Don’t rule out the Democrats winning back the House in 2014 | Harry J Enten

The party in the White House usually struggles in midterms, but the Republicans could lose their majority without a huge swing

I don’t believe the Democrats will win back the House of Representatives in 2014. President Obama’s low approval rating, combined with the usual midterm loss and normal movement away (pdf) from the White House party on the national House ballot, should keep Republicans in control. Yet, there’s a difference between thinking whether the Democrats “will” win back the House or whether they “can” win it back.

Right now, the Democrats hold a lead of about 4-5pt per the HuffPollster and Real Clear Politics average. Many have concluded that this lead would not be enough to take back the House, if the election were held today. However, I believe that it quite likely would be enough.

How so? Let’s address a bunch of reasons people expect that a 4-5pt Democratic lead on the national House ballot would result in Republicans still holding the House – and then show why I think those could be wrong.

1. A uniform shift of 4-5pt on all House seats would still leave Republicans winning a majority of seats

North Carolina Republican Congressman Robert Pittenger was the “median” representative in 2012. Half the races were decided by more than his 6.1pt margin and half were decided by less. Given that Democrats won the national House vote by 1.4pt, a uniform swing across all districts would imply that Democrats would need to win the national House vote by 7.5pt to take back the House.

Count me as one of the people who does not believe in uniform swings. It’s not that the uniform swing is uninformative; it’s that it is very inexact. There are many factors that go into House races, including challenger quality, money spent, and whether or not the incumbent is running for re-election. Most of those are unknown at this point for key races.

You only need to look at the 2006 election to get an idea. Back in 2004, Republicans won the national House vote by 2.6pt. They won the median district by a little over 10pt. In other words, there was that same 7.5pt pro-Republican bias between the national House vote and the median district in 2004 as there was last year.

When we examine 2006, we see the bias simply didn’t hold. Democrats only won the national House vote by 8pt, which should have given them the thinnest of majorities per a uniform swing. Instead, they took 233, or 13 more, seats than a uniform swing implied.

The 218th seat won by the Democrats belonged to Leonard Boswell, who had actually taken the seat easily in 2004. He had health problems, which led to a closer than expected re-election campaign. Boswell, with a winning margin of 5.4pt, might have survived even if the national Democratic margin had been closer to 3pt.

My own math, taking into account redistricting in 2011, says a 3pt Democratic win in the national vote and a takeover of the House would not be nearly as likely as in 2006; but a 4 or 5pt victory would probably do the trick.

2. The experts say there are very few seats up for grabs

The indispensable Cook Political Report has only has 13 Democratic-held seats listed in the relatively competitive tossup or “lean” category. Of course, Democrats need to take 17 seats to win the House. The ratings reflect, among other things, a lack of strong challengers for the Democrats and lack of retirements by Republicans.

The thing is that expert ratings (like most polling) are not all that predictive a year out from an election. At this point in the 2006 cycle, there were 17 Republican seats in the lean or tossup categories (pdf). That’s well short of the 30 seats that Democrats would ultimately take from Republicans. At this point in the 2010 cycle, there were 28 Democratic seats in the lean or tossup category. Republicans, of course, went onto gain 63 seats in 2010.

It’s not until later in the cycle when individual seat rankings become quite useful. That’s when potential challengers and incumbents read the national environment and decide to run or not. Chances are that if the 4-5pt Democratic lead holds, the individual seat rankings will reflect that edge. For now, individual seat ratings probably aren’t all that helpful to understanding which way and how hard the wind is blowing.

3. The Abramowitz model says Democrats need something like a 13pt margin on the national House ballot

Alan Abramowitz’s national House ballot to seats model seems to have unusual sway among some. The model is elegant in the sense that it does a good job of trying to map the midterm penalty and how much exposure the majority party has, in a minimalistic fashion. The problem is that some don’t seem to quite understand how the model should work.

It’s not a straight national vote-to-seat equation. It’s built for early September of a midterm year. Abramowitz isn’t saying that a 13pt Democratic margin in the national House ballot on election day is what Democrats need to take over the House. What he is saying is that a 13pt lead in September is likely to shrink because of the natural movement away from the White House party on the national House ballot during the course of the election year.

Moreover, the model is inexact. It would be within the margin of error of the model for Democrats to take back the House with a 2pt September lead on the national House ballot. In 2010, the model forecasted a Republican gain of 45 seats per my calculation. That was 18 seats off the final Republican gain of 63 seats.

Abramowitz’s forecast is a good starting-point for understanding how uphill is the Democrats’ task in taking back the House, but it is far from perfect.

4. The final national House ballot surveys are biased against Republicans

Charlie Cook has a rule that you subtract 2pt from the Democratic margin on the final national House ballot to know how the national House vote is actually going to pan out. That may have worked over five years ago, though it doesn’t seem to work anymore. In 2008, 2010, and 2012, the Real Clear Politics average of the national House ballot underestimated the actual Democratic standing in the national House vote. So, there’s no reason to think the final national House ballot will overstate the Democrats’ standing in 2014.

Conclusion

There are plenty of reasons the Democrats won’t win back the House. But it’s not impossible that they will. If the same national environment that is producing a 4-5pt on the national House ballot still exists in a year’s time, Democrats may very well win back the House.

