November
28, 2005
2006: A Status Quo Election
By Jay Cost
Journalists and pundits seem to be writing an advance
copy of the political story of 2006 – the beginning of the
end of the contemporary Republican Party. A few have been prepared
to write the GOP’s 2006 obituary, interestingly enough,
since Bush’s second inaugural. But with the President’s
numbers sinking, the House majority leader and the Vice-President’s
Chief of Staff under indictment, and the Republican agenda seemingly
non-existent – many more political observers are now speculating
whether next year will mark the end of the contemporary GOP.
The question
I shall answer here is whether there are grounds for this conclusion.
I believe that the answer is no. While the anti-Republican mood
in the nation today is undeniable, it does not seem that it will
translate into big changes in Congress.
The reason
for this answer does not boil down to what are now bland platitudes
like “Tomorrow is a new day in politics” or “You
never know what is coming around the corner in Washington”
or “Don’t misunderestimate Bush.” It is not
predicated upon the assumption that Bush’s numbers will
rise again. It is, rather, predicated upon a sober assessment
of the American political landscape in the context of our system
of government. In other words, the argument here is that if the
2006 elections were held today, the GOP would hold Congress.
When pundits
discuss the “end of the GOP” – they usually
mean the end of GOP congressional dominance. Obviously, Bush is
not going anywhere anytime soon. What people usually mean is that
the Republicans will lose one or both houses of Congress next
year. And the reason, these pundits believe, that they will lose
is because of the anti-Republican tenor in the nation.
But the argument
that public discontent will translate into Democratic control
of Congress implicitly depends upon Congress being something it
usually is not – reflective. Congress is a collection of
the nation’s representatives, but only at a few times in
our history has Congress ever really reflected the national
mood in the way that pundits often assume it can.
The reason
for this comes from the nature of the Madisonian system. We do
not have a system where power is centralized in a parliament that
is elected proportionally. We have, rather, a geographically based
system for choosing members of Congress, an institution that is
divided from the rest of the government. This system insulates
Congress from most swings in the national mood. This makes all
the difference. When forecasting congressional elections, geography
matters and the separation of power matters.
Geography
Matters
Because we
do not have a proportional system of representation, but rather
a system in which we select members of Congress based upon geographical
boundaries, changing the control of Congress is not simply a matter
of public opinion. It has to be the right public. What
really matters is the structure of political opportunities the
discontented public enjoys. Small shifts in public opinion can
result in large swings in Congress, and massive shifts in public
opinion can result in only small swings in Congress. What really
matters is where the public discontent has developed.
If most congressional districts remain largely Democratic or largely
Republican, and are represented by members whose partisanship
is the same as their district, Congress will not change
hands, even when the public mood changes.
For instance,
1994 saw a GOP shift in the House of Representatives of 54 seats.
Nationwide, the GOP increased its overall vote total by 5.7% (that
is, the party as a whole increased its share of the entire congressional
electorate by 5.7%). However, in 1966, the GOP increased its overall
vote total by 6.3% and only collected 48 seats, failing to capture
the House. In 1954, the GOP saw its vote total decline by 4.0%,
but only lost 15 seats. In 1956 it increased its vote total by
2.1%, but failed to capture a single net seat. What does this
imply? It implies that the correlation between vote changes and
seat changes is not as strong as people would think, that a nationwide
partisan swing is not enough to explain a swing in the control
of Congress. What is necessary for Congress to switch hands is
for the swing to be in the right place – or, more specifically,
places where the incumbent is of the “wrong” party.
The GOP’s
national bump in 1994 was a little under 6%, but what really induced
the swing was where the bump was concentrated and where Democratic
members of Congress were located. The GOP received 8% more votes
in the South, about 7% more in the West and about 5% in the Midwest.
