Midterm elections are different from presidential elections because turnout is much lower. I’d argue that midterm elections can be further distinguished depending on whether they occur during a president’s second year in office or his sixth. Since World War Two ended, we have had four midterm elections in the sixth year of a presidency and two additional midterm elections that almost fit that model. In 1958, Eisenhower’s sixth year in office, the Republicans lost 48 seats in the House. In 1986, Reagan’s sixth year in office, the Republicans lost five seats in Congress. In 1998, Bill Clinton’s sixth year in office, the Democrats gained five seats in the House. In 2006, Bush’s sixth year in office, the Republicans lost 30 seats in the House. In 1974, Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace and the Republicans lost 48 seats. In 1966, which would have been JFK’s sixth year in office, the Democrats lost 48 seats.
This is a small data set, but the trend is pretty clear. The president’s party doesn’t do well in the sixth year of his presidency. In the post war era, the only time the president’s party gained seats in the sixth year was in 1998, and that was pretty clearly a backlash against the impeachment proceedings again President Clinton. Yet, if you look at all these examples, they all have unique circumstances that explain the results. In 1958, the booming economy we associate with that decade came to an abrupt halt and went into recession. In 1966, there was a backlash against the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, and there was growing consternation about the war in Vietnam. In 1974, people were furious about President Ford’s pardon of Nixon. In 1986, there was the Iran-Contra scandal. In 2006, there was exhaustion with the war in Iraq.
I think it is a mistake to think that we can use these past sixth-year midterm elections to make confident predictions about what will happen in 2014. If the president is staggering through some massive scandal, his party will probably do badly unless (as in 1998) the public perceives the Republicans to be overreacting.
The truth is, no post-war president has had a good second term. The least bad second term was Eisenhower’s. He had a bad economy and got caught lying about the Gary Powers U-2 incident, but that scandal occurred after the midterms. I think we have to go back to FDR’s second term to find an example that is likely to fit Obama’s second term. But even that example won’t be helpful in predicting the congressional elections of 2014. In 1938, the Democrats lost 72 seats and still didn’t lose their majority. The last time a president went into their sixth-year midterms with a split Congress was in 1986. Reagan’s party lost control of the Senate.
I think the best guide for predicting the 2014 elections is to look at each individual seat and its likelihood of changing hands. From that standpoint, the House looks very stable. There is almost no chance of a wave election where 48 seats change hands. There are many more seats that the Democrats won narrowly than that the Republicans won narrowly, making it a little more likely for the Republicans to make significant gains. The Democrats will need to pick up 17 seats to regain control of the House. That doesn’t sound all that daunting, but it looks nearly impossible when you begin to look at the individual races.
We need to figure out a way to beat expectations or the House is going to be in Republican hands for the remainder of the decade.
I guess the short answer is to try to deploy the organizational skills and tech savvy that twice won Obama the White House. For starters, what are the twenty-five most vulnerable Republican districts? and which Democratic districts need the most defending?
there aren’t 25 vulnerable districts. There are about five.
There are now. Who knows how many there will be in 18 months?
Isn’t “vulnerable” a somewhat relative term?
Yes and no.
Things change and the public can get in a foul mood about one political party or another. On the other hand, a candidate who wins with 57% or better of the vote is almost a lock to win reelection unless they suffer some public relations disaster.
Let’s look at the example of Michele Bachmann. As of right now, she won with a little over 4,000 votes to spare. Her seat is a prime pickup opportunity. But she was extremely vulnerable this time around because she had neglected her district to run for president and had alienated and energized her opposition as a result, and because she face a presidential turnout, and because her opponent was very moderate and self-financed.
Her chances of winning in 2014 are better. They just are. Simply registering 5,000 Democrats in her district won’t be enough. We’d probably have to get 10 to 15 thousand new voters to overwhelm her, and that is not really possible.
She won when her vulnerability was maxed out, and she can probably hold the seat until the next redistricting.
So, even the races that seem ripe for takeover are not necessarily winnable. Once you start talking about incumbents who won with a 40,000 or 60,000 vote cushion, you’re in fantasyland.
We have a lot of work to do.
But when you say 57% or better, that was with presidential election turnout? Will the Republicans be able to get anything like that kind of turnout in 2014?
Maybe Bachmann isn’t the most typical example. I don’t mean because she just scraped by, I mean because she’s very high profile. The knew she was a prime target and they dumped unlimited $$$$ into her campaign.
But I see your point.
The pattern I notice is that most President have either a scandal or the consequences of a disastrous policy bite them in the hiney in their second term, after having sowed the seeds in their first.
I don’t see either of those things happening to Obama, while a backlash against Republican overreaching, like during Clinton’s second term, seems well within the realm of possibility.
There was also the 1950 election during Truman’s second term. But the trend holds: Democrats lost 28 seats.
