Governing through Reason
House of the Rising D
[Updated from previous version, errors corrected and new information added. Thanks to commenters for their suggestions.]
It was a good-enough Election Day for House Democrats, although they fell far short of capturing the 25 seats needed to regain the majority.
At this writing, news services have called House seats for 194 Democrats and 233 Republicans, with eight seats still being decided. Of these eight races, seven are led by Democrats, none are led by a Republican, and one will have two Louisiana Republicans (from an open general election ballot) running against each other in a runoff. If the current leads hold, the 113th Congress will have 201 Democrats and 234 Republicans. That would be a gain of nine seats for the Democrats over the 112th Congress (plus replacements for vacant seats once held by two elected Democratic Representatives). The composition of the 112th Congress (which serves through January 2, 2013) is 190 Democrats and 240 Republicans with five vacancies. There are 435 Representatives in the House, so 218 seats make a majority for most votes.
Cook Political Report did a great job calling the results of House races. Races rated “Likely Democratic” by Cook were won by all 10 Democrats rated. Eleven races were rated “Lean Democratic”. Of those, nine were won by Democrats and the results are still pending in two Arizona races: in AZ-2, incumbent Democrat Ron Barber now leads the Republican, Martha McSally, by more than 300 votes; in AZ-9, Kyrsten Sinema (D) is ahead of Vernon Parker (R) by 5,700 votes. Tossup races broke slightly toward the Democratic side: of the 29 “tossup” races, Democrats won or are leading in 20 and Republicans won or are leading in nine races. Most of the races where the outcome is still not determined come from this category: CA-7 (Bera [D] leads Lungren [incumbent R] by fewer than 200 votes); CA-52 (Peters [D] leads Bilbray [incumbent R] by fewer than 700 votes); FL-18 (Murphy [D] leads West [sort-of-incumbent redistricted R] by 2400 votes); NC-7 (McIntyre [D] leads Rouser [R] by fewer than 400 votes). In Florida’s 18th District, loser Allen West (R) also comes from this group. The preponderance of Democratic wins in this category is evidence for a very, very small wave favoring Democrats.
In “leans Republican” based on Cook’s calls, 15 Republicans and two Democrats (Tierney in MA-6 and Matheson in UT-4) prevailed. There are no remaining Republicans in the House representing New England states. In the “likely Republican” column, all Republicans won. Again, there was a minor wave buoying Democrats, but it was tiny compared to the 2010 wave that swept Republicans into leadership of the House. In Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, firebrand Representative Michele Bachmann was threatened, but eventually prevailed over Democrat Jim Graves by 4,200 votes.
[Corrections in the previous paragraphs made based on latest Cook report and news reports.]
Political scientists have noted the increasing polarization of the House of Representatives. This is shown graphically by Keith Poole and Christopher Hare, political scientists at the University of Georgia, creators of the DW-NOMINATE scale and authors of the Voteview blog.
Hare and Poole’s chart of increasing polarization in Congress (red line) 1879–2011.
The number of moderate Democrats began dropping before World War II, while moderate Republicans held on until the Nixon administration. The reasons are not known, but I would speculate that Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and the incorporation of the southern, socially conservative wing of former Democrats had much to do with the shift. Note the number of moderate Republicans in the House: near zero. (Not that the Democrats have bragging rights; within their party, their moderates’ share is at a level close to historical lows.)
How did each group of the 112th Congress’ House of Representative fare? I’ve taken the ten most liberal, ten most conservative, and ten most moderate members (based on DW-NOMINATE scores) to compare their fates. Since there is no overlap between the parties, the five most conservative Democrats and the five most liberal Republicans comprise the ten most moderate.
| Liberals (all Democrats) | ||
| Member (state) | DW-NOMINATE | 2012 result |
| Lee (CA) | –0.744 | won with 86% of the vote |
| Conyers (MI) | –0.717 | won with 82% of the vote |
| Waters (CA) | –0.713 | won with 71% of the vote |
| McDermott (WA) | –0.707 | won with 80% of the vote |
| Filner (CA) | –0.682 | elected SD Mayor; Vargas (D) 70% |
| Stark (CA) | –0.674 | defeated 47%-53% by Swallwell (D) |
| Clarke (NY) | –0.650 | won with 87% of the vote |
| Schakowski (IL) | –0.647 | won with 66% of the vote |
| Grijalva (AZ) | –0.639 | won with a mere 57% of the vote |
| Payne (NJ) | –0.635 | won with 87% of the vote |
| Moderates | ||
| Altmire (D-PA) | –0.135 | redistricting put two incumbent Ds in 12th district; lost primary to Critz; Critz lost to Rothfus (R) 41%-59% |
| Donnelly (D-IN) | –0.132 | elected to Senate |
| Barrow (D-GA) | –0.132 | won with 54% of the vote |
| Boren (D-OK) | –0.111 | retired; Mullin (R) 57% |
| Shuler (D-NC) | –0.102 | retired; Meadows (R) 57% |
| Smith (R-NJ) | +0.121 | won with 68% of the vote |
| Lobiondo (R-NJ) | +0.182 | won with 58% of the vote |
| Meehan (R-PA) | +0.189 | won with 60% of the vote |
| Reichert (R-WA) | +0.192 | won with 59% of the vote |
| Hanna (R-NY) | +0.195 | won with 60% of the vote |
| Conservatives (all Republicans) | ||
| Hensarling (TX) | +0.745 | won with 64% of the vote |
| Campbell (CA) | +0.757 | won with 60% of the vote |
| Franks (AZ) | +0.775 | won with 64% of the vote |
| Stutzman (IN) | +0.781 | won with 67% of the vote |
| Mulvaney (SC) | +0.819 | won with 56% of the vote |
| Amash (MI) | +0.837 | won with 53% of the vote |
| Graves (GA) | +0.914 | won with 73% of the vote |
| Broun (GA) | +0.954 | unopposed |
| Paul (TX) | +0.971 | retired; Randy Weber (R) 54% |
| Flake (AZ) | +0.988 | elected to Senate; Matt Salmon (R) 67% |
Stuck in the Middle with You. Photo: AP.
Sadly, these results will likely deepen the chasm between Democrats and Republicans in the House. While moderate Republicans survive, moderate Democrats are still losing their seats, which will open the gap between the parties’ DW-NOMINATE scores even wider. Meanwhile, extremely right-wing politicians are rewarded with re-election or, as in the case of Senator-elect Flake, promotion to the upper house.