Harry J Enten

Has gerrymandering made politics more partisan? Ted Cruz argues not | Harry J Enten

Redistricting is blamed for polarising Congress. But Ted Cruz shows the cause is red-state voters’ choice of strict conservatives

I have written about gerrymandering before, but the issue is back to the fore because numerous commentators have posited a link between gerrymandering and the shutdown. Gerrymandering is now commonly given as the reason why congressional districts appear to be producing more conservative and/or Tea Party-allied Republican representatives.

I still believe the supposed effects of gerrymandering on political polarization in the House of Representatives are being overstated. And fine work from Nate Cohn and Sean Trende explains the point very well. I just have one more thing to add to the argument: what about Ted Cruz?

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is seen as a figurehead for Tea Party conservatives. It’s even been reported that House Republicans have been taking directions from him in refusing to pass a clean continuing resolution without defunding or delaying Obamacare. So did gerrymandering create Ted Cruz, too?

The answer, of course, is no. Ted Cruz was elected to the United States Senate; he has never served in the House. Senators are voted for in state-wide elections, which means that redistricting and gerrymandering logically can’t apply. Yet, Cruz is as conservative as, if not more conservative than, the House GOP members who, many believe, are keeping the government shut down and flirting with debt default.

Admittedly, Ted Cruz is just one elected official, but he’s played a larger-than-life role in the current crisis. And, more importantly perhaps, he is part of a larger trend in the United States Senate, in three ways.

First, Cruz is from the state of Texas. And Texas is a deep red state, which makes it characteristic of a pattern of states becoming more polarized. As I’ve noted before, there used to be a great many states that were very competitive in national elections. In 1976, almost half the states in the union came within 3pt of the nationwide vote in the presidential election. A more impressive 30-plus states were within 5pt. Today, the numbers aren’t even close to that.

There were only eight states that came within 3pt of the national vote in the 2012 presidential race. That number only rises to ten when we include states where the margin was within 5pt of the nationwide margin – only a third of the number there were in 1976. Even if you expanded the list to include those within 10pt, you’d still only get to 14 states.

It’s fairly clear, then, that people are “self-sorting” on the state level. As Sean Trende shows, this filters down to the congressional district level rather well. The number of districts that most would call “competitive” under even the Democratic-written district lines of the 1990s would have been about the same.

Second, Cruz’s election was one of many where voters decided that they wanted their senatorial vote to reflect their presidential vote. Just 20 years ago, a similar party allocation in the Senate featured many more blue state Republicans and red state Democrats. In 1993, 49% of the Democrats’ Senate caucus came from states that had voted more Republican than the nation as a whole in the prior presidential election. That percentage has been cut in half, to only 25% in 2013.

It’s the same story with the Republican Senate caucus. Republicans from blue states were 28% of the Senate Republicans in 1993. Today, the percentage is only 16%.

So, what we have is increased polarization in the voting patterns of states on the presidential level, which has translated down to the senatorial level. Note, as Nate Silver has shown, this is the same phenomenon that is occurring on the congressional district level – even when controlling for changing districting lines.

The third factor is that the increased polarization of the states seems to be reflected in the senators’ voting records. The Senate (as well as the House) is now more polarized than it’s been in the past 135 years. How do we know?

The people over at Voteview score each roll-call vote: -1 is most liberal, while +1 is most conservative, per Voteview’s “DW nominate” score. They then were kind enough to map the average difference between the Senate’s Democratic and Republican caucus. This shows that there have been increasing differences in the average voting scores of the Republican and Democratic Senate caucuses, respectively, since the 1976 election. The polarization accelerated after the 1992 election.

It’s simply not possible that gerrymandering was the sole cause of this trend. It’s not as though anyone can, all of a sudden, start moving around state lines.

Now, none of this is to say that gerrymandering isn’t responsible for some part of the polarization in Washington. The median Democratic and Republican House district is more polarized than the median Democratic and Republican Senate seat. The House caucuses have more extreme voting records than the Senate’s. Some of that is, again, due to self-sorting on the state level more locally, but not all of it can be accounted for that way.

The Senate shows, however, that the sharp upswing in polarization we see today is largely the product of natural voting patterns. And these manifest themselves on the state level without any gerrymandering. Texas put Ted Cruz in the Senate not because someone redrew Texas’ state lines, but because Texas voters became, on average, more conservative.

Harry J Enten

What the Virginia governor’s race tells us about the 2014 midterms | Harry J Enten

Against trend, Democrat Terry McAuliffe is set to win. After running a strong conservative, Republicans should take a hint

I’m hesitant to read too much into elections that don’t occur during the midterms or presidential election years. If off-year elections were all that predictive, Democrats would have done well in the 2002 midterms. Still, Republicans should pay attention to what’s looking increasingly like a Democratic win in the making in the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial election; that ought to make them at least a little worried for the 2014 midterms.

Historically, whichever party is in the White House loses the Virginia gubernatorial election, just as the White House’s party loses House seats in midterm elections. The last time this did not happen was 40 years ago, in 1973.

