OK, I realize that there is a tendency to overreact after a wave election, and we too often hear right after such an elections claims that the beneficiary of the wave is destined for long-term dominance. So my title may be a bit over-the-top. And I don’t think America is a “center-right” country or even that this election was particularly ideological (as opposed to reflecting the state of the economy). It’s pretty close to 50-50 right now, ideologically.
But I do worry that Republicans will find it increasingly easy to achieve and maintain their hold on the House over time, due to a couple serious structural disadvantages Democrats face. I’ll explain after the flip.
It seems pretty clear that the parties have become more polarized over the past couple decades, and that people are becoming more likely to vote straight-ticket. States that are Republican at the presidential level are becoming more likely to vote Republican for all state and federal races (witness, for example, even the traditionally Democratic state legislatures in places like Alabama switching this year). And vice-versa.
It would seem, therefore, that fewer districts that vote Republican for President will elect Democratic Reps., and fewer Democratic districts will vote for Republicans. This certainly seemed to come into focus over the past three election cycles, when Democrats nearly wiped out Republicans in Democratic districts in 2006 and 2008 and Republicans pretty soundly defeated Democratic Reps. in red districts in 2010.
Here’s the basic problem: there are a lot more Republican districts than Democratic districts. According to the list of districts sorted by Cook PVI, there are 234 districts that are at least R+1, and only 192 that are at least D+1 (with 9 right in the middle at D+0). If we only look at the districts that have a particularly strong lean –say, 5 points in either direction — there are 189 “strong” Republican districts (R+5) and only 156 (D+5) “strong” Democratic districts.
A big part of this, of course, is because of gerrymandering. Unfortunately, because Democrats have an urban base, they are a lot easier to pack into very Democratic districts than are Republicans. Republicans, in other words, are more efficiently distributed across districts. One of the fears, as others here have noted, is that the Republicans’ substantial victories at the state levels will make this gerrymandering even more “efficient” for the Republicans. My point, however, is that even if they fail to alter the status quo it’s clear the Democrats have a structural disadvantage in the House.
To some extent, this structural disadvantage may be true in the Senate as well, due to there being more safe Republican states (on the Presidential level) than safe Democratic states (Republican voters again being more efficiently distributed). But this is more ambiguous, and, as Clinton and Obama both proved, Democrats can turn a majority of the states into blue states.
In any case, the upshot of all this is that with greater party polarization and more straight-ticket voting, it’s becoming much more difficult for Republicans to win in Democratic areas and Democrats in Republican areas. Because of the disparity in the number of Republican- and Democratic-leaning districts, however, this development would seem to be a major boon to the Republicans in the House, whether or not they gerrymander the hell out of the areas they now control.
This structural disadvantage has another effect as well — it allows the Republicans to be more conservative and forces the Democrats further to the political center. Republican don’t have to worry about winning ANY Democratic districts and not more than a handful of swing districts (that nevertheless lean slightly Republican). Democrats, on the other hand, must win several Republican-leaning districts to maintain a majority. While the Republicans in Republican districts can get away with being fire-breathing conservatives, I doubt you’ll get many strong progressives in these Republican-leaning areas necessary to capture to obtain a majority.
This is the kind of thing keeping me up at night. Am I overreacting in suggesting that we’ll have big problems holding the House in future years following the retirements/defeats of nearly all our Republican-district Democrats (something that has little to do with the fact that America is a “center right” country but rather with the structural set-up increasingly stacked against Democrats)? Somebody talk me off the ledge here.
What you point out is true: Republicans’ vote is distributed more efficiently, with Democrats running up huge margins in urban districts and Republicans winning rural and suburban districts by generally lower margins.
The upside for Republicans, as you point out, is that it means they have an advantage in an even split.
Democrats however, have an upside too: the same thing that helps Republicans in an even split, helps Democrats if there’s even a moderate margin in their favor. It’s not an accident that the outgoing Democratic majority was a good deal larger than the incoming Republican one: because Republican votes are less concentrated, a modest swing to Democrats nationally can result in huge numbers of seats falling to the Democrats.
Essentially, the way votes are distributed means that the median district is likely to be Republican – but that helps provide Democrats with a higher floor and Republicans with a lower ceiling.
And while elections will likely remain competitive, it’s unlikely we’ll always have close to even splits in the popular vote. In most elections, one party or the other will have a moderate advantage.
