Wednesday, November 10, 2010

GOP Wins House by Winning Seats that Already Voted Republican for President, Not by Expanding the Playing Field

Recently, liberal commentators have espoused the theory that the Democrats lost the U.S. House of Representatives in the November 2, 2010 elections because the so-called Blue Dog Democrats didn't embrace President Obama's liberal agenda, using as evidence the fact that most liberal Democrats survived while most moderate (practically none are actually conservative) Democrats lost. This is, of course, twisted logic, akin to saying that expeditioners in Mount Everest wouldn't freeze to death if only they wore swimsuits like surfers in Hawaii (who rarely freeze to death). While Blue Dogs, many of whom had held their seat for decades, were disproportionately the victims of the electoral carnage that befell the Democrats, this is because they tend to sit in districts that generally vote Republican for president, and we have seen that the presidential vote is increasingly a leading indicator of congressional electoral performance. GOP candidates fell well short in most of the heavily Democrat districts where it was polling well (think Barney Frank’s MA-04, Dingell’s MI-15, etc.), and the Republican Party's victory was due to it winning almost all of the districts that had been carried by President Bush by 6% or more in 2004; meanwhile, GOP candidates won exactly half of the districts where the presidential-vote margin in 2004 (whether for Bush or Kerry) was less than 6%, and won only won 4 districts that were carried by Kerry by 6% or more (with the largest Kerry margin of victory being his 7% in MN-08).

Assuming that the GOP doesn't end up winning CA-20, GOP congressmen now hold 13 districts carried by John Kerry in 2004:

FL-22
IL-10
IL-17
MN-08
NH-02
NY-25
PA-06
PA-07
PA-08
PA-11
PA-15
WA-08
WI-07

This is actually 5 fewer than the 18 districts that voted for Kerry in 2004 but elected a GOP Representative that year (when the GOP had 232 Representatives, likely 11 fewer than it will have next January):

CO-07
CT-02
CT-04
CT-05
DE-AL
FL-22
IL-10
IA-01
IA-02
KY-03
NH-02
NM-01
NY-25
PA-06
PA-07
PA-08
PA-15
WA-08

In fact, the 13 Kerry-GOP districts of today are only 6 more than the 7 Kerry CDs held by Republicans right before the elections (when the GOP held only 179 House seats).

DE-AL
HI-01
LA-02
IL-10
PA-06
PA-15
WA-08

With respect to districts that voted for Bush in 2004 but elected Democrats to the House, there are now only 25 such districts (assuming that the Dems win in CA-11):

AZ-08
AR-04
CA-11
CA-18
CA-47
GA-02
IN-02
IA-03
KY-06
MI-09
MN-01
MN-07
NY-23
NC-07
NC-08
NC-11
OK-02
OR-05
PA-04
PA-17
TX-15
TX-28
UT-02
VA-11
WV-03

(By comparison, there are 52 GOP congressmen from districts carried by Obama in 2008; we’ll see in 2012 how dozens of those districts carried by Obama were absolute flukes.)

After the 2004 elections, there were 41 House Democrats from seats carried by Bush that year:

AL-05
AR-01
AR-02
AR-04
CA-18
CA-47
CO-03
FL-02
GA-02
GA-08 (numbered 03 back then)
IL-08
IA-03
KS-03
KY-06
LA-03
MI-01
MN-07
MS-04
MO-04
NY-01
NC-02
NC-07
ND-AL
OH-06
OK-02
OR-05
PA-17
SC-05
SD-AL
TN-04
TN-06
TN-08
TX-15
TX-17
TX-27
TX-28
UT-02
VA-09
WA-03
WV-01
WV-03

And prior to the 2010 elections, there were a whopping 83 House seats carried by Bush but held by Democrats:

AL-02
AZ-01
AZ-05
AZ-08
AR-01
AR-02
AR-04
CA-11
CA-18
CA-47
CO-03
CO-04
FL-02
FL-08
FL-24
GA-02
GA-08
ID-01
IL-08
IL-11
IL-14
IN-02
IN-08
IN-09
IA-03
KS-03
KY-06
LA-03
MD-01
MI-01
MI-07
MI-09
MN-01
MN-07
MS-01
MS-04
MO-04
NV-03
NH-01
NJ-03
NM-03
NY-01
NY-13
NY-19
NY-20
NY-23
NY-24
NY-29
NC-02
NC-07
NC-08
NC-11
ND-AL
OH-01
OH-06
OH-15
OH-16
OH-18
OK-02
OR-05
PA-03
PA-04
PA-10
PA-17
SC-05
SD-AL
TN-04
TN-06
TN-08
TX-15
TX-17
TX-23
TX-27
TX-28
UT-02
VA-02
VA-05
VA-09
VA-11
WA-03
WV-01
WV-03
WI-08

My conclusions from all this are that:

(i) the 2004 presidential voting results are a truer measure of the partisan bent of congressional districts than the hopey-changey presidential voting results of 2008;

(ii) there has been a massive reduction in the number of voters who vote one way for president and another way for Congress, making presidential voting percentages an even better leading indicator of how a district will vote in House elections than it already was; and

(iii) GOP House gains in 2010 were overwhelmingly a result of districts that voted Republican in presidential elections now doing the same at the congressional level.

If the Democrats can no longer count on Blue Dogs holding districts that vote Republican for president, they will need to find a new way to 218 House seats, because Democrats holding conservative districts have for decades formed a major part of Democrat House membership. Given that there are far more conservative districts than liberal districts (given that there are more conservatives than liberals in America, and that liberals tend to be concentrated in heavily Democrat urban areas and minority-majority districts, it appears that House Democrats will be out in the wilderness until they can forge a major political realignment.

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