Facebook
Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Playing Defense in a Recession
Republicans in 1982 vs. Democrats today
, July 29th, 2010
The political scene is not a pretty one: A new president facing his first midterm election with declining approval ratings as his party struggles to keep the upper hand in Congress – all in the midst of a darkened political environment where the unemployment rate hovers around 10%.
It is a description, however, of both past and present. In short, we have been here before.
Prior to Barack Obama and the Democrats, Ronald Reagan and the Republicans faced a similar challenge in the midterm election of 1982, weathering the situation about as well as they could. The GOP dropped 26 seats in the House (a result the Democrats’ would probably accept now, no questions asked) while adding one seat to their Senate majority. It was in the states that Republicans took their biggest hit in 1982, losing eight governorships from their total in 1980.
But a Democratic landslide was averted that could have put a stop to the “Reagan Revolution” before it was barely underway. How did it happen?
For one thing, the Republicans had good candidates and plenty of resources ready to drop into the closest races. Writing on the eve of the 1982 election, Alan Ehrenhalt, the political editor of Congressional Quarterly, noted: “The hard Republican times of the mid-’70s eliminated nearly all the party’s deadwood, leaving young, aggressive and sophisticated incumbents… They are tough targets.”
Second, the Republicans in 1982 benefited from the luck of the draw. Most Senate elections were being waged on the Democrats’ half of the field, as the party was defending 19 of the 33 seats that were up that year. On the House side, 1982 was a redistricting year, with 17 seats mainly moving from the Democratic-leaning Frost Belt to the Republican-leaning Sun Belt. The GOP ultimately did not realize the gains from redistricting that they had hoped for in 1982, but reapportionment probably helped keep the party from suffering much bigger House losses.
Third, Reagan and the Republicans took the approach that the best defense was a good offense. With no wars or other major crises to divert him, Reagan was able to focus on the economy from the start of his presidency. In 1981, he promoted major tax and spending cuts that the Republican minority in the House passed with the help of conservative Democrats known as “Boll Weevils.”
When the economy began to worsen, and Democrats lambasted the failures of “Reaganomics,” the president offered his party optimistic pep talks. Don’t let the Democrats “bully us,” Reagan said in the course of election-eve campaigning. “The economy is a banner we can wave, not something to hide behind.”
The concept of perseverance was summed up neatly in the GOP’s three-word slogan: “Stay the Course.” As a line of argument, it was not compelling enough to hold many of the economically pinched, blue-collar “Reagan Democrats,” who had been an instrumental part of the GOP’s broad and victorious coalition in 1980. But it did help activate much of the party base. While the Democratic House vote increased by more than 6 million votes from 1978, the Republican congressional tally in 1982 also rose by more than 3 million – helping the GOP to hold down the size of their losses.
Chart 1. Weathering the Storm: The Republicans in 1982
| Given the economic angst abroad in the land, the Republicans survived the 1982 election about as well as they probably could have. The GOP added one seat to its Senate majority, while losing 26 seats on the House side, where the party was already in the minority. Republicans took the biggest hit, though, at the gubernatorial level, where they lost eight seats from their total immediately after the 1980 election. |
Note: An asterisk (*) indicates that the current Democratic House total does not include the New York seat vacated this year by Democrat Eric Massa, nor does the Democratic Senate total include independents Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernard Sanders of Vermont.
Sources: Vital Statistics on Congress (The Brookings Institution) for congressional totals in 1980 and 1982; Elections A to Z (CQ Press) for gubernatorial totals in 1980 and 1982.
Then and Now
In some respects, the Democrats are in better position to weather 2010 than the Republicans were in 1982. Then, the unemployment rate was rising steadily throughout the year – from less than 9% at the beginning of 1982 to nearly 11% on Election Day. The high unemployment tended to trump signs of life in other parts of the economy, such as declining inflation and a decrease in interest rates.
On the other hand, the unemployment rate thus far this year has been slowly going down, from more than 10% in late 2009 to 9.5% now. Some other parts of the economy have failed to gain much altitude, but the closely watched unemployment rate at least is not a “killer” for the Democrats.