Moreover, Virginia’s voting patterns these days mirror the nation’s nearly perfectly. President Obama won nationally and in Virginia by 3.9pt. Democrat Tim Kaine won his 2012 senatorial race with 53% of the vote, while Democrats nationally took 54% of the senatorial vote. Both elections featured electorates in which whites now make up 70%, or a little more, during presidential years, and closer to 75% in non-presidential years.

That’s why we’d expect, all other things being equal, the Republican candidate, Ken Cuccinelli, to win Virginia’s gubernatorial election. And voters in Virginia did appear, at first, likely to follow the historical pattern. The first two polls which accounted for the higher white turnout in off-year and midterm elections had Cuccinelli leading Democrat Terry McAuliffe by 3pt and 10pt, respectively.

Then, something started to happen at the end of spring: voters got to know Ken Cuccinelli. Groups supporting McAuliffe and McAuliffe himself, aided by his background as a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee and for Bill and Hillary Clinton, pounded the airwaves – pointing out Cuccinelli’s very conservative positions on contraception, gay rights, and now, the government shutdown.

The result is that McAuliffe has jumped ahead to a mid single-digit lead with a little less than a month to go before the election. Polling at this point has generally been reliably predictive of who will win.

Now, it would be one thing if McAuliffe were winning because of some factor or factors unique to the state of Virginia, but I don’t think we can claim that. The incumbent Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, has faced criticism on grounds of ethics, yet his approval rating is relatively high. McDonnell also led McAuliffe in a pollsters’ hypothetical matchup, if he could have run again.

McAuliffe himself isn’t exactly Mr Popularity. His net favorable ratings are, at best, even, though most polls have his favorable rating below his net favorable rating. In other words, he’s not exactly the type of candidate you’d expect to break an election history pattern in a positive way for his party.

No, the real problem for Republicans in Virginia is Cuccinelli. While McAuliffe may rank slightly below a net positive favorable rating, Cuccinelli’s net favorable is 15-20pt in the red.

Voters simply think Cuccinelli is too rightwing: 43% of voters believe he is too conservative, which is up significantly from when he led in the polls in spring. That compares with only only 35% who believe McAuliffe is too liberal (and that’s more or less where it had been earlier in the campaign).

Therein lies the issue for Republicans nationwide, Cuccinelli embodies their present identity in many ways. Both are becoming deeply unpopular for conservative positions, and both are partying with Ted Cruz – even though they probably know that it doesn’t look good from the general electorate’s point of view.

Meanwhile, McAuliffe looks a lot like Democrats nationally. Both are not well-liked (you could even say, disliked), but they’re not seen as extremist – and, crucially, they look great when compared to the other guy.

None is this is to say a McAuliffe win means Democrats in the 2014 midterms are going to break the historical loss trend – as McAuliffe looks as though he’s going to do in Virginia. In fact, I don’t think Democrats will win seats in the House and will almost certainly lose some in the Senate. It would be a victory of sorts, though, if they can keep any losses to a minimum.

So, Republicans should have a bit of a sinking feeling when looking at Virginia. When presented with the choice between ugly and uglier, Virginians seem to have decided to go with ugly. This may not end up being predictive of next year’s midterms, but it should be unsettling, to say the least, to Republicans nationally.

Harry J Enten

Move On poll tries to make people believe Republicans are vulnerable | Harry J Enten

Most experts, and Move On’s own pollster, don’t believe the surveys are predictive, but media reported them anyway

Outside a few diehards, no analyst gives Democrats much of a chance to take back the House of Representatives. It would take at least 17 seats for the House to change hands.

Public Policy Polling (PPP) sought to push back against that conventional wisdom when it released polls sponsored by MoveOn.org looking at 24 competitive Republican held seats. The results showed generic Democrats leading named Republicans in the 17 necessary to win back the House.

Mark Blumenthal and Nate Cohn have done a good job showing why those polls are unlikely to be predictive, yet I would argue the polls did what they were designed to do. What’s that exactly?

The point of any release from an internal poll is to prove a point. That is, you’re trying to relay a message that is positive to your side. It doesn’t mean the poll is inaccurate, but it’s very unlikely you’ll see an internal poll that is bad for the side who sponsored the survey.

In this case, the point they’re trying to make is that Republican incumbents are vulnerable. This wouldn’t be a big deal, if the election were around the corner. At that point, candidates are already determined, and the races are all but decided.

But right now the Democratic candidates are not determined. In fact, most of the Republicans in districts that leaned to the left of the national vote in the 2012 presidential race lack credible Democratic challengers. It’s the reason, as Cohn points out, that most expert ratings have the Republicans PPP polled doing fairly well. In other words, these Republicans don’t have any real opposition in sight.

What’s the type of thing that can get good challengers to enter? The thought that they can win. The belief that there is blood in the water, and money can be raised to take on an incumbent. Potential candidates for political office want to enter at a moment of strength. Campaigns and fundraising are grueling, and most candidates get one crack at the chance to win.

Tom Jensen of PPP pretty much admitted as much to Blumenthal:

What the Move On polls show is that voters are extremely unhappy with their incumbent Congressmen and open for a change, and now Democrats need to recruit strong enough candidates to take advantage of that anger and vulnerability.

Jensen also acknowledged that there is these surveys are not meant to be too predictive. He noted “Often times a generic opponent is stronger than who actually ends up being the candidate.” In other words, no big deal if the polls overstate Democratic support, as a similar set of polling did for 2012.