I also think that the era of near-permanent House majorities is gone. Even in the full sweep of U.S. history, the post-New Deal Democratic Congresses were a big anomaly, and they reflected the basically non-ideological nature of Congress, where partisan affiliations meant very little. That’s gone, and I think it’s reasonable to expect the House to change power relatively frequently, probably on average about as frequently as the WH and the Senate do, usually every 4 to eight years.
if we speak about short term and mid term perspectives. Republicans, of course, will have their “bad years”, but they will be “on top” approximately in 2 cases out of 3 as a minimum. It will take a miracle, for example, for Democrats to have 2 wave years in a row as it was in 2006 and 2008, which gave them so big majority in 2009-2010. The reason is very simple – there is not enough “progressive districts” in US, and no realistic chances of them to be a majority at least before 2030 in best case (and 2050 in worst). The level of political polarization increases with every election (2006 and 2008, where Democrats won a number of relatively conservative Republican districts, which they must not win at all, with relatively conservative candidates, is an exception and, as 2010 has shown, even that effect was rather short-termed and evewrything “returned to normalcy”), with Republicans generally becoming a party of “pure right” and Democrats (who had a majority being party of both “left” and “center”) more and more becoming simply “party of the left”. Because there is considerably more “right” then “left” in US – Republican chances are better and the “leftier” Democratic platform becomes – the more difficult it will be for them to win large share of thet 40% “center”, which they need so dearly.
Long term perspectives are another thing. After 2030 (and surely 2050) because of heavy democratic changes it’s quite possible that US will become a “liberal nation” (mostly) and Democrats will have “solid progressive majority”. But (taking nto account my age) this is unlikely to be of great interest personally to me)))))) In addition – the 2-party system may evolve into something very different by then – if present process of political polarization will continue i still think that “center” will sooner or later have it’s own party – the void must be filled some way….
It’s true that Republicans pretty much ran the gamut on super red districts, but that means Democrats have less to worry about on the defense list. That also means that Republicans have less room for redistricting games, there aren’t many Blue Dogs left to draw out of seats, the members left are mostly in districts with Democratic PVIs. I agree that there is a big structural disadvantage, but the upside is that some places will continue to trend blue over time.
of problems with assuming Republican cohesion.
For one thing, they are slowly working their way to an internal schism along generational-ideological lines with a strong regional component, resembling what happened among Democrats in 1964-1972.
Secondly, they have been picking up the poorest majority white districts, and relative poverty of districts goes along with relative seediness and corruption and wacky behavior of their representatives.
Third, their vote is starting to concentrate as well. The rural/small town vote continues to lose relative weight because the cities/metro areas are where all the economic and (thus) population growth is.
Fourth, there is a liberal trend in the country of 1% per year shift in support. That doesn’t translate perfectly to partisan gains, of course, but it sets the national Democratic vote percentage baseline. Around 2018 that reaches 50% support. So Democrats need to win fewer and fewer centrist/conservative leaning voters over time.
In practice it takes about 53% or so of the popular vote for a party to win majorities when the state or country as a whole is effectively gerrymandered against it, almost no matter how clever the gerrymander. I don’t know why this is so, it’s an empirical observation. Districts that technically shouldn’t elect the candidate of the party with the 53+% majority, just do. There’s some kind of psychological phenomenon involved.
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Fifth, Republicans only have the sort of strength we’ve seen in midterms and it requires weakness or acquiescence on the Democratic side. I’m somewhat hesitant to say that the generic national partisan split is a Democratic majority, but it’s a better warranted hypothesis than a Republican majority. What we have around the 50% mark in the electorate at the moment are voters who view liberal governance as working to their rational advantage. But they’re still identifying relative safety with conservative positions/policies- not on certainty, on benefit of the doubt. And that makes for the wave elections, as we move back and forth between confidence/determination/fleeing forward and anxiety/insecurity/retrenching as a society.
I’ve looked at the matter somewhat and frankly, I don’t believe that the safety currently desired can or will be found in conservative economic positions. But the only way benefit of the doubt is lost is by giving the group that receives it opportunity to prove their/its worthiness- by electing the reactionaries to power and telling them to prove themselves.
