March 8, 2006
Will Republican Retirements Swing the House?
By Jay
Cost
With the
announcement
of Bill Thomas’s retirement, many have begun to take closer
notice of the number of open seats in 2006 – and how they
seem to favor the Democrats. Most political observers have recognized
that the number of open seats is a critical factor in the partisan
composition of the House, and that this year the Republicans must
defend more than the Democrats. However, few have correctly surmised
that the Democrats enjoy little-to-no real advantage because of
open seats.
All political
scientists agree that open seats are a key method of party changes
in the House of Representatives. Only a half dozen (or fewer)
incumbents tend to lose every year, so an open seat is the only
way for a challenger to get around what is known as the “incumbency
advantage”. This is the massive advantage that incumbent
politicians enjoy in terms of money, approval rating and name
recognition; because of this advantage, contests where the incumbent
is running tend to be referenda on the incumbent. It is in open
seat races where national trends can influence the election and
where partisanship becomes more important. Thus, it is in open
seat races – and open seat races alone – that the
Republicans could seriously suffer from today’s anti-Republican
mood. A handful of Republican incumbents will bite the bullet
because of today’s political climate, but if the Democrats
hope to retake the House, they will need to net a dozen or so
open seats.
Open seats
are also an indication of how the parties think they are doing.
The fact that one party has more open seats than the other is
often a sign that politicians sense a negative political climate.
Politicians are strategic, and will flee when a loss seems imminent.
So, open seat announcements are noteworthy; they give us a sense
of how each party surmises its position with the electorate.
As it stands,
the Republicans have 17 open seats to defend. The Democrats have
9. Historically speaking, with an economy as strong as today’s,
and the party of the President having to defend 8 more open seats
than the opposition, we can expect the Republicans to lose about
9 net seats. My sense is that the final figure will be slightly
lower than that. The reason for this is that this estimate takes
into account the quantity, but not the quality, of open seats
in play. In 2006, the quality of Republican open seats is very
poor from the Democrats’ perspective. Consider the following:
·
Of the 17 open Republican seat districts, Bush won 15 in 2000
and 2004.
·
Bush’s median percentage of the vote in 2000 in all 17 was
55%. In 2004 it was 57%
·
Of the 17 open Republican seats, Bush increased his percentage
of the total vote by an average of 3% between 2000 and 2004.
·
The median Cook Partisan Voting Index of these 17 districts is
Republican +5. In other words, the median district of these 17
tends to vote Republican 5% more than the nation.
Simply stated,
Democrats are not salivating at this set of 17. These are not
the sorts of districts that have shifted against Bush and the
GOP enough to give the Democrats a real shot. Sure, there are
a few among these – CO 07, IA 01 – that will probably
switch to the Democrats because the seats are open. And IL 06
might be a nail-biter for the GOP. Nevertheless, these types of
open seats are very dissimilar to the type of open seats the Democrats
had to defend in 1994. The Democrats had many more open seats
that year. And, furthermore, the quality of those open seats was
much more amenable to GOP gains. In 1994, Republicans won Democratic
open seats in conservative districts. It is unlikely that the
Democrats will win Republican open seats in conservative districts.
Further,
as mentioned above, open seats are frequently a sign of how politicians
view their chances. Thus, we can get a sense of how the parties
will do in November based upon seat vacancies today. If, for instance,
lots of Republicans are retiring, we could infer that the Republicans
sense an anti-Republican climate and have decided to avoid losing.
Open seats in 1994 were a sign of the anti-incumbent climate of
that year, for instance. What can we infer about the GOP based
upon these open seats? Consider the following:
·
Of the 17 open Republican seats, 9 of them are open because the
incumbents are pursing higher electoral office.
·
The median share of the vote that incumbents in these seats took
in 2004 was 60%.
·
Of the 7 Republican seats that are open because members have decided
to retire, 2 of those members faced no opposition in 2004. The
remaining won their 2004 election by a median value of 60%.
·
Of the same 7 seats, the median length of time each current member
has served is 24 years. All of them have served through anti-Republican,
anti-incumbent elections.
·
7.3% of the Republican delegation will be open in November. 3.9%
of the Democratic delegation will be open.
Clearly,
these vacancies do not exist because these Republicans fear losing
in November. All of these incumbents are quite skilled at retaining
their seats, many of them are actually seeking higher offices,
and as a whole the Republicans are not defending that many more
open seats than the Democrats.
It is likely
that we will see a few more Republican vacancies. But we should
also expect a few extra Democratic vacancies as well. Overall,
there will not be many more – and we can expect that the
Republicans will have to defend about 8 to 10 net open seats.
A large number of additional Republican retirees seems extremely
unlikely. Retirees would need to announce early enough to give
their replacements time to file their candidacies. Filing deadlines
in many states have now passed; they are quickly approaching everywhere
else.
All in all,
the following seems clear to me. While the larger number of Republican
open seats seems, at first glance, to favor the Democrats, a closer
look at them indicates it does not. The Democrats should expect
to net about 2 seats thanks to Republican vacancies. Thus, the
Democrats, to take the House, will have to do something that is
now almost impossible: defeat a net 13 Republican incumbents.
Jay
Cost, creator of the Horse
Race Blog, is a doctoral candidate of political science at
the University of Chicago. He can be reached at jay_cost@hotmail.com.
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