This “generic” bias might have been balanced in vulnerable seats for Democrats, except PPP didn’t poll any. If PPP and MoveOn had any real interest in seeing what the state of the House was, they’d poll Democratic controlled seats too. After all, the Rothenberg Political Report finds a nearly equal number of Democratic and Republican seats in play.

I would think no Democratic incumbents in districts won by Mitt Romney were surveyed because it would tip off strong Republican challengers in these districts that the incumbents could be beaten. It’s highly unlikely that MoveOn wants to alert readers and Republicans living in these the districts they can take them away from Democrats.

Despite these caveats, news outlets ran with the PPP polls. The very well read Huffington Post went with the headline “GOP In Grave Danger Of Losing House In 2014, PPP Polls Show”, and the piece got over 35,000 Facebook likes. The more Washington insider publication National Journal, which many donors read, went with “Poll: Shutdown Hurting Republicans in Battleground Districts”.

In other words, Move On got the the press to report that Republican incumbents and only Republicans are in trouble. Whether or not that actually persuades strong Democratic challengers to declare candidacies for 2014 can’t be known. It certainly doesn’t hurt with fundraising. Thus, Public Policy Polling’s surveys might be more predictive than most might think, as it creates a bandwagon effect.

One can only give credit to MoveOn.org for their ability to push a message that Republican incumbents can lose in 2014, while the press might be wise to point out the surveys’ potential faults in the future.

Harry J Enten

Democrats won’t win a ‘blame the GOP’ game on the shutdown and debt ceiling | Harry J Enten

Consumer confidence is crashing. If the economy goes south because of default fears, President Obama will be the big loser

So, people currently blame the Republicans more than anyone else for the government shutdown, but predicting the long-term political fallout is not as easy as that suggests. For one thing, the latest CBS News poll shows that while slightly more people believe the Republicans are at fault, a majority of them are upset with both sides for the inability to avert this crisis.

The real story is not revealed by people’s view of the politicians; it’s contained in the indices of economic sentiment. Gallup finds that Americans’ confidence in the economy has dropped like a rock, from -20pt just before the shutdown, to -35pt now. And it would not be surprising to see that measure continue to fall over coming days, with the deadline for raising the debt ceiling looming in ten days’ time.

What we’re seeing is a time-lag in consequences for the politicians. Gallup has President Obama’s approval rating still within its normal range of 45%, plus or minus a few points.

But remember the debt ceiling battle of April to July 2011: the politicians solved that crisis without the US actually defaulting, yet the mere idea of a default hurt tremendously. S&P downgraded the United States’ credit rating, while Gallup’s economic confidence rating fellby 30pt, to -55.

Regardless of whom the public blamed for the 2011 crisis, President Obama’s net approval rating did drop, by up to -4.3pt, per the Real Clear Politics average. True, that was not a catastrophic fall, but consumer confidence tends to be a leading economic indicator; it moves before the rest of the economy does.

Sure enough, Obama’s net approval rating didn’t bottom out until the end of August 2011 – a month after he, House Speaker John Boehner, and congressional leaders had reached a deal. Obama’s net approval stayed at about -10pt through early October, and was still lower at 1 November than it had been on 1 August. And it stayed depressed even though consumer confidence recovered slightly during the same period.

In fact, the political arguments over the shutdown and debt ceiling fight may not matter that much at all. As University of North Carolina political scientist Jim Stimson found (via Mark Blumenthal of the Huffington Post), it’s consumer sentiment that tends to have the greatest impact on approval ratings and hence elections.

After the last go-round on the debt ceiling, the economy had started to pick up by the end of October 2011, and Obama’s approval rating followed. But the lesson for Democrats who may be thinking smugly that the Republicans will take the biggest hit for the federal shutdown and government default angst is that if the economy goes south as a result, then it’ll likely be the Democratic president who sustains the most damage.

Harry J Enten

Wendy Davis and Texas are a problem for Democrats | Harry J Enten

The Lone Star state isn’t blue yet. A big push for Wendy Davis’ guv race takes resources from more winnable red-leaning states

Those who have followed my writing know that I don’t think Wendy Davis has a very good chance of being elected governor of Texas. She trails in early polling, there hasn’t been a major Texas Democratic statewide officer holder in 20 years, and the state’s demographic changes indicate a landscape that is much further away from being competitive than many Democrats argue. But there’s more to it than that: Davis’ campaign could have bad ramifications for Democrats outside of Texas.

Many Democrats want to argue that even if Davis doesn’t win, it’s worth competing in the state. I don’t disagree. You never know what’s going to happen in any election, and any organizing efforts are likely to hasten (even if not greatly) the chance of a Democrat winning down the road.

The issue is that resources are always limited. Sure, there are mega donors who will donate to every candidate they can. There are also volunteers who will hit the ground in Texas. There are, however, plenty of donors who will pick and choose their campaigns. There are folks who might go down to Texas to help Davis, when they could be somewhere else.

The dollars and volunteers spent for Davis lessens the opportunity that they be spent in other places. That’s a problem for Democrats given that they have a real opportunity to make major gubernatorial gains in 2014.

