Polling Data
Polling has come a long way since Gallup started surveying the electorate during the Truman administration. For example, the Real Clear Politics (RCP) formula (combined average of all recent data from credible polling agencies) has successfully called the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, with a high level of accuracy even at the state level. On House races, the RCP formula successfully predicted substantial democratic pickups in both 2006 and 2008, along with accurately calling individual 06 and 08 Senate races. To see what an imminent landslide looks like, behold the polls prior to the Democratic takeover of the House in 2006:
Polling Data
| Poll | Date | Sample | GOP (R) | Dems (D) | Spread |
| RCP Average | 11/01 - 11/05 | - | 40.6 | 52.1 | Dems +11.5 |
| FOX News | 11/04 - 11/05 | 900 LV | 36 | 49 | Dems +13.0 |
| CNN | 11/03 - 11/05 | 636 LV | 38 | 58 | Dems +20.0 |
| USA Today/Gallup | 11/02 - 11/05 | 1362 LV | 44 | 51 | Dems +7.0 |
| ABC News/Wash Post | 11/01 - 11/04 | LV | 45 | 51 | Dems +6.0 |
| Pew Research | 11/01 - 11/04 | LV | 43 | 47 | Dems +4.0 |
| Newsweek | 11/02 - 11/03 | 838 LV | 38 | 54 | Dems +16.0 |
| Time | 11/01 - 11/03 | 679 LV | 40 | 55 | Dems +15.0 |
| CBS News/NY Times | 10/27 - 10/31 | LV | 34 | 52 | Dems +18.0 |
| NBC/WSJ | 10/28 - 10/30 | 1,010 RV | 37 | 52 | Dems +15.0 |
| CNN | 10/27 - 10/29 | 499 LV | 42 | 53 | Dems +11.0 |
| Cook/RT Strategies | 10/26 - 10/29 | 981 LV | 36 | 59 | Dems +23.0 |
| Newsweek | 10/27 - 10/26 | 677 LV | 38 | 53 | Dems +15.0 |
| FOX News | 10/24 - 10/25 | 900 LV | 38 | 49 | Dems +11.0 |
Brutal. In 2006 the Democrats averaged a double digit lead in the run-up to the election and picked up the 32 seats needed to regain majority control. The Republicans in late 2009, needing 40 seats to take back the majority, currently have polling data that looks like this:
Polling Data
| Poll | Date | Sample | Democrats | Republicans | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RCP Average | 10/1 - 10/18 | -- | 45.5 | 39.3 | Democrats +6.2 |
| ABC News/Wash Post | 10/15 - 10/18 | 1004 A | 51 | 39 | Democrats +12 |
| Rasmussen Reports | 10/5 - 10/11 | 3500 LV | 39 | 41 | Republicans +2 |
| CBS News | 10/5 - 10/8 | RV | 46 | 33 | Democrats +13 |
| Gallup | 10/1 - 10/4 | 906 RV | 46 | 44 | Democrats +2 |
| Bloomberg | 9/10 - 9/14 | 1004 A | 40 | 32 | Democrats +8 |
While polling data cannot predict the future, the RCP data from 2004, 2006 and 2008 regarding House, Senate and Presidential elections has been extremely accurate. The last time we saw a landslide election in the House, the ascendant party had almost a 12 point lead when all surveys were registered. Today, despite the howls from the right regarding the atrocious nature of Democratic governance, not only doesn't register the large lead seen in 2006 when the House changed hands, but don't even register a lead. Whether Democratic governance in unpopular in reality or just in Republican's heads, the reality of the matter is that the GOP has yet to capture the interest of American electorate and perhaps still carries with it the stench of the failed Bush administration and the bitterly divisive leadership of DeLay, Hastert, etc. Apparently, Boehner might not be the answer.