To schematize Republican waves, the Reagan Revolution was a counterrevolution whose principal objective was to crush the post-1968 left alliance as a political force- Leftist groups (mainly AA and hippie), the center Left (unions), and liberals (gays, women, Jews, environmentalists, academia). And it succeeded, crushing the most legitimate groups down to hard cores and peeling off most soft support, discrediting the marginally legitimate or obsolete interests. It was an attempted Restoration whose emphasis was simply power itself and using the power to settle scores and aggrandize itself. It succeeded in that the Right became the dominant power; in returning to the pre-1968 condition not as much. The victories became as complete as could be achieved and then the initiative petered out over a couple of years. And the election of Clinton marked the end, marked the post-1968 left alliance rebuilding. A lot of what took place in the public arena was rehashing and revisiting of 1930s/1940s divisions, problems, attitudes, issues, and motifs.
The 1994 Gingrich-led wave set itself the same objective. But it became mostly an effort at a social/cultural Restoration. A lot of what took place in the public arena was rehashing and revisiting of 1950s divisions, problems, attitudes, issues, and motifs. It ran out of steam and finally broke down in the Clinton impeachment. Which was more or less motivated by right wing anger at how his election had begun the slow reversal and undoing of the Reagan Revolution. Voters stopped the movement in the 1998 and 2000 elections.
The Bush-led wave really begins with 9/11 and the 2002 elections. It also set itself the Reagan Revolution objective of total victory over the post-’68ers. What it quickly became was an effort at a Restoration of aggressively hegemonic, military power based foreign policy as most strongly manifested during the middle of the Cold War. A lot of what took place in the public arena was rehashing and revisiting of 1960s/mid 1970s problems, attitudes, issues, and motifs. Voters put the brakes on that in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Now we have another wave of the kind in 2010. It’s identified with the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, though that might yet change if they get e.g. Romney into the Presidency in ’12 and he zips to the front of the parade. The stated objective is the usual one: total victory over post-1968 liberalism in all realms. But it’s perfectly clear that the central desire or emphasis of the reactionaries is on a Restoration in the economic realm of American life. They don’t have a lot of credibility left in any other.
If this wave goes according to pattern we’re looking at a stalemate election in ’12 or additional net national Democratic loss. (Probably the Senate majority; quien sabe the Presidency. Republicans may well already be staggering politically by the 2012 election just as they did in 2004.) But on pattern the thing will be spent before the ’14 election. Reverse wave. Or maybe just enough to flip things.
Sorry this got kinda long. But I hope it was worth the read. 🙂
(Which I don’t really see as a problem, because the democratic party will always be a bit tent coalition party of liberals, moderates and conservatives) is easily addressed by one thing. Removal of Gerrymandering.
I have hope that this may be brought up as an amendment to the constitution (in a similar vein the 17th amendment was ratified). Rick “Dick Bag” Scott won in florida by the thinnest of margins, yet ballot initiatives 5 & 6 passed, which arguably hurt the republican party, while Prop 20 passed in CA, which have the ability to hurt dems.
This movement has popular support, and maybe if our degradation in politics can be aimed at these gerrymandered districts, we can have a somewhat better house who which will become less polarized, and more willing to work together.
I know that it will probably help some intelligent moderates who may like a gubernatorial candidate, but dislikes his party, and thus votes against them because they have a lot of influence in redistricting. I can assume this happened to at least SOME voters in Texas, who like White, but want a republican gerrymander.
Democrats and Republicans were beginning with Nixon, where the Republicans seemed to have a lock on the presidency unless Democrats nominated a candidate who could appeal to both Southern and Northern Democrats, but where the wide variety in the remnants of the Democratic New Deal coalition made it next to impossible for the Republicans to win the House, but could make inroads into the Senate. Now we have states where Democrats can win governorships, senate races and presidential elections by racking up huge wins in big cities and middle-class suburbs in the Northeast, Pacific, Mountain West and some areas of the Midwest and Coastal South, but find it hard to get to 50%+1 in rural areas even within the states they win. Kind of weird to look at how close the popular vote was in 2004, but the seas of red that Kerry couldn’t make any inroads in whatsoever, let along 2008.
The problem with this scenario is it focuses on PVI. If we divy up districts by who they preferred in 2008, 59 districts Obama carried are now represented by Republicans while only 11 that were carried by McCain are now in Democratic hands. Yes, Republicans are set to control redistricting in a lot of states but in a number of these states they controlled it last time, which raises the question of how much more they can enhance their position.