Democrats are far better positioned to regain control of the governor’s mansions in Florida, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. All these states have had at least one poll come out over the past year indicating that a Democrat led in the race for governor, which cannot be said about Texas.

Florida and Pennsylvania are major swing states in presidential elections. Democrats in Florida could use the governor’s powers to block some very conservative legislation passed by the state’s legislation, while Democrats in Pennsylvania won’t have to listen to their governor’s homophobic remarks. Democrats hold large early leads in both states with very unpopular governors.

Maine’s Governor Paul LePage has made comments that you’d expect from a deeply red state, not one from the blue state of Maine. He only won last time because of a three-way contest, which will again be the case this year. The Democrats are favored, yet will need to ensure the independent candidate Eliot Cutler doesn’t give LePage a second term.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is well below 50% against an unknown opponent in this bluish state. His approval rating is well below 50%. I know Democrats would love to take out the governor who signed right to work into law in the ultimate labor state of Michigan.

South Carolina is most intriguing because there it’s the ultimate southern state. There aren’t any major demographic changes happening in South Carolina, though Republican Governor Nikki Haley has struggled to keep approval rating above water. She only won by 5pt in 2010, even as Republicans won big time nationally.

Democrats also want to hold seats in Arkansas, Connecticut, and Illinois. Polls indicate that those races won’t be easy to won, but they are all more competitive than Texas is.

Republicans would absolutely love the effort and money that would have gone to any one of the eight states above go to Texas. They know that Texas won’t be competitive for at least 10-20 years, if demographic voting patterns hold. No amount of money will change that significantly, while money could alter one of the states mentioned here.

Indeed, Democrats seem to have sort of fantasy on Texas that I can only describe as a naive childhood crush on a pinup when the nice girl next door yearns for attention. Democrats continuously pledge to make Texas blue, though the math just isn’t there. They do when there are other states that are far more for the taking.

The gap between how Georgia and the country votes is shrinking by the day, as the percentage white people make up in Georgia is dropping fast. It’s the reason why Michelle Nunn is competitive in a Senate race in the Peach State. President Obama lost the state by only single digits, unlike Texas.

Arizona is a state where the growing Latino population has at least made it possible for Democrats to win statewide. There has actually been a Democratic governor in the past ten years. Richard Carmona only lost a Senate race there by 3pt in 2012, and Democrats actually control a majority of the state’s House’s seats. None of this can be said for Texas.

Overall, Texas and Wendy Davis’ efforts in the state are not just the fun type of tease for Democrats, but one that are probably taking resources out from other states. Making an effort in every state is important, though when Twitter hashtags like “Stand with Wendy” are dominating it may be too much of a good thing.

Democrats have a real chance to win back the majority of governorships in 2014, and they have the ability to take advantage of the changing demographic tides in Arizona and Georgia. The question is whether or not Wendy Davis and Democrats in Texas will get in the way.

Harry J Enten

Facing government shutdown, Obama’s party can’t bank on 1996 mythology | Harry J Enten

Convention says Republicans got blamed for the last shutdowns, helping Clinton win in 1996. In reality, it was the economy, stupid

We are less than a week from a possible government shutdown, thanks to the inability of congressional Republicans and President Obama to reach a budget compromise. Much of the disagreement stems from the determination of some Republicans use the budget bill to defund Obamacare. Given the imminence of the threat, much reference has been made to the previous government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996.

For those who don’t remember, 1995-96 featured congressional Republicans led by Newt Gingrich taking on Democratic President Bill Clinton. The conventional wisdom now is that Clinton won the political battle over the shutdowns. Some have taken that a step further and believe Gingrich’s “defeat” cost Republicans in the 1996 election.

The former is definitely true. Republicans clearly took more blame for the shutdowns 17 years ago. Today, though, the “margin of blame” is 16pt smaller – with Americans surveyed only 3pt more likely to blame congressional Republicans than the president (the margin was 19pt in 1995-96). That suggests that Republicans are much in better shape now than they were then.

But even if the polling today did look like 1995-96, I would argue that this looming shutdown will offer nowhere such a clear win for Obama and the Democrats as it did for Clinton. The 1996 elections didn’t differ at all from what you’d expect – given the state of the economy and the outcomes of congressional elections in presidential years when there is split government.

Take a look at presidential and congressional approval from 1995-1996. This allows us to see what impact the budget had on the different parties’ overall stature because of the shutdowns.

You would have expected Congress to see a steep decline in 1995-1996 because of the budget shutdown, but that simply didn’t happen. Check out this graph from Charles Franklin, with the key points of budget shutdown included.

As now, congressional approval was already in the can back in 1995. There was perhaps a slight decline in congressional approval going into 1996, but it’s a point or two at most.

The same pattern held with President Clinton. Here’s a chart from the same time period, created by the Monkey Cage‘s John Sides.

Clinton’s approval rating just after the shutdowns was, if anything, slightly lower than before it. In other words, he really didn’t win much in terms of his standing. He didn’t gain ground in his approval rating, and didn’t lose less than Congress.

Clinton’s major increase in presidential approval occurred in the months after the shutdown. Those ratings corresponded very well with a major increase, also, in congressional approval. That’s not surprising, given that both approval ratings tend to move in unison with one another. Congressional and presidential approval in this case moved up – because the economy was improving.