Is this an example of The Ideology Gamble?
On the other hand, the Republican tactic of obstructionism in the 112th Congress may not be politically tenable for the 113th.
As The Economist writes in this week’s OpEd:
But what about the Republicans? Their script is depressingly easy to write. The party’s leaders will once again conclude that they lost because their candidate was not a genuine conservative, and vow to find the real thing next time. Possible future leaders like Paul Ryan, this year’s vice-presidential candidate, will head to the right in preparation for the 2016 primaries. Compromise with Mr Obama will be treason.
If the Republicans do that they will be abandoning all electoral sense.
What is your prediction for the 113th Congress? What will they accomplish?
Related articles
- GOP to retain control of House (sfluxe.com)
- Republicans Retain House by Shoring Up Incumbents — New York Times (nytimes.com)
- House Republicans may actually add to their majority on Election Day (washingtonpost.com)
- Republicans Stand Firm in Controlling the House (nytimes.com)
- Americans Actually Voted for a Democratic House (politicalwire.com)
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A lot depends, I think, on what Republicans decide was the cause of their dramatic loss last Tuesday. If they decide that they didn’t go crazy enough, Republicans will try harder to be obstructionist. They’ll spend the next two years trying to repeal Obamacare in the House, and maybe enacting bills like a mandate for prayer in public schools, an electrified boarder moat with Mexico, or life imprisonment for people who don’t report instances of flag burning. These will all be presented as “jobs bills” with titles like “Jobs for Prayers,” the “Moat Employment Act,” “Patriotic Protection Bill.” (All these bills will die when handed to the Senate, of course. They won’t be intended to ever become law. Their purpose is merely to prove that yes indeed the House is still insane.) Oh, and more tax cuts.
On the other hand, the rich donors who wasted hundreds of millions of dollars bankrolling losers may threaten to cut off the gravy train unless Republicans get their act together. They may insist that Republicans actually accomplish something rather than merely waste Congressional office space. It’s possible we’ll see progress on a number of items, so that Republicans can attempt to claim credit for it.
Already, for example, I’m hearing Republicans being concerned with trying to revise immigration laws, in an effort to look less hostile to Hispanics and Latinos, because people who can count have noticed which way they voted in this election. Speaker Boehner has made noises attempting to look as if he’s willing to deal on budgetary matters.
The problem is that Republicans aren’t actually willing to change any of their policies — the point is to look reasonable rather than to concede any ground. It’s all for show. Krauthammer and other have said people like Tood Akin lost, not because Republican policies offend most of America, but because those policies were not presented well.
So expect to see happy faces painted on those boarder moats, and have that called “immigration reform.” Or have the House agree to raising revenue by “broadening the base” — which means taxing those sluggards who currently don’t pay federal income taxes because they’re too poor. (Meanwhile, Republicans at the state level will do their best to make sure those poor people can’t vote.)
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#3 written by PNE 6 months ago
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I made the corrections and updates. Cook Political must have had a pre-election race ratings change that I missed, because the numbers they posted are different than mine. Also, Barber is back up again, just barely. It looks like it’s going to be 201 Democrats and 234 Republicans if his lead holds.
Max, one thing that was in an earlier draft of the article that did not make it into the final is a note that the House is not required to have a Speaker from the majority party. With the House so closely divided, it is going to be tough for John Boehner. So I would add to your list that some grand bipartisan bargains may be struck between Democrats and Republicans as the Republicans engage in a leadership fight. It might be that one or the other potential Speaker will need to attract Democratic votes, or that a Democratic moderate might attract enough Republican votes. Pelosi and Hoyer are hard-nosed, tough negotiators and may work out a bipartisan deal that gets the House working again. If they do, it will be a good sign. (I’m not saying it’s likely; I’m just saying it would be nice if the Democratic leaders take advantage of this Republican Achilles heel.) -
#6 written by Max 6 months ago
From a Slate article:
In the final 10 days of the race, a split started to emerge in the two campaigns. The Obama team would shower you with a flurry of data—specific, measurable, and they’d show you the way they did the math. Any request for written proof was immediately filled. They knew their brief so well you could imagine Romney hiring them to work at Bain. The Romney team, by contrast, was much more gauzy, reluctant to share numbers, and relying on talking points rather than data. This could have been a difference in approach, but it suggested a lack of rigor in the Romney camp. On Election Day, the whole Romney ground-game flopped apart.
Sounds like a familiar scenario at the micro level as well.
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This Jonathan Martin article from Politico explains quite well what the problem with the Republican Party is these days: “Pauline Kaelism”. (Kael famously said after Nixon’s 1972 landslide of 520 to 17 electoral votes that she knew only one person who voted for him.)
Here’s the money quote:
“Dick Morris is a joke to every smart conservative in Washington and most every smart conservative under the age of 40 in America,” said [New York Times columnist Russ] Douthat. “The problem is that most of the people watching Dick Morris don’t know that.”
The solution? Conservatives need to join us, write articles, and comment at Logarchism. That’s the best way to break out of the Kael Universe and to repudiate those on the so-called Right who merely want to entertain, not to inform.
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#8 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
One of the challenges of the next two cycles is to bring Texas into the light. The GOP has dominated a state that should be or have already drifted into Purple status. Understanding how the GOP is managing that, given the bellicose stupidity of the likes of a cadre of ‘Louey Gohmert’s’, is the key. IMO, the Democratic Party is going to have to craft a message that appeals to what are rural thinking voters that is consistent with the more or less urban message it presents now. That will require moderation and a peace treaty/rapprochement with the oil and gas industry. It’s the terms of that ‘treaty’ that needs to be negotiated. If doable, that brings Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma into a coalition and forever breaks the southern strategy.
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@DC… They’ll spend the next two years trying to repeal Obamacare in the
House, and maybe enacting bills like a mandate for prayer in public
schools, an electrified boarder moat with Mexico, or life
imprisonment for people who don’t report instances of flag burning.And steep fines for women who haven’t become pregnant in that two-year period and are therefore darkly suspected of using birth control.