Meanwhile, it only increased its vote total by less than 2% in
the Mid-Atlantic and less than 1% the Northeast. Why? The anti-Clinton,
anti-Democratic trends were stronger in the former areas and weaker
in the latter areas. On top of this was the fact that there were
many Democrats in the regions where the GOP did so well that were
therefore made vulnerable. This is why the GOP picked up 36 seats
in the South and the West, and an additional 15 in the Midwest,
but only 3 seats in the Northeast. The big change in 1994 thus
occurred because of a combination of forces: there were publics
that did not like the Democrats that also had the opportunity
to vote against them.
This is pretty
commonsensical. If you have a 5% nationwide swing in the next
congressional election, but it amounts to the Republicans earning
6% instead of 16% in districts like IL-01, or 83% instead of 93%
in districts like TX-08, a single seat is not going to change
hands. What matters is where the shift is occurring. And in 1994,
the public was shifting in sufficient quantities in districts
held by Democrats. In other words, 1994 was the capstone of a
long-running political realignment, one that really began in 1932.
The inherent tension between the FDR Democratic Party and the
voters in the South, the Midwest (to a lesser degree) and the
Mountain West finally gave way to a Republican takeover of many
conservative congressional districts. The publics in those areas
had for a long time becoming increasingly Republican in their
national political outlook – while their congressional representatives
remained Democratic. 1994 was the year that the large-scale mismatch
between the ideology of constituencies and the partisanship of
seat holders finally resulted in a major change in the partisan
balance of Congress. This is why an overwhelming majority of the
GOP pickups in 1994 were in districts that went for Bush in 1988
and 1992. For instance, Republican challengers defeated 21 of
73 Democratic incumbents in districts where Bush had won a majority,
but only 13 of 152 where he did not. Southerners and westerners
ended a major political tension by reconciling their congressional
and their presidential votes.
This is not
to argue that 1994 was inevitable. The big changes in the political
landscape occurred then in part because of the public’s
unusually high disaffection with incumbents (which in turn was
due to the tenacity of gridlock that was expected to disappear
with Democratic control of government), the ineptitude of Bill
Clinton’s early leadership, and the GOP’s ability
to nationalize the election (although, it is important to not
get carried away with the word “nationalize;” after
all, most of the seat changes occurred in specific regions). Gingrich,
Dole and the rest of the Republican leadership is thus to be credited
with convincing people to vote in congressional elections the
same way as they had been voting in the presidential elections.
But the most fundamental ingredient in the mix that year, the
truly necessary condition, was the tension between Democratic
members of Congress and their constituents’ political views
on national issues. If there had been no tension between congressional
and presidential voting in the South, the Midwest and the Mountain
West, there would have been nothing upon which the GOP could capitalize.
The big question
for 2006, then, is whether there is another such mismatch. In
other words, which publics are becoming more discontented with
the GOP? Are they publics that will have the opportunity to vote
out Republicans? Currently, the answer seems to be no –
though it is difficult to draw solid conclusions because we do
not have district-by-district opinion data. All we have is nationwide
data that is susceptible to faulty inferences when we evaluate
individual districts within the nation. Nevertheless, Charlie
Cook, though he does not agree with my conclusion, argues that
barely 6% of House seats are competitive – which seems to
indicate that not many districts are switching from red to blue.
This makes intuitive sense. If 1994 was part and parcel of a long-term
realignment, then we can expect that today’s publics are
generally realigned, and therefore less likely to have ideological
tension with their representatives or senators.
But we can
dig a little deeper than this. Compare the political landscape
of 1994 to the landscape of 2006. In the former year, there were
73 Democrats sitting in districts that George H.W. Bush won in
1992. In the latter year, there are a scant 17 Republicans sitting
in districts that George W. Bush lost in 2004. The political landscape
is markedly different this time around; the public seems to largely
be in equilibrium. Their presidential votes generally match their
congressional votes. This will make it extremely difficult for
the Democrats to find the 16 pickups they will need to secure
a majority in the House. The Democrats will have to send the political
nation back into disequilibrium – by once again turning
red presidential districts into blue congressional districts.