Perhaps counterintuitively, both Clinton and congressional Republicans actually saw their standing improve in the ballot test for the November 1996 elections. Clinton opened up about a 6pt edge on Republican Bob Dole in the immediate aftermath of the shutdown, when he had been tied prior to it. Congressional Republicans closed a 5pt deficit, to a 1pt deficit, in the national House vote ballot.

Both of those margins pretty much held through the election. Congressional Republicans would gain a little bit on congressional Democrats. Both Clinton and Dole ran away from Reform party candidate Ross Perot (Clinton slightly more so). It looks as though most people did not determine their vote based on their view of the government shutdown.

Indeed, only 10% of Americans said the government shutdown was their greatest reservation about Republicans, following the 1996 vote, per a post-election poll. The exit polls didn’t even ask about it.

There just isn’t much sign that 1996 differed from what you’d expect, given the fundamentals. Clinton won the national vote by a little less than 9pt over Dole. One would think that if the shutdown had really hurt Republicans over the long term, then Clinton would have done far better than the economy would suggest. That simply didn’t happen.

Of the seven economic fundamental models displayed by Brendan Nyhan, two underestimated Clinton’s vote, three overestimated it, and two pretty much nailed it. That’s what you would expect to happen if there were no big event that overrode the 1996 election.

The same holds for the House. House Democrats gained two seats over their 1994 showing, but that’s well within expectations. The result was less of a loss than Republicans went on to suffer in 2008 or 2012, or then Democrats sustained in 1992, for instance. It’s equal to the loss Republicans took in 2000. Only once since 1952 has the majority party gained more than three seats in a presidential election year, when the other party controlled the White House.

In short, there’s just no clear evidence that House Republicans suffered, even if they were largely blamed for the shutdown.

In fact, Senate Republicans actually picked up two seats in 1996. Some might say that Democrats would gladly settle for a two-seat Republican gain in 2014. While that’s true, you have to know the baseline going into the 1996 elections: Republicans controlled 56% of the class up for re-election; they ended up winning 62% of the class thanks to wins in the south.

The reverse will be true in 2014. Democrats will control 60% of the seats up for election in 2014. Republicans have a lot more opportunity to pick up seats. They are playing offense mostly in the south, as they were in 1996. If Republicans were to win 62% of the seats in play in 2014, they’d pick up eight seats.

Now, I don’t think Republicans will gain eight seats in 2014. To me, one would be wise not to project too much correlation between the 1995-96 shutdown and a possible one in 2013. This is a midterm election, not a presidential election year. Congressional and presidential approvals are both in worse shape now than they were then. And polling puts Obama in worse shape than Clinton was at this point, as he faces a possible shutdown.

For those who look to the 1995-96 shutdown as a sign that it will have major electoral implications, look again.

Harry J Enten

The approval rating of Congress is up. Yes, you read that right | Harry J Enten

Their stand against a war in Syria has pushed their approval up to 20%, which could make a difference in the midterm election

Trying to find an American who likes the job Congress is doing is like trying to find a parking space in New York City. A few months ago Congress’ approval rating was at historic lows. Today, it still stinks, but there are signs that, as President Obama flounders, Congress may be making a slight and potentially important comeback.

The HuffPollster aggregate has Congress’s approval rating up to 20%. It’s not just one outlier poll, either. CBS/NY-Times, CNN, Gallup and Reason-Rupe have Congress’ approval at its highest this year.

To be sure, 20% is quite low. It is, however, higher than congressional approval going into the 2012 election. Just 12% approved of Congress per the HuffPollster very sensitive trend among adults aggregate, which is used for consistency and to catch any last minute movement in the polls.

The reason for the increase could be any number of reasons, but the sudden increase is most likely from Syria. Congress has expressed a lot of skepticism over a possible war. This stance is in line with the American people, while President Obama’s initial position on attacking Syria was not. While Obama has changed his stance, a majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of the situation.

There’s no way to know if this is a temporary blip or the start of a new trend, though it certainly underestimates how well individual congress members are doing.

When we look at approval of a person’s own representative, polls show 30pt or higher approval than that of the Congress as a whole. Democrats generally like their Democratic congress member, and Republicans the same for their own. Republicans and Democrats may not even like their own caucus, yet still will vote for their own congressman. It’s why re-election rates for congress members are so high.

That’s not to say the 8pt improvement in overall congressional approval isn’t important. It definitely is.

David Jones and Monika McDermott found that, once controlling for a host of factors including the president’s approval and the state of the economy, a 10pt decrease in congressional approval costs majority party incumbents about 4pt in their re-election margin, while helping minority incumbents by about a point. Overall, a 10pt drop in congressional approval would lead on average to a 17 seat loss for the majority party.

Usually, this rise in congressional approval would be mitigated by a rise in the president’s approval. The president’s and Congress’ approval ratings tend to run in concert with each other, as demonstrated by Jim Stimson. That’s why it’s odd to see major gains for either party in Congress when the two branches are controlled by different parties (even if the US senate has a slim Democratic majority).