Seriously… isn’t that a risky strategy for the GOP? In spite of gerrymandering they lost seats in the House, and both the national mood and the demographics are clearly swinging away from them. They have to face the electorate again in two years and despite the traditional success of the “out” party, it’s entirely possible they could see the Dems consolidate their gains in the Senate AND take back the House if the Reps get too crazy.
That would give Obama a total mandate for his last two years… and I think that idea scares them more than anything, so they might decide to step a bit carefully. Or not... but if not, 2014 will be as entertaining for Dems as 2012 was, just because of the way the electoral calendar is set up.
The more I think about this, the more dazzeld I am by the wisdom and prescience of the Founding Fathers who designed this overall system that has endured more or less intact for 200 years and still looks so brilliant. How on earth did a bunch of guys wearing wigs and riding around on horses, presiding over a mostly rural nation of 2.5 million people, manage to develop an entire political system… legislative, executive and judicial… that still works in cyber age in a nation of almost 400 million?
It truly boggles the mind.
Obviously I’m not as versed in American history as most of you… apart from the Amendments, have there been many other significant changes over the past two centuries in the way the politcal system is structured?
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#11 written by GROG 6 months ago
In regards to DC’s comment #2.
I was thinking that after the election this site may transition away from being an anti-Republican blog and begin to actually talk about leftwing ideas
That was wishful thinking. I see that it will continue to be what it is and has always been — anti-conservative.
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Looking at these elction results overall, Josh Marshall asks a question that has been on my mind all week. We’re hearing everywhere that the Romney camp was gobsmacked by his loss, they truly expected to win, he didn’t even have a concession speech prepared, etc etc:
Back on Thursday I expressed my own uncertainty
about just what to make of all this. On the one hand, the story seems
so universal and there seems so little reason at this point to keep up
the pretense, unless there’s some reason I’m not aware of to keep
pumping up retroactive erstaz Romney momentum. So the unanimity of the
story gives it increasing credibility. On the other hand the scale of
the goof just seems too much to believe and the Romney camp’s own
actions — the desperate move into Pennsylvania, for instance — don’t
really square with this purported confidence. Now though we have yet another article in Politico
reporting that not only did Romney’s campaign have polls that were
substantially off but that this was the case pretty much across all
Republican campaigns. I think at this point, I give up. I give in. I can’t maintain my
skepticism. I don’t know quite how shell shocked Mitt and his crew
were. But I don’t see how not to believe that Republicans as a group
were not working on the basis of internal polls that were just totally
wrong. Cui Bono? Why lie this much? I simply don’t see any purpose
being served. I’ve heard many suggest that they need to keep up this
pretense because these are the bogus numbers they were serving up to
Adelson and the other multi-billionaires to keep the money coming in.
But this doesn’t really make sense. Are these guys going to react worse
because they were lied to than they are if they think the guys they
gave their money to are a bunch of incompetents and morons?I’m baffled, too. Can this whole “we didn’t know we were trailing” meme possibly be true? Do you believe it… or is it being presented for some unfathomable reason that makes sense only to Republicans and will be revealed to the rest of us later?
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#13 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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#14 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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#GROG… c’mon, be fair. That comment #2 appeared in the “comments” section, not in the article, which is remarkably even-handed and objective.
Can you direct me to any right-wing-leaning site where the commenters spend more time discussing conservative ideas than attacking Democrats? Because if you can, I’d be so grateful. I’ve been searching for years for a site like that.
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#16 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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#17 written by rgbact 6 months ago
Also, the Blue Dog Caucus has gone from 54 in 2008, down to 25 in 2012, and by my count only 14 of those folks will remain in 2013. Course the House is a bad place to really care about partisan split. Given the “majority rule” nature, I suppose huge rifts don’t matter as much. Anyway, I suspect Boehner faces more risks from compromising than not.,
given the generally strong wins they had in areas like OH, PA, and VA.Most of their losses were in IL and CA, mostly due to redistricting. I’m not sure it possible to win back those seats anyway.OTOH, the Senate is where compromise should occur more and a bigger rift likely matters. The Scott Brown loss moved things left. IN and ME replaced moderates with slightly more lefty moderates. It will be interesting how much less moderate Murphy in CT is than noted moderate Joe Lieberman and if Fischer from NE becomes the first true female Senate conservative, as opposed to the moderate Nelson.
I was thinking that after the election that this site may transition away from being an anti-Republican blog and begin to actually talking about leftwing ideas.
I’ve noticed alot of the post election media coverage has been anti Republican rather than pro-Democrat agenda. Its curious.
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Thanks, cc… I’ll have to give American Conservative another look.
Speaking of thoughtful people.… I see that the Hadron Collider guys report a very rare B particle meltdown. This at the very same time as the historic Donald Trump Twitter Meltdown.
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#19 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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#20 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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#21 written by PNE 6 months ago
rgbact said, “if Fischer from NE becomes the first true female Senate conservative…“
So the Senate hasn’t had any female conservatives until now? Was Kay Bailey Hutchison not a conservative? How about Elizabeth Dole? I can see how you may not consider Snowe, Collins, or Murkowski to be “true” conservatives, but Kelly Ayotte also seems pretty conservative to me.
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#22 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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#23 written by Max 6 months ago
“ the more dazzeld I am by the wisdom and prescience of the Founding Fathers who designed this overall system that has endured more or less intact for 200 years and still looks so brilliant. How on earth did a bunch of guys wearing wigs and riding around on horses, presiding over a mostly rural nation of 2.5 million people, manage to develop an entire political system… legislative, executive and judicial… that still works in cyber age in a nation of almost 400 million?
It truly boggles the mind.”
Which is a major point I make in my article that sits waiting for GROG to provide the counterpoint.
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#24 written by dawolf 6 months ago
editing: don’t put all those through lines and new numbers in the main body text. Put the new numbers in the text, and have a footnote saying “This has been updated from an earlier version based on the latest information available” or something like that.