Like the Republicans in 1982, Democrats this year should have a field of reasonably strong candidates, especially in the districts that they picked up in 2006 and 2008 that helped transform the party from a minority to a majority in the House. Many of these candidates, now incumbents, were specifically recruited by Democratic campaign officials because of their ability to be elected in moderate or conservative districts.
The Democrats are also doing much better this year on generic congressional ballot tests than the Republicans were in 1982, when the GOP ended up losing the aggregate nationwide House vote by 12 percentage points. This year, the lead on the generic ballot question has been flipping back and forth between the two parties, with the Democrats up by 4 points in the Gallup Poll’s July 19-25 weekly tracking. This advantage, though, could be readily offset by the “enthusiasm gap,” which has strongly favored the Republicans throughout much of 2010.
In some ways, the gap is difficult to comprehend, given the success of the Obama administration on major issues from health care to financial reform. For better or worse, Obama has multi-tasked rather than focused on the economy as Reagan did in the opening stage of his presidency. And it is clear that the Democrats’ route to economic recovery – featuring a costly stimulus plan, huge deficits and a hint of future tax increases – is less appealing to voters than were Reagan’s tax and spending cuts.
Maybe a slogan in the vein of “Stay the Course” would not work for the Democrats this year, given its recent identification with President George W. Bush and the defense of his Iraq war policy.
But in 1982, it did underscore the need for Republican voters to stay loyal to their president and their party in order to avoid a debilitating landslide loss that might compromise the future of both. For the Democrats this year, the challenge is similar.
Figure 1. Reagan, Obama Approval Ratings Closely Matched
| Buffeted by bad economic news, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have seen their presidential job approval ratings take a similar path over their first 18 months in office – steadily downward. Obama’s has been in a downhill slide since his inauguration in January 2009. Reagan’s initial job approval rating was a modest 51%, a figure that matched his winning percentage in the 1980 presidential election. But Reagan’s approval rating zoomed upward after an unsuccessful assassination attempt in late March 1981, before beginning a long descent that did not hit bottom until early 1983. |
Note: President Reagan’s approval ratings for 1981-82 are based on the Gallup Polls taken closest to the first day of each quarter, with the exception of the January 1981 poll which was the first taken after his inauguration. President Obama’s approval ratings for 2009-10 are based on three-day rolling polls by Gallup that were taken with the first day of the new quarter as the end date (or the second day in the case of the January 2010 entry). As with Reagan, the timing of the January 2009 poll is an exception and was the first one taken after Obama’s inauguration.
Source: Gallup Poll.
Chart 2. High Unemployment Rates in 1982 and 2010 But Trend Lines Differ
| The midterm elections of 1982 and 2010 are already linked as the only two in the last half century where the nation’s unemployment rate hovered around 10%. However, the trend lines in each year were different. Throughout 1982, the unemployment rate was on the rise, breaking the 10% mark in September and continuing upward until it approached 11% in November. In this election cycle, the unemployment rate has been going down grudgingly, from a high of 10.1% last October to the latest rate of 9.5% for June. |
Note: The nationwide unemployment rates listed here are seasonally adjusted.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
All Politics Is National
Using the Generic Ballot to Forecast the 2010 State Legislative Elections
, July 29th, 2010
Along with the entire House of Representatives and 37 U.S. Senate seats, voters this November will be going to the polls to elect thousands of state senators and representatives. Eighty-eight of the nation’s 99 state legislative chambers are up for election this year. And while these state legislative elections are less glamorous and attract far less media attention than elections for federal offices, their results will have important consequences for the direction of public policy in the states.
In the states, just as in Washington, there are often dramatic differences between the approaches favored by Democrats and Republicans on major policy issues such as taxation, education, transportation, and the environment. Social issues such as abortion and gay marriage have also produced intense partisan conflict in many states. In addition, the results of this year’s legislative elections will also determine who will control redistricting. The process of drawing new state legislative and congressional district lines could affect control of state legislatures and the House of Representatives for the rest of the decade.