When one rises and the other falls, it can lead to historical anomalies. Consider 2012: President Obama’s approval was decent, even if not great. Congressional approval was at its all time low of 12%. And while a host of variables such as gerrymandering and urban packing kept Republican seat losses to a minimum, they lost the national House vote by over a point. It was the worst loss for the majority party in the national vote for a presidential year House election since 1948.

For 2014, it may be the opposite. Congress’s approval seems to be rising, while the president’s is dropping. Presidential approval is, in my opinion, more instrumental in determining the results of congressional elections, so a low Obama approval would be worse for the presidential party than a dropping congressional approval. But with congressional and presidential approval in concert against the Democrats, it could provide quite the punch back in the other direction from 2012.

Of course, we don’t know if the current congressional approval rating rise will hold. It could sink back into the deep abyss by 2014. If it does stay up, it doesn’t guarantee anything. Again, 20% approval isn’t great.

Still the rise in Congress’s approval rating, even if it is only to 20%, does in conjunction with the usual movement against the president’s party in midterms make Republican gains more likely.

Harry J Enten

President Obama’s flailing approval ratings hurt his party | Harry J Enten

Obama’s approval rating is unlikely to rise by the 2014 midterm or 2016 presidential election, spelling danger for Democrats

President Obama’s standing with the American people is flagging. The Real Clear Politics average at the time of this writing has his net approval rating at -7.3pt. But does Obama’s approval rating matter now given that he never has to face re-election? And if it does matter, can he recover?

The answers are that it does matter – Obama’s approval rating can greatly affect the 2014 midterm elections and, to a lesser extent, the 2016 presidential election – and the historical odds of it recovering much seem to be slim.

In midterms, electorates often take out their frustration with the president on the their party’s congressional members. A poor presidential approval rating will only add to that frustration. A president likely needs an approval rating in the mid 60s, like Bill Clinton in 1998 and George W Bush in 2002, to avoid the curse of “midterm loss”.

In every non-wartime midterm election since 1938, simply knowing how many seats the president’s party controlled and the president’s approval rating goes a long way in determining how the midterm is going to shake out. Not counting 1974, because Richard Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford took his place, more than 75% of the variation between the seats won in the House by the president’s party in the midterm is explained by the two aforementioned variables.

If the president’s approval rating were to hold, this very simple regression finds the Democrats would lose 30 seats in the House. Now, no one I’ve spoken to thinks that the president’s party is going to lose that many seats. The margin of error on this regression is large enough that no seat loss is possible with the president’s net approval rating of -7.5pt. Still, the chances of a major House loss for the president’s party are perhaps better than one might think, if the president’s position holds.

The effect of the president’s poor standing extends into the Senate elections. It’s much more difficult to model Senate elections over the long-term because not every senator is up for re-election in a given year. That said, the Senate is likely to be decided in states where President Obama lost in 2012. Democratic Senate candidates are likely going to try very hard to localize their races.

One race that they won’t be able to localize is the 2016 presidential election. To be sure, the incumbent president’s approval rating matters less when he is not running for re-election. Clinton’s high approval rating didn’t save Al Gore, while Hubert Humphrey nearly won even as Lyndon Johnson slumped. The factor that will matter most will be economic growth during 2016.

However, the president’s approval plays a role in the election to find his successor. Once we control for the economy, every 5pt increase in a president’s net approval rating increases his party’s candidate’s margin by 1pt in the presidential election per Drew Linzer. An election his party might have won by 1pt had the incumbent president had a +5pt net approval rating becomes an election the incumbent party loses by 1pt with a -5pt rating.

Of course, we’re still a long way from the midterm election and an even longer way from the presidential election in 2016. But the chances that the president can pick up ground before the midterm and even the next presidential election are not as good as one might think.
You may remember that Obama’s approval was in a similar position after the debt ceiling crisis in 2011, and he recovered. The difference is that we were heading into a president’s re-election year, when presidents regularly see their approval rating rise and fall. Going into a midterm or an election when the president does not run for re-election is a different story.

The president’s approval rating has never increased by more than 7pt from this point after re-election until the midterm election.

The greatest increase in a second term was 7pt for Bill Clinton in from this point until the 1998 midterm. The only other increase at all was 4pt for Ronald Reagan in 1986. Both of these years featured much stronger economies than we have now. All other presidents saw a decline in their approval rating. The average previously re-elected president loses about 10pt on their net approval from now until the midterm.

When we include presidents who were in their first term, 14 out of 16 saw a decline in their approval rating from now until the midterm. It is, in other words, unlikely that the president sees an increase in his approval. Add on the fact that most polls now are of adults and the likely electorate is probably going to lean more Republican, and it doesn’t look good for the Democrats.

2016 will almost certainly feature better turnout among the Democratic base of minority and youth voters than 2014. The issue is that of the six presidents who had won re-election and weren’t running in the next election, none have seen more than a 2pt improvement in their net approval rating from this point until the next presidential election. Clinton saw a 1pt increase and Eisenhower a 2pt increase. Neither of those increases would put Obama in positive net approval territory.

Now all that said, it’s certainly possible that President Obama’s approval rating will rebound. There have been great deviations in a president’s approval from this point in his presidency forward. It’s just that almost all movement has been in the negative direction. Maybe this time will be different.

If historical patterns hold, however, President Obama’s approval ratings will matter in the upcoming midterm and next presidential election, and they will likely be an albatross around the neck of the Democratic party.