Also, this confuses me
“Races rated “Lean Democratic” were won by nine Democrats and the results are still pending in two Arizona races: in AZ-2, incumbent Democrat Ron Barber now leads the Republican, Martha McSally, by more than 300 votes; in AZ-9, Kyrsten Sinema (D) is ahead of Vernon Parker (R) by 5,700 votes. Races rated “Lean Democratic” were won by all 13 Democrats competing” -
@filistro
Obviously I’m not as versed in American history as most of you…
apart from the Amendments, have there been many other significant
changes over the past two centuries in the way the politcal system is
structured?In the way it’s structured, no. But there are elements of the way the branches of government interact that are now simply accepted, but were not written into the Constitution. For example, the power the Supreme Court has to decide whether a law is “constitutional” is not a power that is mentioned in the Constitution. SCOTUS simply seized that power (famous case, Marbury v. Madison — this case deserves an article discussing it in the context of the times and personalities. Hell, it deserves a novel.)
The Courts have no military and control no funds, yet they are, in some ways Ultimate Authority — simply because they say they are, and neither the Executive nor the Legislature has had the spine to disagree (not that I think they should). The President and Congress have fought about the limits of their authority all along. The structure, as you say, has pretty much remained the same (other than stuff like direct election of Senators). But the lines between the branches tend to shift and flex.
On another topic:
Can this whole “we didn’t know we were trailing” meme possibly be true? Do you believe
it… or is it being presented for some unfathomable reason that makes
sense only to Republicans and will be revealed to the rest of
us later?I think it’s an additional symptom of a deeper syndrome, the same denialism that creates Republican opposition to climate change or to evolution, the refusal to realize that the best way to reduce abortions is sex education and free birth control. There’s this opposition to data, a refusal to look at the real world. Romney getting gobsmacked isn’t surprising when taken in that context.
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filistro,
How on earth did a bunch of guys wearing wigs and riding around on horses, presiding over a mostly rural nation of 2.5 million people, manage to develop an entire political system… legislative, executive and judicial… that still works in cyber age in a nation of almost 400 million?
Largely by accident. The elements that have most contributed to this system’s endurance came from dealing with a sweltering summer, an unwillingness of Georgia and the Carolinas to accept any actions that might weaken slavery, and the rather urgent need to strengthen the central government so that the states wouldn’t go to war with each other.
apart from the Amendments, have there been many other significant changes over the past two centuries in the way the politcal system is structured
Yes and no. The biggest changes outside the Amendments occurred with the Supreme Court more broadly defining “interstate commerce” in the 20th century, thus allowing the federal government to have more control over activities theretofore considered within the purview of the states. It is this, in particular, that the libertarian wing of the Republican Party rails against.
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#27 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
Ted Cruz sees the Armageddon coming. The Republican Parties very existence depends on Texas.
http://www.businessinsider.com/texas-swing-state-blue-election-obama-ted-cruz-2012–11
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rgbact
I’ve noticed alot of the post election media coverage has been anti
Republican rather than pro-Democrat agenda. Its curious.One thing that happened in 2008 is that Republicans refused to acknowledge they lost the election. They went on an obstructionist rampage which continues to this day. It may be necessary to beat their defeated and failed policies into the ground before we can move on to accomplish the things America has clearly voted for.
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GROG,
I don’t think the election has quite worn off as a topic. As we approach Thanksgiving, you can expect an increase in policy topics. I know I’ve had several sitting around in various states of completion for months.Of course, the machinations of the lame duck Congress, and the coming “fiscal cliff”, are likely to involve quite a bit of partisan wrangling. That will probably appear to be “anti-Republican” to you.
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Okay, cc, I’ve scanned the American Conservative website and I think the reason the comments section is so resonable is that the commenters there are roughly 70–80% thoughtful Democrats (or at least left-leaning moderates.)
Read this comment thread, where poltical leanings are more plainly indicated, and tell me if you disagree.
As Treme noted above… if we had 70–80% thoughtful conservatives posting here, we’d be presenting a different face, too. But conservatives don’t participate in such large numbers at left-wing blogs. I don’t know why, they just don’t. I wish they would, but they won’t.
As for the somber, inward-looking tone at conservative websites presently… they are in a navel-gazing, “where-did-we-go-wrong” mode right now. Back in 2010 liberals were feeling the same way, so “left-wing ideas” were the only thing being discussed at their sites.
OTOH, at the moment Dems are GLOATING just like the R’s were in 2010.… and I really think gloating, triumphalism and jeering at the vanquished enemy should be freely allowed without censure for a two-week period after a successful, hard-fought election.
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filistro,
Can this whole “we didn’t know we were trailing” meme possibly be true?
Yes. I recall two years ago the degree to which at least a couple of regulars here thought the Democrats would lose only a handful of seats in the House. It can be really hard to overcome confirmation bias. It’s even harder when one can surround oneself with the comfortable echo chamber of partisan cheerleading.
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#34 written by mclever 6 months ago
@GROG and rgbact
It’s called schadenfreude.
It’ll probably take a couple more weeks for some of the emotions from the election to wear off. The glee of Dems and the gloom of Republicans will fade as the machinations of Washington trying to “do stuff” begin to churn out some of the post-election sausage. I guarantee some Dems will be lamenting whatever compromises Obama and Reid have to make in order to get something through the House, and likewise Republicans will be disappointed when Boehner can’t hold firm enough to Republican principles. Then we can all get together and moan our respective displeasure that Congress can’t get anything right!
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#35 written by rgbact 6 months ago
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#36 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
Most of those Democrats, although it’s more 50/50, are moderates as well. The amount of ‘Muleish’ behavior among conservatives is remarkably minimal there. Often you draw commentary in philosophical balance to thematic content of the articles as well. It goes to my ‘high fiveing’ comment yesterday as well. I’d also ask you to revisit the terms conservative and liberal from the risk perspective I speculated about a few days ago.
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@Michael… It’s even harder when one can surround oneself with the comfortable echo chamber of partisan cheerleading.
Yes, but the campaigns plan their strategy based not on partisan cheerleading but on very expensive (and supposedly very accurate) internal polling. So what happened? Did the pollsters also succumb to the echo chamber and skew their samples to get the numbers they wanted? Or did the campaign simply refuse to believe the results they were paying so much money to obtain?It really is a baffling mystery.
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#38 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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#39 written by mclever 6 months ago
@filistro
Keep in mind that much of successful polling involves getting an accurate representation of who the likely voters are. My guess is that the Republican insider pollsters were either engaging in an egregious version of Rasmussen’s predetermined partisan splits rather than letting the voters tell them what their partisan preferences are or they were weighting the demographics poorly, especially underweighting minorities and younger voters, because they simply didn’t believe that a disappointing first term from Obama could bring record numbers back to the polls again. It’s sort of like they all said to each other, “Everyone agrees that Obama sux and the economy sux, so there’s no way that blacks and students will be excited to vote for him again, so it only matters that we turn out our white supporters, and we’ll win.”
