OBAMA’S WORLD VIEW STUMBLES DOWN ‘THE HILL’

As the world turns its attention to U.S. midterm elections, a predictive model that synthesizes many current and historical data tells one clear story: Democrats will likely face serious setbacks in the House of Representatives.

Of course, midterm elections are routinely set-backs for the president’s party. In the 36 national midterm elections held since the end of the Civil War in 1865, the president’s party has gained House seats in only three midterms.

But the House Democrats’ poor outlook in 2010 is far worse than historical precedent. They can expect to sustain losses comparable to those that floored them in 1994 when Republicans swept 52 seats and control of the House of the Representatives.

My forecasting model of House elections predicts that Democrats will lose about 51 or 52 seats. Republicans need a gain of only 40 seats to regain the control of the House that they lost in 2006.

My forecasting models employ three variables. The first is an index of “seats in trouble.” This is computed from the Cook Political Report’s (Cook Report) district-by-district assessment of congressional races in late August of this year. The Cook Political Report has a very strong record of successfully handicapping individual political races. I have taken this in-depth micro assessment of congressional races and combined it with a statistical analysis of congressional election history.

The other variables used in two versions of the model are the president’s approval rating and the number of seats that a party won in the previous election. This year, according to the August Cook Report, Democrats had over forty seats more than Republicans in the “toss-up” or worse categories-‘seats in trouble’. Several other forecasting models have now produced predictions close to mine.

If the Democrats sustain such large seat losses this year, it will be partly because their sweeps in 2006 and 2008 left them holding so many seats in traditionally Republican districts — by only narrow margins.

The factors driving those narrow Democratic wins were short-term factors at best. An unpopular war in Iraq, poor grades for President Bush on handling the Hurricane Katrina disaster, congressional scandals, an unpopular immigration proposal, high levels of domestic spending, and the Wall Street meltdown of 2008. All that helped Democrats pick up a combined total of 54 House seats in the two elections. As a result, 47 Democrats are currently in House districts that were won at the presidential level by both Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008.

By contrast, only six Republicans sit in Kerry-Obama districts. The others are in robustly Republican seats. Because Democrats are defending so many seats inclined to vote Republican, 2010 is likely to be a market-correction, of sorts, for them.

By James E. Campbell
Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science
University of Buffalo

 

RELATED MATERIAL FOR THE WEEK OF NOVEMBER 1

BACKGROUND

As the countdown to the United States’ midterm elections continues, candidates and major players in both the Republic and Democratic parties have begun to pull out all of the stops. Former President Bill Clinton has launched a multi-city campaign tour, urging Democrats to remain energized lest the Obama administration experience a replay of the Clinton administration’s 1994 loss of Congress to the Republicans, a move that stymied Clinton’s domestic and foreign agendas. On the Republican side, candidates in several districts have focused their election campaigns on the current President’s policies, reflecting the belief that the upcoming election is, in some ways, a referendum on the Obama administration.

The traditional contest between Democrats and Republicans has been altered in this election cycle by the emergence of the “Tea Party” faction – its name originating from the eponymous 1773 revolt in Boston – of the Republican Party, which emerged in the wake of current President’s victory in 2008. The group’s agenda runs the gamut of right-wing conservative positions, from cracking down on non-status immigration and promoting stronger border control, to protecting American jobs and industry, to anti-abortion and same-sex marriage stances. A consistent theme of the political movement is a call to take back the government for tea party supporters and to reduce government spending on a variety of programs including recent health care reforms.  The faction’s candidates showed unexpectedly strong polling figures and unseated long-standing Republican representatives in several congressional districts, though it remains unclear how successful these candidates will prove in the general election.

Aside from the impact that a Republican-majority congress might have on domestic debates issues including healthcare and social security, the outcome of the upcoming election has the potential to alter the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda. The START II treaty on arms reduction remains on the table in the United States Senate, leaving some to believe that its future hangs in the balance of the congressional elections. There is some prospect that the Senate vote may be taken up before the new congress is seated.  The Obama administration’s climate change and energy agenda faced challenges from the current Democrat-majority congress; its chances of passing through a Republican congress are even slimmer. Finally, the American stance toward trade, particularly in the midst of global debates over currency intervention, might be hardened by incoming politicians – both democrats and republicans –  whose constituents face ongoing high levels of unemployment.

RELATED MATERIALS AND SITES

  • Glenn Downey, former editor of the Washington Post, speaks to the BBC College of Journalism about the US political landscape ahead of the forthcoming mid-term elections.
  • In this blog entry, Joseph Wood of the German Marshall Fund of the United States discusses the muted role that security plays in the 2010 elections.
  • Naftali Bendavid of the Wall Street Journal discusses the use of China as the bogeyman by both democrats and republicans in this the 2010 campaigning season.
  • On Foreign Policy, Roya Wolverson discusses the emergence of trade policy as an important campaign issue in the first of a series of backgrounders on the foreign policy implications of the 2010 elections.
  • The Economist has posted on its website an interactive map of the congressional elections from Congressional Quarterly
  • In this article, Jeff Tollefson suggests that the next US Congress prove doubtful of the scientific community’s conclusions about global warming.
  • Heidi Ledform from Nature News predicts that key health reforms may face Republican antipathy and legal challenges following the US midterm elections.
  • Shary Ray Goldberg from the New York Times reports on Obama’s recent visit to the Daily show and his defending his record from John Stewart’s critique.