Amy Walter is a savvy political analyst and I agree with most of what she has to say about the upcoming midterm elections. I do think, however, that she goes a little too far when she writes this:
The dirty little secret is that we “see” a wave on Election Night and not before. As the results come in, we start to see a very discernible pattern as the closest races break disproportionally to one party. In 2008, the GOP lost four out of the six closest races (66 percent). In 2010, in what was a “wave year” just two of the seven toss-up races went to Republicans, though public polling predicted that four of those seven (57 percent) would flip to the GOP.
Part of this depends on how you want to define a “wave election.” Does that refer to an election in which one party wins a very large number of seats from the other party? Does the term apply when the big change is limited only to one house of Congress? Or is a wave election one that tips decisively in one direction right at the end, causing one party to greatly exceed expectations?
If you look at the 2010 midterms the first way, it was a very big wave election. But, if you look at it the second way, the GOP actually underperformed in the Senate.
This year, we can all see, and have been able to see since before election night in 2012, that this would be a good year for the GOP in the Senate and that the House would be difficult for the Democrats to win back because of the way the districts are drawn, the tendency of Democrats to live in compacted urban and suburban areas, and the drop off of Democratic turnout in non-presidential elections. Those elements of the upcoming midterms are part of the architecture and aren’t dependent on the state of the economy or the president’s approval numbers or the degree of turmoil in foreign lands. You can call this an architectural wave.
What we’re not seeing are indications that the Republicans are doing better than expected. And this is distinct from, say, the 2006 midterms. In those midterms, we did not see as early as November 2004 that the Democrats were going to have a great night in November 2006. There were no structural advantages for the Democrats outside of the typical six-year itch that presidencies often suffer. What happened is that the Bush administration suffered one calamity after another, on Social Security privatization, Terri Schiavo, Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, the Abramoff scandal, the Mark Foley scandal, the Valerie Plame scandal, the Alberto Gonzales scandal, and so on. And the people began to turn on the Republicans for cause.
The Obama administration, and the world, has had a rough summer, but there are no indications that the Democrats are taking any disproportionate amount of the blame. They remain more popular than the GOP and they still lead the Generic Congressional Ballot.
In this sense, the Republican are underperforming expectations. And, yet, this is an election that they basically cannot lose.
