there's just one seat that's likely to be truly competitive. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. For all your elections tracking, POLITICO has you covered: Our spiffy results pages for Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, and congressional elections in Florida and Ohio, and our live chat with top elections reporters and editors. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author at tweyant@politico.com or on Twitter at @tweyant.
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