Changing Electorate
Looking back at 1994 when the GOP took back the House, a common theme to the election was that of the "Angry White Man." Because the Democrats took on the NRA and looked to be threatening 2nd Amendment rights, along with a number of other issues, rural and southern whites abandoned House Democrats en masse in favor of the GOP, handing them control of the House for the first time in a generation. Yet relying on white anger may not offset the demographic changes that continue to redefine American society. Take, for example, the share of minority voters since 1992:
While minority voters are not monolithic, they have tended to give the Democratic Party support by sizable margins. What the growing clout among minority voters as indicated in the chart above portends for the GOP is the need to attract larger and larger shares of the white vote, a strategy that appears to be maxed out, or begin making arguments more appealing to African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans. To verbalize this GOP dilemma more succinctly, Sabato analyst Alan Abramowitz notes that:
The weakness of the Republican Party among nonwhite voters is a much bigger problem for the GOP today than it was back in 1994. In that year, 86 percent of the voters were white while only 9 percent were African-American and only 5 percent were Hispanic or members of other racial minority groups. But in 2006, the most recent midterm election, only 79 percent of voters were white while 10 percent were African-American and 11 percent were Hispanic or members of other racial minority groups.
furthermore,
Based on the 2008 results and the projected racial make-up of the 2010 electorate, Republican candidates would have to win almost 60 percent of the white vote in order to win 50 percent of the overall national popular vote in 2010. That would be even more than the 58 percent of the white vote that Republican candidates received in 1994 and much more than the 54 percent of the white vote that Republican candidates received in the 2008 House elections.
The choice is clear for the GOP: manage to attract white voters to an even greater degree than in 1994, or learn how to broaden your appeal. While the latter is likely in the long run, it doesn't seem plausible that either scenario will be orchestrated by next Fall.
Historical/Regional Realignment
Historical context. The House of Representatives has changed hands just twice in the last half century. Repeat: The lower chamber of Congress has changed parties two times in the last 50 years. To say it is a rare occurrence is somewhat of an understatement. Looking at the two times the House changed hands reveals a remarkably similar discourse.
The fascinating set of narratives, separated by 12 years in time, strike a remarkably similar and coherent tone. First, an article from November 11, 1994, right after the GOP took back the House:
The 1994 Elections: The Rising GOP Tide Overwhelms the Democratic Levees in the South:
As Democrats around the country pick up the pieces from the Republican landslide on Tuesday, nowhere is the shock greater, the losses bigger and the implications harsher than in the South.
In 1990, Democrats in 13 Southern states outnumbered Republicans in the House of Representatives by 83 to 46. Now, Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction outnumber Democrats 73 to 64. For good measure, Republicans also lead the Democrats in Southern Senate seats and Governor's posts for the first time since Reconstruction.
The result is a political landscape no one alive has ever seen, one that raises inevitable questions about whether the South is destined to become almost as solidly Republican as it was once solidly Democratic. Even many Democrats are not optimistic about the answer.
Indeed, for all the unhappiness with Mr. Clinton, less popular in the South than anywhere in America, what is most worrisome for Democrats is the degree to which the debacle on Tuesday can be seen as the dam breaking after four decades of Republican gains. Now, Democrats worry and Republicans hope that a solid Republican South can become a bulwark of a majority in Congress for the Republicans the way it used to be for the Democrats.
"This is the culmination of a political revolution in the South," said Whit Ayers, a Republican consultant in Atlanta. "What's happened is that young, aspiring white politicians will now see their route to positions of power in the Republican rather than the Democratic Party. That has substantial long-term implications for the balance of power in the South for many years to come."
The 50+ seat Democratic defeat was in essence the collapse of the party in Dixie. The sustained Democratic dominance of the House relied on the Solid South to supply an elasticity to their enduring majority. As the white south moved in droves to the party of Gingrich and Rush, the last remnants of the New Deal coalition were officially erased. As the Party of Lincoln southernized, the regions that once provided the party's base began to abandon ship, and the narrative struck a familiar tone. November 19, 2006, immediately after the Democrats took back control of the House:
Gettysburg, Again:
What is the larger meaning of the 2006 Democratic wave? Pulling back the lens a bit, what one sees is the eventuation of a regional realignment that began a half-century ago and is now nearing its conclusion. That realignment commenced with the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which led to the inevitable conversion of Dixiecrats into Republicans -- first at the presidential level in the 1960s and 1970s, then at the congressional level in the 1980s and 1990s, with ongoing Republicanization further down the ballot along the way.