Harry J Enten

Were Republicans really the party of civil rights in the 1960s? | Harry J Enten

Once you control for region, it turns out that Democrats were actually more likely to support the 1964 Civil Rights Act

With Republicans having trouble with minorities, some like to point out that the party has a long history of standing up for civil rights compared to Democrats. Democrats, for example, were less likely to vote for the civil rights bills of the 1950s and 1960s. Democrats were more likely to filibuster. Yet, a closer look at the voting coalitions suggests a more complicated picture that ultimately explains why Republicans are not viewed as the party of civil rights.

Let’s use the 1964 Civil Rights Act as our focal point. It was arguably the most important of the many civil rights bills passed in the middle part of the 20th century. It outlawed many types of racial and sexual discrimination, including access to hotels, restaurants, and theaters. In the words of Vice President Biden, it was a big “f-ing deal”.

When we look at the party vote in both houses of Congress, it fits the historical pattern. Republicans are more in favor of the bill:

80% of Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the bill. Less than 70% of Democrats did. Indeed, Minority Leader Republican Everett Dirksen led the fight to end the filibuster. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina tried as hard as they could to sustain a filibuster.

Of course, it was also Democrats who helped usher the bill through the House, Senate, and ultimately a Democratic president who signed it into law. The bill wouldn’t have passed without the support of Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, a Democrat. Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey, who basically split the Democratic party in two with his 1948 Democratic National Convention speech calling for equal rights for all, kept tabs on individual members to ensure the bill had the numbers to overcome the filibuster.

Put another way, party affiliation seems to be somewhat predictive, but something seems to be missing. So, what factor did best predicting voting?

You don’t need to know too much history to understand that the South from the civil war to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 tended to be opposed to minority rights. This factor was separate from party identification or ideology. We can easily control for this variable by breaking up the voting by those states that were part of the confederacy and those that were not.

You can see that geography was far more predictive of voting coalitions on the Civil Rights than party affiliation. What linked Dirksen and Mansfield was the fact that they weren’t from the south. In fact, 90% of members of Congress from states (or territories) that were part of the Union voted in favor of the act, while less than 10% of members of Congress from the old Confederate states voted for it. This 80pt difference between regions is far greater than the 15pt difference between parties.

But what happens when we control for both party affiliation and region? As Sean Trende noted earlier this year, “sometimes relationships become apparent only after you control for other factors”.

In this case, it becomes clear that Democrats in the north and the south were more likely to vote for the bill than Republicans in the north and south respectively. This difference in both houses is statistically significant with over 95% confidence. It just so happened southerners made up a larger percentage of the Democratic than Republican caucus, which created the initial impression than Republicans were more in favor of the act.

Nearly 100% of Union state Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act compared to 85% of Republicans. None of the southern Republicans voted for the bill, while a small percentage of southern Democrats did.

The same pattern holds true when looking at ideology instead of party affiliation. The folks over at Voteview.com, who created DW-nominate scores to measure the ideology of congressmen and senators, found that the more liberal a congressman or senator was the more likely he would vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, once one controlled for a factor closely linked to geography.

That’s why Strom Thurmond left the Democratic party soon after the Civil Right Act passed. He recognized that of the two parties, it was the Republican party that was more hospitable to his message. The Republican candidate for president in 1964, Barry Goldwater, was one of the few non-Confederate state senators to vote against the bill. He carried his home state of Arizona and swept the deep southern states – a first for a Republican ever.

Now, it wasn’t that the Civil Rights Act was what turned the South against the Democrats or minorities against Republicans. Those patterns, as Trende showed, had been developing for a while. It was, however, a manifestation of these growing coalitions. The South gradually became home to the conservative party, while the north became home to the liberal party.

Today, the transformation is nearly complete. President Obama carried only 18% of former Confederate states, while taking 62% of non-Confederate states in 2012. Only 27% of southern senators are Democrats, while 62% of Union state senators are Democrats. And 29% of southern members in the House are Democrats compared to 54% in states or territories that were part of the Union.

Thus, it seems to me that minorities have a pretty good idea of what they are doing when joining the Democratic party. They recognize that the Democratic party of today looks and sounds a lot more like the Democratic party of the North that with near unity passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 than the southern Democrats of the era who blocked it, and today would, like Strom Thurmond, likely be Republicans.

Harry J Enten

Margin of Σrror

Category Archives: US House of Representatives

Don’t rule out the Democrats winning back the House in 2014 | Harry J Enten

Has gerrymandering made politics more partisan? Ted Cruz argues not | Harry J Enten

What the Virginia governor’s race tells us about the 2014 midterms | Harry J Enten

Move On poll tries to make people believe Republicans are vulnerable | Harry J Enten

Democrats won’t win a ‘blame the GOP’ game on the shutdown and debt ceiling | Harry J Enten

Wendy Davis and Texas are a problem for Democrats | Harry J Enten

Facing government shutdown, Obama’s party can’t bank on 1996 mythology | Harry J Enten

The approval rating of Congress is up. Yes, you read that right | Harry J Enten

President Obama’s flailing approval ratings hurt his party | Harry J Enten

Were Republicans really the party of civil rights in the 1960s? | Harry J Enten