Truman had some pretty bad mid-terms it seems. As far as ’66 is concerned I kind of view that as LBJ’s first mid-term.
I think the best thing we can do is to help the President get the most done to help the country. That’s our best chance to change the game.
There is almost no chance of a wave election where 48 seats change hands.
But we don’t need 48 seats to change hands, 17 will do.
House elections winding down . . . and starting up
I will complete my review soon, but there are not many Republican-held seats where the incumbent got less than 57% of the vote. At that level, you’re talking about approximately 40,000 votes. Or, you need to flip 20,000 if you can’t win the registration battle.
Generally speaking, that is too big to pull off absent some scandal.
In California, I think there are two seats under 57%. In Nevada, one. In Illinois, one. In Indiana, two. In Michigan, one. In Texas, one. I have to check New York and New Jersey because there might be two or three there. I think there is one in Virginia. Maybe Florida has one. In any case, we don’t have seventeen winnable seats. They don’t exist.
Retirements are another source of potential pick-ups.
Another wild card for 2014 is that the election takes place near the end of the first year of full implementation of Obamacare. Not sure if it will hurt or help — if there are a lot of hiccups in getting things going it could hurt, but if it’s relatively smooth, and people start to realize the benefits they will really get, including a lot more employment flexibility, then it could be a big plus. If it goes well I hope the Dems will wrap all that Rep opposition around their necks.
Midterm elections tend to be low turnout. That means that it is easier to upset incumbents with a disciplined GOTV campaign.
History is not destiny.
It’s time for Democrats (and progressives) to stop handicapping themselves with narratives from history or about geography and get down to work to make it happen.
The failure of the Obama campaign to focus on a unity campaign with downticket races in 2008 and 2012 means that his position is weaker in Congress than it could be. And the failure to use the lessons from the 2008 Presidential campaign about GOTV cost serious ground in the 2010 election. This sort of benign neglect in 2014 will be catastrophic and once again snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.
Enough of this lowering expectations. It’s gonna be tough, but it doesn’t happen as a force of nature but through folks getting out and making it happen.
In the post-mortems of the ’08 campaign, I’ve heard a bunch of subtle and a few not-so-subtle hints from the Republican leadership that maybe allowing the teahadi crazies to hijack the primaries was not such a good idea. I wonder if those are the first rumblings of a coming divorce. I don’t know enough to assess the real likelihood of such a split, but I can imagine two scenarios that might damage their prospects in ’14.
One is a nasty custody battle where the various factions get so bogged down in fighting each other that they find it difficult to mount a coherent challenge to the Democrats.
In the other, the crazies take offence at all the blame-gaming and take their balls and go home, leaving the real Republicans to deal with the demographic trends that are already turning against them.
Any chance of either of those, or something like them, helping us out in ’14?
Great post. I think the best possible thing for the left to do is to focus like a laser on 2014 until it’s over. It’ll be tough, but we need to figure out how to activate 2012’s fantastic campaign organization before we even have specific candidates. I hope DFA is talking about it.
Obamacare is going to be huge in 2014, and it’s going to be a media battle every single day starting from before the exchanges come online in the fall of 2013. Individual insurance becomes mandatory on Jan 1, 2014 — but people don’t do their 2014 taxes until 2015, so there will be a lot of fear-mongering about it.
Obamacare is a signature program for the whole progressive movement. Even if progressives wanted single-payer, or a public option, or a pony, this is what we got. If it fails it will be taken as evidence that the government can’t do health care. Whatever we can do to support the administration in it’s gargantuan effort to make this work, we should do.
Personally, I can see a lot of reasons why Obama’s second term could buck the trends you’re talking about.
Before I get to that, I’d like to point out that these abstract patterns are not as predictive as straightforward voter polls. Reason — there are too many variables. A great example of such a “general rule” from this year is the idea that when the economy is bad, the incumbent will lose. There are all sorts of reasons why that wasn’t operative, and Hurricane Sandy wasn’t one of them.
(1) Obama’s GOTV created many new “likely voters”. A lot of these first-time or unlikely had to put unusual effort into casting their votes — but their presidential candidate, and many of their downticket candidates, won, often in close races. Nothing succeeds like success. There will be some new young voters out there in 2014.
Secondly, Democrats are very frustrated with the failure to flip the House. It may be easier for them to understand why their vote is important, especially in a local race.
I think Obama has a strong incentive to make his second term better than the first. The situation is still tough, but everybody on the Dem side feels more empowered. I think both Obama and his supporters have learned something from all this.
I have been wondering what percentage of the Romney vote is really hard-assed, and what percentage was misled or disappointed in Obama’s first term. How many of the latter could be coaxed back if the economy improves, if they come to appreciate the HCA, etc.?
The Democrats need to identify the most competitive congressional contests and do a GOTV like you’ve never seen.
Perhaps a 50 state strategy?
What are the about 5 districts you consider vulnerable?