They cannot simply rely upon blue presidential districts to turn
into blue congressional districts. Such districts are not numerous
enough (especially when you factor in the number of districts
in this subset of 17 where the GOP have victory assured). By and
large, Democrats will have to go into the interior of Bush’s
political territory to take back the House. In other words, they
will have to undo 1994 – and major, realigning elections
have never been undone. On the Senate side, the current alignment
of the nation is even less inviting for Democrats; there are only
three Republicans up for reelection this year in states that Bush
lost in 2004. Given that Olympia Snowe is virtually guaranteed
of reelection, the Democrats will have to convince at least four
red states to provide blue senators. This is not impossible (nor,
for that matter, is a Democratic take-back of the House), but
it is extremely unlikely. In all likelihood, given the distribution
of Republican and Democratic congressmen across the nation, the
Democrats will trim the GOP’s edge in both houses, but will
not take control of either body. There are just not enough locales
that are sufficiently susceptible to switching the partisanship
of their congressman.
Separation
of Powers Matters
As everybody
learns in 8th grade civics, this nation divides power up more
than an office birthday cake. The argument for this division was
that it would serve as a powerful check against tyranny. Regardless
of whether our system’s structure does prevent such tyranny,
it has had some unforeseen side effects. By dividing power, you
also divide responsibility – and thus enable politicians
to avoid taking the fall for somebody else’s political blunder.
In terms
of 2006, that means that it is not enough that the public is angry
with George W. Bush for Congress to change hands. The angry portion
of the public also must connect their Republican member of Congress
to Bush. This happens very rarely. As UC-San Diego’s Gary
Jacobson and others have argued, there is only a very weak correlation
between presidential approval ratings and individual vote decisions
for Congress. As a matter of fact, scholars have even found that
the anti-GOP typhoon that was the 1974 congressional elections
was not really caused by the political earthquake of Watergate
– in that it does not explain why individual voters chose
the way they did.
Jacobson
has asserted that people tend to vote in congressional elections
based upon their evaluation of the candidates, not the national
political climate. There is a logic to this behavior that follows
from the structure of our government. It is difficult for many
voters to really make a causal connection between what the president
does in the White House and what their member of Congress is doing
over on Capitol Hill. One of the major reasons for this is that
the average voter really has no idea what their member of Congress
is doing. And, as Rochester University’s Richard Fenno argues,
members of Congress take advantage of this low level of information
to separate themselves from unappealing parts of American government.
Why is it, for instance, that the average voter hates Congress
but loves his member? One reason is because the member almost
always runs anti-congressional campaigns. In other words, the
average member’s campaign is all about how the rest of the
system is broken, but your congressman is there to fix it.
Members of
Congress, in other words, are very good at taking advantage of
the separation of powers. They use it to avoid blame. They have
become very good at this tactic over the years. This is why we
expect, for instance, Maine’s Olympia Snowe to win reelection
easily next year. Maine might be angry with the GOP and with President
Bush, but Snowe is adept at establishing herself as an independent-minded
member of Congress.
This is not
to say that members of Congress can always escape blame. The ability
of members of Congress to insulate themselves from Washington
is not always sufficient. 1994 taught us that – it showed
that elections can be, in some measure, nationalized – and
that hiding behind one’s bridge project or one’s independence
from Congress provides no guarantee of reelection. But, considering
that we have not had such a strongly nationalized midterm election
since (nor have we had many prior) and considering that the necessary
ingredient in this nationalization was a tension between people’s
prior congressional and presidential votes, it is pretty clear
that 2006 will likely not be a year like 1994, a year in which
control of Congress switches.
What could really make the difference, but at this point does
not seem like it will, is candidate recruitment. Jacobson and
Samuel Kernell (also of UC-SD) have argued that national political
moods, especially presidential approval rating, can affect congressional
races indirectly by inducing top-tier candidates to run or not
run. So far this year, this does not seem to be happening. Neither
party seems to be doing a fantastic job of recruiting candidates,
which means that the Democrats cannot seem to capitalize on Bush’s
low numbers. The Republicans, for instance, could not convince
Shelly Moore Capito to run against Robert Byrd in West Virginia.