From what I’ve read, the Romney campaign met their voter turnout targets, but Obama just turned out even more. Especially in Cleveland, for example. The Obama campaign worked hard to reach every one of its 2008 supporters, plus reaching out to students and other new voters to make sure they knew when/where/how to vote. No one prior to Obama has ever turned out students like that, and he did it again. Also, speaking anecdotally, some minority voters took the news of expected long lines and voter roll purges and other alleged suppression attempts as personal affronts. How dare they try to keep me from voting! And therefore were doubly determined to make sure they voted and there weren’t nothin’ those dang Republicans could do to keep them away!
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#40 written by mclever 6 months ago
@filistro
Keep in mind that underweighting minorities and youth contributed to Gallup’s failure in this particular election, too. So imagine that all of the Republican insider pollsters were basically following Gallup’s model, because they are after all the most trusted name in polling.
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@Mac… Sorry, I’m not buying it. Gallup was the ONLy outlier among national pollsters. It’s defies credulity that the exepensive (but low-profile and very quietly professional) pollsters used by the Romeny campaign were all making the same mistake.
I think the Romney camp knew they were trailing badly (thus the Hail Mary pass in PA in the final days.) But they thought the truth would be demoralizing and suppress the enthusiam they needed in order to have any shot at a win, so they puffed up the “we’re winning!” meme.
The only mystery IMO is why they are still clinging so stubbornly to a narrative that after all, makes them look pretty dumb.
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#42 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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mclever, on your #39, I think that’s exactly it. Republicans assumed their strategy that they decided on the day President Obama was inaugurated had worked. (Remember, Paul Ryan was in that meeting.) They decided to block everything. This would allow Republicans to spread the meme of “Obama’s failed presidency” since so many of the things the President had tried to accomplish, from closing Gitmo to immigration reform, from creating jobs to green energy, had not been allowed to happen.
This would, they thought, turn the President’s supporters against him — or at least demoralize them into staying home. Couple that with attempts at vote suppression (or intimidation when the suppression attempts were stopped by the courts), and they simply could not believe that the electorate would turn out to be more like 2008 than 2004. In fact, they probably expected it to be most like 2010.
This was confirmed by the reaction to Romney’s performance in the first debate. The way all the polls swung (ignoring for a moment that Oct 1 was also when many pollsters changed from “registered voters” to “likely voters”) convinced them of the effectiveness of their strategy.
Never mind what the voters themselves said about their partisan affiliation. Having decided what the electorate must be like (energized conservatives, dispirited liberals), Republicans were confidant in their re-weighting of the demographics.
Besides, people are not straightforward in what they claim to be their partisan membership. Huge numbers of those “independents” are really people too embarrassed to admit they’re Republicans. Likewise, Republicans hoped, many of the people who claim to be “Democrats” were people who had voted for Obama in 2008 but were now too embarrassed to admit they’d been wrong to do so. (I saw a lot of Romney ads that were really pretty gentle, if more than a bit condescending, with the message, “It’s okay to admit you made a mistake. Vote for us this time.”)
So I think the Romney people simply did not believe the hard numbers that came out of the polls. Their assumptions about what the makeup of the electorate would be overweighed the actual numbers from what the poll respondents told them. They all engaged in “unskewing” the numbers, convinced their understanding was more accurate.
This is why a campaign really should hire a polling company from the other side, to make sure they’re not merely being told what they want to hear.
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#44 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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#45 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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filistro,
Yes, but the campaigns plan their strategy based not on partisan cheerleading but on very expensive (and supposedly very accurate) internal polling. So what happened?
Keep in mind that a small change in assumptions corresponds to a huge change in the electoral vote. We’re talking about only a few percentage points. Couple that with a degree of concern over telling the Emperor that he’s naked…
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channelclemente, one fascinating part of that clip relates to the possibility of Republicans realizing they were wrong on the issues. (This gets to Grog’s complaint in #11 and to a discussion we had a day or two ago.) One of the panelists pointed out that given Romney’s stance on immigration, he was simply not going to get the Hispanic vote he needed. Given Romney’s promise to de-fund Planned Parenthood, he couldn’t possible make up the gender gap. These are positions the Republican Party is simply getting wrong, and the Democrats are doing right — not just as far as winning elections, but also because this is what a majority of Americans want, and it is what is right for the nation.
We’ll see if Republicans figure this out. It isn’t just what face you put on a bad policy, or whether you have a good candidate or an effective ground game. Romney failed on all those points. Then he had the stupidity to allow, and to stand behind, outrageous falsehoods like the “Jeep is moving to China” ad, or the “Obama stole $716 billion from Medicare” lie. But put all that aside, because it’s window dressing.
Republicans were wrong on the issues. That’s why they lost. Maybe the rest could have been overcome, maybe not. But they were wrong on the issues.
We’ll see if they figure this out. Republicans have an opportunity, in the next few weeks, to show whether or not they have. Americans decided — and declared rather forcefully — we want to see taxes increase on the top 1%. How will Republicans respond?
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filistro,
Gallup was the ONLy outlier among national pollsters.
No, Gallup was the most egregious outlier among the national pollsters. Even among the state pollsters, the consensus was to the right of the results. PPP, who typically leaned about 1–2 points to the left of the consensus, ended up closer to reality than the consensus.
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dawolf,
You’re probably right. I was trying to not cover up my obvious errors too much for archival consistency, but sacrificed readability.
Max,
Regarding the Romney campaign’s failures that mystify filistro, I was trying to find the examples from the pilot safety literature that I learned long ago where there was a controlled flight into terrain due to the crew not being willing to contradict the pilot’s obvious fatal error. Do you recall which crash(es) that was? I know that it was the subject of our work on medical errors, which often happen from the same root cause: a pilot or physician with such a strong personality that people can, and will, die rather than contradict authority.
Can you amplify on that anecdote?
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#50 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
DC,
what would also help is if the media evolved into fact/issue based reporting, as opposed to this narrative storytelling where they paste the most convienent factoids on to a preexisting narrative line. It inevitably leads to a debate between facts and pseudo facts with talking heads pundits doing the interpreting. AKA, pretty face journalist. Give me Candy Crowley or Maddow anytime.