So what can we expect in November? In his excellent overview of the outlook for this year’s state legislative elections in last week’s Crystal Ball, Tim Storey explained that Republicans are expected to make significant gains in the state legislatures just as they are in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. That’s because two factors that favor Republicans in this year’s congressional elections also favor Republicans in the state legislative elections: 2010 is a midterm election under a Democratic president and Democrats have made substantial gains in the 2006 and 2008 elections that have left them defending many seats in districts that have traditionally favored Republican candidates.
It is well known that the president’s party almost always loses seats in the House of Representatives and usually loses seats in the Senate in midterm elections. What is less well known is that this pattern also extends to state legislative elections. Since World War II, the president’s party has lost seats in 15 of 16 midterm elections with an average loss of between 250 and 300 seats. The president’s party has also lost state legislative chambers in 14 of 16 midterm elections with an average loss of 8 chambers.
While the tendency of the president’s party to lose state legislative seats and chambers in midterm elections is very clear, the size of these losses has varied tremendously. In 2002, in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, Republicans actually gained over 100 seats and 5 chambers. On the other hand, in 1958, Republicans lost almost 700 seats and 20 chambers and in 1994, Democrats lost almost 500 seats and 20 chambers.
The outcomes of midterm state legislative elections are strongly related to the outcomes of midterm U.S. House elections. Figure 1 displays the scatterplot of this relationship for the 16 midterm elections since World War II. The correlation between the state legislative and U.S. House results is a very impressive .95. Elections that produced large Republican gains in Congress such as 1946, 1966 and 1994 also produced large Republican gains in the state legislatures. Similarly, elections that produced large Republican losses in Congress such as 1958, 1974 and 2006 also produced large Republican losses in the state legislatures.
Figure 1. Change in Republican % of State Legislative Seats by Change in Republican % of U.S. House Seats in Midterm Elections, 1946-2006
Source: Data on state legislative elections provided by David Storey, National Conference of State Legislatures. Data on congressional elections compiled by author.
The data displayed in Figure 1 strongly suggests that state legislative elections are influenced by the same forces that influence congressional elections including the national political climate at the time of the election. My previous research on congressional elections has indicated that the outcomes of House and Senate elections can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy based on a midterm election variable, the number of seats each party is defending and the national political climate, measured by the results of the Gallup generic ballot question.
In order to test the hypothesis that state legislative elections are influenced by the same forces that influence congressional elections, I performed a regression analysis of the outcomes of all 33 elections since World War II using the change in the Republican percentage of state legislative seats as the dependent variable and three independent variables: the Republican percentage of state legislative seats prior to the election to measure exposure to risk, a variable indicating whether an election was a Democratic or Republican midterm, and the Republican lead or deficit on the Gallup generic ballot question in early September of the election year to measure the national political climate. The results of this regression analysis are displayed in Table 1.
Table 1. Results of Regression Analysis of State Legislative Seat Change, 1946-2008
Source: Data provided by Tim Storey, National Conference of State Legislatures
Note: Dependent variable is change in Republican % of state legislative seats.
The results in Table 1 provide strong evidence for the influence of national political forces on state legislative elections. In addition to the effects of the seat exposure and midterm election variables, the results of the Gallup generic ballot question have a very strong impact on seat swing in state legislative elections. A ten point swing in the generic ballot margin, such as going from a 5 point Democratic lead to a 5 point Republican lead, would be expected to produce a shift of just over 3 percent of the nation’s state legislative seats, or approximately 225 seats. This would have important political consequences since there is a very strong relationship between state legislative seats and chamber control: the correlation between the two is .92. On average, an increase of 2 percentage points in a party’s seat share can be expected to produce a pickup of one legislative chamber.