The Republicans' "southern strategy" -- initiated by Barry Goldwater, accelerated by Richard Nixon, expanded by Ronald Reagan, and perfected by George W. Bush -- is now a fait accompli, and at every level of government. Prior to this year's election, the Republicans held a greater share of Senate, House, and governors' seats in the former Confederate states than the Democrats did in the dozen northeastern states from Maine to Maryland. In fact, the percentage of northeastern House and Senate seats that Democrats controlled following the 2004 elections, when John Kerry won all 12 of those states, was basically the same as it was after the 1968 elections in which Nixon carried Delaware, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
The 2006 elections were a corrective, an overdue if not inevitable Rust Belt realignment brought upon by the rightward shift of American policy and politics led by the southernization of the Republican Party. Republican losses were fueled by the return of Catholic "Reagan Democrats," a labor resurgence, and the pivotal power of inner suburban voters. The Democratic pickups across the Northeast and Midwest were sufficient to give the Democrats majorities in the House, the Senate, and among governors for the first time since the 1994 revolution.
The meaning of these defeats is that the Republican caucuses will now be further dominated by Southern-based cultural conservatives, while the ascendant Democratic majorities will be infused with new liberal blood. This will push the Democratic caucus to the left as it expands -- particularly on economics and foreign policy -- and the Republican caucus to the right as it shrinks. Those hoping for an end to partisan polarization on Capitol Hill, or between Congress and the White House, may be sorely disappointed.
The collapse of the GOP in the North mirrors exactly the collapse of the Democratic Party in the South. Indeed, while I will not use up more bandwidth with charts and maps, a quick glimpse of the 2006 and 2008 (lighter colors = party change) midterm elections reveals that a staggering 31 of the Democrat's 54 seat gain in those two elections came in former Union States (along with 9 more in heavily Hispanic districts in the southwest). The GOP ruled the House because they captured the South while holding the North. As the GOP radicalized, the Democratic Party's liberal platform provided an irresistible reason to leave the party of Ike, Javits, Rockefeller, Ford and Dewey. Again, the GOP has tapped out in the South. There are perhaps up to a dozen vulnerable Democratic seats throughout the former Confederacy, a mere fraction of the 40 seats needed to take back the House and is a far cry from the large number of Solid Democratic seats that were ripe for the picking in 1994. The GOP needs to compete in the places they lost ground in during the 2006 and 2008 elections, in places like Connecticut, Upstate New York, suburban Philadelphia, etc. Signs are rather ominous in this regard as well. Consider GOP favorability by region:
That the party is strongest in the region the party captured in 1994 is not the problem; that they are so unpopular everywhere else, however, provides yet another barrier to any significant Republican surge in 2010.
In Summation
To repeat, any one of the obstacles could be overcome in a short amount of time, but taken together it is hard to envision a 40 seat pickup by the Republican Party. We can see clearly what an imminent landslide looks like by examining polling data from 2006. The polling in the months before that election showed a double-digit Democratic preference, while the GOP today has a 6 point deficit. The last time the GOP took back the House it did so by capitalizing on white voter dismay in an electorate that had a combined minority population 10% lower than it is expected to be in 2010. Without any sign of the GOP making corrective steps toward minority outreach, it is inconceivable that the GOP will be able to capture the record proportion of white voters needed to offset the growing clout of minority voters. Lastly, the incredibly rare change of House control is directly correlated to regional voter allegiances, first registered in 1994 with the Democratic collapse in the South, then again in 2006-8 with GOP collapse in the Northeast and Great Lakes. The current state of the Republican Party, with its Birthers, its Deathers, its Neoconfederates like Gov. Perry threatening secession and its visceral, high-profile leaders in the form of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, make it hard to envision a Republican resurgence in the Liberal Yankee states from which they were most recently trounced. Absent fundamental change and approach to politics, the GOP seems destined to languish on the sidelines of history, but in the immediate future the odds of a 2010 GOP House takeover rests between nil and scant.