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rgbact #17 said,
IN and ME replaced moderates with slightly more lefty moderates.
Do you just not believe in the DW-NOMINATE system, or do you not read what I write, or what? Because calling Senator-elect Donnelly a “slightly more lefty moderate” when he is (tied for) third from the center in a 435-person House is a strange turn of phrase. A true moderate would have a DW-NOMINATE of zero by definition, and Donnelly’s is –0.132. If he had stayed in the House, he would be tied for the distinction of “most moderate”.
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#52 written by rgbact 6 months ago
Do you just not believe in the DW-NOMINATE system, or do you not read what I write, or what? Because calling Senator-elect Donnelly a “slightly more lefty moderate” .……is a strange turn of phrase.
I consider Lugar a moderate, and he got replaced by the 3rd most righty Dem House member, who’s still “slightly more lefty” than him. Same goes for ME, as Snowe was very moderate and its not clear how much more lefty this new guy will be than her. Whats a better description?
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#53 written by GROG 6 months ago
Michael,
I don’t think the election has quite worn off as a topic. As we approach Thanksgiving, you can expect an increase in policy topics. I know I’ve had several sitting around in various states of completion for months.
Regardless of what “policy topics” are published, the comment threads will continue to devolve into what DC wrote in #2. They will be about Republicans desire to mandate prayer in schools, remove uteri from women, lynch blacks and latinos, put moats around Mexico and hope they all drown and call it immigration reform. They will be about how we’re the party of rich, élitist, snobbish, rich guys.It was that way when Dems controlled the Senate, the House, and the Presidency. It was like that when they controlled the Senate and the Presidency. I don’t expect it to change over the next 4 years.
That’s what Democrats do. They complain about and blame others.
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“anti-conservative”
Again grog, all I ask for is consistency. btw, the antithesis of liberal is conservative ie this is a liberal er advanced, broad-minded, enlightened, flexible, high-minded, humanitarian, intelligent, rational, reasonable, receptive, tolerant, unbiased, unbigoted, understanding blog.
And because of this ((( friendly, benevolent, genial, peaceful, sympathetic, welcoming ))) atmosphere, grog likes us, he really likes us.
ok, ok, most of us.
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#55 written by mclever 6 months ago
@rgbact
I think Monotreme just misunderstood your frame of reference for “slightly more lefty” and took it to mean you thought Donnelly and King were “lefty” rather than moderates who happen to be “slightly more left” in comparison to the moderate Republicans they are replacing. I admit I had to read it twice to get your meaning, too.
That sort of easy misunderstanding is an example of why it’s a good idea for all of us to ask for clarification if we think someone said something outrageous rather than antagonistically chastising them for what we assume they meant. Sometimes people are unclear. Sometimes people say something that means something different to someone else. Sometimes people’s sarcasm or humor is misunderstood. Sometimes people misspeak.
Happened with me and GROG regarding Ohio absentee ballots. His grace in admitting that he’d misspoke and quickly correcting himself should serve as an example for how to respond to a challenge. I should clarify that I’m not implying you or Monotreme did anything wrong; I just wanted to highlight GROG’s good behavior as a reminder to those who might get unruly during these sorts of “not what I meant” exchanges…
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#56 written by mclever 6 months ago
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“His grace in admitting that he’d misspoke”
Don’t know about grace, but he did correct himself. I almost shortened my logarchism vacation when I saw grog’s erroneous post lol. Indeed, after I had already acquired an Ohio absentee ballot form from the local library I received (3) more forms in the mail. One from Husted, one from Obama’s highly tuned, leave no stone unturned, state of the art, presidential GOTV campaign and one from former gov. Ted Strickland.
Ohio ~ Ohio ~ Ohio
The postage was $1.20 and my ROI is multiplying as I type.
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#58 written by GROG 6 months ago
And I’m really beginning to reject this assertion that Obama had this amazing and dramatic victory.
It was the most negative presidential campaign in history, a stark contrast to the hope and change campaign of four years ago. He’s the first president in history to win reëlection with fewer overall votes and fewer electoral votes. He received less votes than GW Bush did in reëlection for God’s sake.
He has four more years to prove himself and his ideology. He can’t blame the previous administration anymore. -
#60 written by rgbact 6 months ago
So the Senate hasn’t had any female conservatives until now?
Well, Lisa M. is obviously far more moderate than someone I’d expect from AK. Collins and Snowe are obvious moderates. Kay Bailey H. is conservative and while not very outspoken, is a great role model. Kelly Ayotte is probably the best conservative female in recent Senate history. I hope Fisher can be as great as her. I actually think the GOP needs to do better with females than Hispanics. Losing with females is more deadly demographically. If anything, this election was a woman election.
It may be necessary to beat their defeated and failed policies into the ground
Well, as I (and Grog) have implied.…proceed already. I anxiously await a budget from the Senate and an amnesty plan from the president.
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#61 written by Mule Rider 6 months ago
“…beat their defeated and failed policies into the ground”
This is exactly why I’m not overly concerned with a permanent Democratic/liberal/progressive hegemony.….failure. Failed policies. Failed ideas. That will be the one thing to turn the tide on the current stranglehold Dems have on Hispanic, Asian, and women voters in this country. Conservatism most certainly won’t be able to flip those majorities (i.e. take Hispanics/Asians 3-to-1 and women 3-to-2) but they can at least bring the split much closer to 50/50, in my opinion. I don’t see it happening in the black community anytime soon, however, because unfortunately, their culture appears addicted to failure and has been for some time now.
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GROG,
He’s the first president in history to win reëlection with fewer overall votes and fewer electoral votes.
You said this before, and I asked you your source. And pointed out that you’re wrong about this. Repeating it doesn’t make you any more right. It just makes you look foolish.
He received less votes than GW Bush did in reëlection for God’s sake.
Also wrong. You really need to check your sources.
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mclever,
You’re right.
rgbact,
I apologize. I was focusing on the “moderate” part rather than the modifier “slightly more lefty”. I realized that Donnelly has a lower DW-NOMINATE than Lugar.
I think we’re operating from different definitions of “moderate”. What I was trying to say, and said in an inelegant and bullying fashion, was that my definition of moderate is “a DW-NOMINATE of zero” and yours is probably different.