The 2010 Forecast
The late Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s famous statement that “all politics is local” clearly requires modification based on the evidence presented in Table 1. While individual legislative races are shaped by local as well as national forces, the evidence presented here demonstrates that national forces strongly influence overall party performance in state legislative elections. Specifically, the results of the Gallup generic ballot question, along with the number of seats each party holds going into an election and the party of the president in midterm elections can be used to predict overall seat swing and chamber control in state legislative elections.
Given these findings, what can we expect in 2010? Since the only unknown at this point is the results of the Gallup generic ballot test in early September, we can calculate the expected Republican seat gain in November and, from that, the expected number of legislative chambers Republicans would control after the election, depending on the results of the Gallup question. Those predictions are displayed in Table 2.
Table 2. Predicted Results of 2010 State Legislative Elections based on Early September Generic Ballot
Source: Tim Storey, National Conference of State Legislatures, and data compiled by author.
Because 2010 is a midterm election with a Democrat in the White House and because Democrats have made large gains in the last two elections, Republicans are almost certain to make substantial gains in the 2010 state legislative elections. Those gains could range from a minimum of about 200 seats and 5 chambers to a maximum close to 500 seats and 13 chambers depending on national political climate as measured by the Gallup generic ballot question. However, since the results of the Gallup generic ballot question have averaged very close to a tie over the past several months, the most likely scenario at this point appears to be a Republican gain of between 300 and 350 seats which would be expected to give the GOP control of between 44 and 46 legislative chambers, an increase of 8-10 over their current 36 chambers. A shift of this magnitude, while leaving Democrats as the majority party in more than half of the nation’s 98 partisan legislative chambers, would dramatically increase Republican influence over both state public policy and redistricting.
Tweets of the Week
, July 29th, 2010
| The Crystal Ball’s Tweets of the Week is a look back at the highlights of the past week in politics in snippets of 140 characters or less. To get this analysis as soon as news breaks, follow University of Virginia Center for Politics Director, and Crystal Ball founder, Larry Sabato on Twitter by clicking here. |
11:03 AM Jul 25th: 100 (long) days to go until Nov. 2. Overall drift seems clear–substantial R gains top to bottom. But CW is often wrong on individual races.
11:05 AM Jul 25th: Scandal, other events intervene. Most recent example: who could have forseen McInnis plagiarism in CO GOV?
8:55 AM Jul 26th: New Mason-Dixon confirms Crystal Ball’s early decision to tip Senate seat R. Roy Blunt(R) leads Robin Carnahan(R) by 6%. Bond seat stays R.
8:57 AM Jul 26th: Other than GOV disaster in CO, GOP may face greatest challenge in FL, where party rifts now endanger both GOV & SEN seats. Early yet.
12:32 PM Jul 26th: FDR ran against Hoover over & over. It worked. Reagan & Bush41 did same against Carter. Mainly worked. Can Obama run against Dubya again?
12:33 PM Jul 26th: Easy prediction: My D tweeps will say YES! My R tweeps will say NO! Crystal Ball not needed for this one…
10:11 PM Jul 27th: Upset brewing for D GOV-OK? Lt. Gov. Jari Askins ahead of AG Drew Edmondson 51-49% w/85% in. All recent polls favored Edmondson.
10:14 PM Jul 27th: If Askins wins, OK will be 4th all-woman GOV race in US history. Mary Fallin R nominee. NM GOV 2010: Diane Denish(D) v. Susana Martinez(R).
10:16 PM Jul 27th: Other 2 all-woman GOV: 1986 NE Kay Orr(R) v. Helen Boosalis(D), Orr won. 2002 HI Linda Lingle(R) v. Mazie Hirono(D).Lingle won, still serves
10:17 PM Jul 27th: Fallin favored in OK 4 Nov. Toss-up in NM. But if Martinez wins, all four all-woman GOV match-ups in US history will have been won by GOP.
3:05 PM Jul 28th: Remember spring’s “anti-incumbent” story? As of today, 257 House & Senate members have won re-nomination, just 5 lost (1.9%).
3:07 PM Jul 28th: Yes, there may be a few more incumbent defeats in primaries, but only on 11/2 will many incumbents fall–though 90% on ballot may win.