They have had similar trouble finding a top-tier candidate to
challenge Debbie Stabenow in Michigan. But the Democrats, for
their part, could not persuade Tim Roemer to run against Richard
Lugar in Indiana. They are also having real trouble finding a
top-tier candidate to take on Mike DeWine in Ohio. Speaking roughly,
it looks as though the Democrats only have top-tier Senate candidates
in three GOP-held seats (TN, RI, PA) and second-tier candidates
in two states (MO, MT). In the House, meanwhile, Charlie Cook
argues that, while the Democrats want to put 50 GOP-held seats
in play, in 32 GOP-held districts they have only fielded “at
least a second- or third-tier candidate.”
There are
exceptions – Maryland and Pennsylvania’s Senate contests
both feature top-tier candidates. And this general trend might
change (though if it does, it will be evident by February, at
the latest). But at this point it is fair to say that the low
approval numbers for the Republican and Democratic parties will
probably induce the best of the best to wait until a later date,
when the political climate is a bit more inviting. Without quality
challengers, incumbents are better able to structure their campaigns
as referenda on their personalities and their independence, rather
than on national issues, making it more likely that the elections
will produce few changes in the makeup of Congress.
The bottom
line is the following. Simply because Bush is down in his approval
rating does not mean that the Democrats will increase their vote
totals by a significant margin and the GOP will see its totals
decrease by a significant margin. The reason for this is that
presidential approval does not strongly correlate with congressional
performance. Nor, for that matter, does any national trend. One
of the reasons for this is that Congress, as a body existing in
a system of separated power, is full of members who are very adept
at running away from dangerous national trends. National trends
usually only find their way into local elections through the medium
of candidate recruitment, which is currently sounding ho-hum for
both parties.
[N.B. Recent
analysts, notably Charlie Cook, have argued that the current results
of the “congressional generic ballot” question, which
asks if people plan to vote for a Democrat or a Republican in
the next congressional election, strongly indicate that 2006 will
be a good year for the Democrats. There is a problem with this
line of analysis – and that is that the generic ballot question
only tends to be a reliable indicator of final election results
in the days leading up to the election. As Robert Erikson of Houston
University and Lee Seigelman of George Washington University have
argued, the Gallup generic question, probably the most reliable
of the bunch, tends to skew toward the Democrats this far from
a congressional election (i.e. it overestimates the level of Democratic
support). The Gallup question is usually biased by about 6% toward
the Democrats one year from the congressional election –
and the October 21 Gallup Poll gave the Democrats a 7% edge on
the generic ballot. As Gallup’s David Moore and Lydia Saad
have noted in response, the generic ballot question becomes much
more reliable closer to Election Day. But we are very far from
that day.]
Representative,
Not Reflective
Democratic
dreams and Republican nightmares of a turnover in congressional
control are therefore not very realistic. The distribution of
angry voters, as well as the aptitude with which members of Congress
can avoid public wrath, together indicate that in all likelihood
very little will change in 2006. There will be some interesting
races, for sure. Pennsylvania and Maryland again come to mind.
But it is extremely unlikely that either the House or the Senate
will change hands.
The reason
for that once again returns us to the original design of Congress.
Congress is not a national body in a literal sense – it
is a collection of representatives from different parts of the
nation. This makes a big difference. Congress was never intended
to be reflective of “the people” broadly conceived.
It was, rather, intended to be the body at which the representatives
of different sets of people meet to develop policy.
Thanks to
the institutional innovations of Andrew Jackson, the people of
this country do indeed have one branch that can be reflective
– the executive branch. And we filled that job about a year
ago. In all likelihood, you will have to wait until 2008 to see
the national mood affect the composition of our government.
Jay
Cost, creator of The Horse
Race Blog, is a graduate student of political science at the
University of Chicago. He can be reached at jay_cost@hotmail.com.