Since there have been multiple harangues here of the “define this” variety, I stepped nimbly to one side to avoid that trap and stepped right into a different one, the Snark Trap. Sorry.
If you want to check out why Lugar is not really a moderate, then check out this useful tool: a rank-order list of the DW-NOMINATE scores for the 112th Senate. He is the 8th most moderate Republican (Snowe, Collins, Brown, Kirk, Murkowski, Cochran, and Hoeven are closer to zero, in that order). On an absolute value scale, removing the – sign for Democrats/liberals, he is the 31st most moderate Senator. There are a lot of moderate Democrats.
Interesting factoid: Lugar is more conservative (+0.322) than President Obama is liberal (–0.311).
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GROG #58 and Michael #63,
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781450.html
It’s a bit of unfair comparison to go before the 20th century, since the nation was rapidly expanding and therefore adding electoral votes.
1912 Wilson 435; 1916 Wilson 277
1932 Roosevelt 472, 1936 Roosevelt 523, 1940 Roosevelt 449, 1944 Roosevelt 432
You really have a small dataset. Some came very close; Eisenhower gained 15 from a very large number to a slighly larger one. Reagan also gained slightly, but he didn’t have much room above his first number. Clinton was only 9 electoral votes higher the second time, and Bush II was only 15 electoral votes higher.
Also by definition, Hoover, Carter, and Bush I were not re-elected and therefore received fewer electoral votes. Some don’t meet the narrow definition of having been elected twice (those who died in office, or for example, Harry Truman who certainly had less popular support in 1948 than he did in 1945).
I know your definition includes the qualifier “and won re-election” but why should we exclude those who simply lost? Isn’t the point you’re trying to make is that Presidents should increase their electoral vote total upon re-election?
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#66 written by rgbact 6 months ago
There are a lot of moderate Democrats.
So, there’s about 22 Democrats (about 40%) less liberal than Lugar is conservative? Interesting. Well, Democrats have focused less on purity than on winning seats in the Senate, while GOP has probably given up some winners in the name of purity. Not sure which is a better strategy. As a proponent of gridlock, I personally prefer the purity strategy.
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#67 written by Mule Rider 6 months ago
I think GROG may have jumbled some mis-reporting that could be found in various sources ahead of the election. But Obama was the first president to win a second term with both a smaller share of the popular vote and fewer electoral votes. Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 re-election bid featured fewer electoral votes but a higher share of the popular vote. FDR’s re-election bids in 1940 and 1944 featured declining shares of both, but those were his third and fourth terms. Fun factoids.
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grog, by any measure, Willard and the Rep party got his/their butt
kicked. Elections come down to winners and losers as Bush got 47.9%
and more than a half million fewer votes than Gore in 2000. Feel free
to stop whining at any time … or not!Romney even got two million fewer votes than McCain.
Republicans were insisting this would be a romp for them. No President had ever gotten reëlected, they claimed, with the economy so bad. They’d go on and on about how much America hated Obama and his “failed” policies.
They were wrong. This election wasn’t even close. Democrats gained seats in both houses. In several states (such as here in Minnesota) Democrats even took back both houses of the state legislature. And all that is despite Republican gerrymandering. This was an enormous Democratic victory.
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Well, as I (and Grog) have implied.…proceed already. I anxiously await a
budget from the Senate and an amnesty plan from the president.The President isn’t going to give an “amnesty plan.” “Amnesty” is a right-wing word. You won’t find a Democrat doing that.
I can’t see a reason for the Senate to enact a budget that isn’t going to be approved by the House anyway. What’s the point?
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Mule,
Correct. But it’s really easy to turn those factoids into false memes. This is why I’m calling those out.One has to significantly narrow the definition to make it true. And it then becomes like those other entertaining, but otherwise useless, factoids that sports commentators like to throw in to fill time between plays.
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Grog, on your concern about progressive positions and programs …
When you see criticism of, say, Republican positions on abortion or taxation, you can probably assume that the person leveling the criticism holds a view different from the Republican one. If you want to discuss that differing opinion, you could ask about it.
Further, discussions of Republican positions often include implied — or stated — contrasts with Democratic positions. For example, we’ve discussed taxation pretty extensively, and we’re likely to do so again. While criticizing Republican opposition to allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on that portion of income over $250,000, there is usually the implication — and sometimes direct mention — of the President’s position that the Bush tax cuts on that portion of income over $250,000 should be allowed to expire.
You seem increasingly critical of discussions of Republican positions, and you have repeatedly lamented a supposed lack of discussion of Democratic positions. It seems to me that Democratic positions are spoken of with equal frequency, sometimes by implied contrast to Republican positions, but often — in fact, perhaps even usually — by outright stating them.
In any case, please do feel free to ask about specific positions if you would like to discuss them but are unclear as to what they are.
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#73 written by GROG 6 months ago
Mule,
But Obama was the first president to win a second term with both a smaller share of the popular vote and fewer electoral votes.
OK. I stand corrected, but he still won both a smaller share of the popular vote and fewer overall votes and few electoral votes than in 2008. (In 2008 he won 69,500 votes. This year will have won 68 million.)
DC,
This was an enormous Democratic victory.
Keep believing that. This was the Indians versus the Astros in the World Series and the team with fewest errors won. It was 2 bad teams. An ugly slugfest. This was a terrible victory. A victory while losing support after four years in office is not an “enormous” victory.
He has 4 more years to prove himself. Game on. No more blaming everyone else.
It seems to me that Democratic positions are spoken of with equal frequency,
Count the amount of times the word “Republican” appears on this blog versus the amount of times the word “Democrat” or “Democractic” appears. Let me know what you find. -
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#76 written by Max 6 months ago
Mono,
There are numerous cases of CFIT. The last ten years or so the issue has been at the forefront of safety procedures. So use if checklists and “sterile cockpit” where no other subjects are allowed during take-off and landing procedures.
And, yes, the reduction in authority figure of the pilot from God-like to chief co-pilot.is a large part of the training.
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#77 written by Unconventional 6 months ago
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#78 written by GROG 6 months ago
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grog, re: your 68 million expected 2012 vote total projection for Obama when all the votes are counted nationwide, keep in mind the Hurricane Sandy effect ie NY/NJ alone had over 2 million fewer votes for president than 2008.
btw, Carmona may have conceded too soon as America’s Sweetheart, Jan Brewer’s AZ is still a political clusterfuck.
Apologies to clusterfucks!
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GROG,
take it to mean that he lost support over four years and the republican candidate gained support.
I think it’s too early to come to that conclusion. I have yet to get a state-by-state count for the two candidates. Have you found one? I don’t think we should underestimate Sandy’s impact on turnout, and we need to get a sense of that effect before we conclude anything about support for either party.
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#81 written by Max 6 months ago
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#82 written by Max 6 months ago
And much was made about Gore not even taking his home state of TN, a few years back. CT, the VP’s homestate, did go Democratic.
Well, Mitt could not win ANY of his home states, NH where he has a house, nor CA, not MI where he was born, and ESPECIALLY not in MA, where he was governor for 4 years.
Whacha make of THEM apples?
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Max, Willard’s 2012 projected vote total is 63,726,025, McCain received 60 million. Per grog’s above link.
>
“Whacha make of THEM apples?”
Willard’s high water mark was ((( 49% ))) when he was elected MA gov. in 2002. Of course he didn’t run for re-election ’cause he had a 36% job approval rating when he left office w/no chance for re-election.
Also interesting William Weld, another Republican Massachusetts governor, was re-elected w/71%.
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#85 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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#86 written by dawolf 6 months ago
@Grog
“A victory while losing support after four years in office is not an “enormous” victory.“
Labour won 3 elections in a row. The first two were landslides. In 1997 Labour won 418 seats out of 659, in 2001 413. Labour’s vote percentage dropped 2.5% and they dropped from 13.5 million votes to 10.7 million.That 2001 election was a landslide, a phenomenal victory and an absolute thrashing of the other parties.….no-one would have said any different.
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Seventeen presidents have been elected more than once. We’re not talking about a huge sample here.
Seven presidents were defeated when they ran for a second term. (One of them was later reëlected when he ran a third time.) Clearly, President Obama did far better than any of them.
In FDR’s third and fourth reelections, he had fewer popular votes and fewer electoral votes than the previous time.
This makes a total of twenty six times that a sitting or former president ran for reëlection, seven of which attempts failed completely.
In seven of the seventeen times that a president was elected to a second term, the popular vote totals were not kept (in many of the early ones there was no popular vote at all), so we don’t know if those presidents gained or lost in the popular vote.
For the first of the remaining ten, Grover Cleveland, the number of electoral votes available increased by 43 between his first election in 1884 and his second in 1892, as six states were added to the Union in the meantime. We should clearly omit him in any reasonable comparisons.
In the remaining nine examples, none but President Obama had to deal with Hurricane Sandy lowering the total number of votes cast.
Woodrow Wilson, by the way, had an impressive 158 electoral vote drop from his first to his second term.
But if Republicans want to console themselves with this rather irrelevant meme, at least it’s better than the birther stuff they plagued us with the first time around. In any case, Romney, who was supposed to win a a cakewalk, was soundly defeated.
By the way, there has been exactly one president who has not had a single state admitted to the union during his lifetime.
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#89 written by mostlyilurk 6 months ago
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#90 written by PNE 6 months ago
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@Grog
“A victory while losing support after four years in office is not an “enormous” victory.“
Considering what he’s been up against, yes, it is. You’re free to disagree, of course.
Do recall also how Bush crowed about the “political capital” he gained from his tiny sliver of an electoral vote win in 2004 (only 286). Obama exceeded this by 46 Electoral Votes, and at least a half million popular votes. On the standard that Republicans apparently use, Obama’s 2012 victory is a landslide of biblical proportions.
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#93 written by channelclemente 6 months ago
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#94 written by GROG 6 months ago
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Continuing to examine presidential data, in every one of the seven instances of a president being reëlected before 1872, 1) there are no good popular vote counts (often because electors were not chosen by popular vote), and 2) there were always more states in the second election than the first, so the two elections are not comparable.
That means, prior to 2012, there were a total of ten times when a sitting or former president ran for reëlection, and that candidate either lost, or won with fewer EVs (and usually fewer popular votes, when available) than his initial election.
Republicans want to make a thing out of this meme. It’s like saying that a winning Superbowl quarterback won with fewer passes over 15 yards the second time he won the Superbowl. No one cares except maybe the other team and a few bookies.
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Seriously this meme sounds like, “We’ve been campaigning against this guy for four years, nonstop, and even tried to tank the economy in our desperation to stop him. We should have run away with this election. He kicked our ass. But at least we can insist our ass got kicked slightly less than last time he kicked our ass.”
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ok, ok, back by popular demand
an addendum to my Republican’s recent futility in presidential elections, including 2012 updated results:1992 ~ 37.5% Bush41 an incumbent president who won Bart’s er the 1st Gulf War.
1996 ~ 40.7% Dole
2000 ~ 47.9% against a very, very weak candidate Gore.
2004 ~ 50.7% as an incumbent wartime Rep ran against a very, very weak Kerry.
2008 ~ 45.7% as the best Reps could come up with, McCain, didn’t have a dog’s chance in hell after (8) years of cheney/bush.
2012 ~ 47.8% as Willard had a con billionaire $$$ advantage.
>
The good news
for Reps ~ the updated average has gone from 44.5% to ( 45.05% ) for the last (6) presidential elections.>
btw, Nate predicted Obama would get 50.8% and grog’s link has a projection of 50.8%.
Coincidentally, Dick toe sucker Morris predicted Obama would lose by 5 to 10 pts.
>
Also, Markos Moulitas is hoping Romney gets down to 47.4% so it can round off to 47%.
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I checked Kristol’s numbers. He’s right. In fact, in the entire history of the US (that’s cheating — popular vote only goes back to 1872) there were exactly five presidents who were elected and reëlected with over 50% of the popular vote both times — the four mentioned in #98, and William McKinley.
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I don’t have a clue. I wouldn’t wager either way.
The infighting between the House GOP leadership throws another Joker into the deck, not mentioned above. Will Boehner exert control as Speaker? Will Cantor’s semi-revolt become outright civil war? What will McCarthy do? What role will Ryan play? These questions will be just as, if not more, important than the partisanship issue.
Never forget that strong personalities are at play, not just ideology.