realignment

After an absence of over a year -- and what a year it's been! -- I've decided to begin writing again and, hopefully, contribute something to the discussion.

In the wake of Barack Obama's victory in 2008, "realignment" became the conventional narrative among talking heads, often combined with its sister narrative, the death of conservatism/the GOP/the Reagan Revolution (take your pick). The problem with conventional wisdom is it usually treats a snapshot in time as a summation of all that is, will be, and ever was. And that very problem creates false baselines by which conventional wisdom measures future events.

Coming off two narrow victories by George W. Bush in 2000 (271 electoral votes to 266) and 2004 (286-251), the common understanding of the electoral map was that the country was divided in two: red states and blue states, and that only a small handful of states fell into the "swing" category and determined the outcome. In other words, the map looked something like this:

Flip the "swing state" of Ohio and John Kerry would have been president.

Using those two elections as the standard, Obama's 365 electoral votes in 2008 look like a major diversion from the norm.

However, the truth is that Bush's two elections were the anomaly. Take a look at the last pre-Bush election (1996):

Not only have the "swing states" of OH and FL flipped, but an entire axis stretching through the midwest from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico (with the exception of MN) is in Clinton's column, as are the three western states of NV, AZ and NM and Appalachian states TN, KY and WV.

(Edit: to clarify, obviously MN is in Clinton's column too. I meant that it was excepted from the other states in that it's never been considered a "red" state)

The electoral margin of victory in the five "pre-Bush" elections also suggests something very different than a "divided America":

• 1996 (Clinton-Dole): 379-159 
• 1992 (Clinton-Bush): 370-168
• 1988 (Bush-Dukakis): 426-111
• 1984 (Reagan-Mondale): 525-13
• 1980 (Reagan-Carter): 489-49

In fact, to find a president elected with fewer than 300 electoral votes, you have to go back to Jimmy Carter's 1976 win over Gerald Ford (297-240). The next one that's even close is Richard Nixon's 1968 victory over Hubert Humphrey (301-191), and if one assumes that, but for the presence of George Wallace on the ballot, Nixon would have carried AR, LA, MS, AL, and GA, his victory jumps to 346-191.

To varying degrees, most elections have represented consensus on the part of the electorate (despite the protestations of the losing party and its followers), and 2008 simply returns us to that pattern. The 2000 and 2004 elections, rather than reflecting the "divided America" that was such a popular narrative (see the "snapshot" comment above), reflect more on the failure of Bush and his campaign to achieve consensus, rather than a unique level of division.

The point of all this is that in the long view, the reality is that "flexible independents" rule. By this I mean not just those who are not registered as Republicans or Democrats, but those who are generally inclined toward one party (and thus registered), but won't rule out voting for the other (think Reagan Democrats). These voters are largely working and middle class, and are particularly concerned with everyday-living issues such as jobs, education, and (when they feel it affects them directly, such as after 9/11) national security. One of the reasons Ohio goes with the winner so consistently is it represents a microcosm of these voters. They're not particularly ideological, and neither are the election results they produce, which is why both a very conservative (by 1980 standards) Reagan and a very liberal Obama can rack up such big wins. Once a "comfort threshold" is reached, the voters will hand them the keys to the White House, based on the belief that they're better equipped to manage those issues than the other guy.

It is within this prism that the question of "realignment" must be answered.  I don't know if anyone's ever established a hard and fast definition of realignment, but in my mind it represents a long-lasting shift in a segment of the electorate -- geographic, demographic or otherwise -- from general fealty to one party to the other.  Of course, the only way to measure if it's long-lasting is to see whether the shift holds through a string of elections.  The most obvious example would be the shift of a stripe of southern states (MS, AL, GA, SC, and NC) from a Democratic lock through 1960 to reliable Republican territory (with the exception of GA, which went for favorite son Jimmy Carter and also Bill Clinton in 1992) for the 48 years that followed, losing only NC in 2008.

Here's the 2008 map:

(Note Nebraska, which apportions electoral votes, also awarded Obama 1 vote, not reflected visually)

With the longer pattern in mind, the only earth-shattering wins for Obama are IN, VA, NC, and possibly CO.  I will leave to others to break down exit polls and try to read the tea leaves on whether Obama's wins in these states are indicative of a lasting lock by Democrats, but it seems unlikely.  Increased turnout among African-American voters -- who already vote for Democrats in excess of 90% -- was crucial to Obama's win in NC.  It's difficult to imagine the Democrats sustaining that turnout for just any Democratic candidate.

Much has also been made of Obama's success among younger voters, and indeed it was this success that allowed Obama to change the playing field and snatch the Democratic nomination from the "inevitable" Hillary Clinton, and at least in part helps account for the fact that in 2008 Obama netted the highest number of voters in American history.  But it also remains to be seen if these voters will continue to turnout for Democrats generally in future elections, or if their loyalties will remain constant throughout their lives.  It seems like a silly assumption that no 18-year-old Reagan voter in 1980 became a 30-year-old Clinton voter in 1992, or a 46-year-old Obama voter in 2008.  Similar assumptions about Obama's youngest voters seem equally silly.

So was 2008 a realignment?  In regard to a few states, the jury's still out, and will be until 2012 and beyond.  However, given the 2008 election's similarity to most other presidential elections, it seems unlikely.  Candidate Obama clearly sealed the deal for a consensus among the above-described "flexible independents", but the Democrats' string of losses in statewide elections in VA, NJ and MA since then suggest that his 2008 win isn't translating into large numbers of newly loyal Democrats.

It seems much more plausible that Obama ran a smart, effective campaign in a year when these "flexible independents" were already inclined to pass the baton to the Democrats, perceiving the Republicans as no longer competent to govern.  Such power shifts, particularly among these voters, are almost always based on perceived competence, not ideology, which probably explains why so many of these same voters have bristled at Obama's attempts to pursue a Great Society-esque program of social welfare and government intervention in the economy.

It seems to me that how Obama and the Democrats adjust their governance to the concerns of the "flexible independents" will have far more bearing on their future electoral fortunes than any perceived shifts in the electorate in 2008.

First apologies for the absence.  I had hoped to liveblog Tuesday's results, but I have one word for you:  rotovirus.  After my bout with hand/foot/mouth disease two weeks ago all I can say is that life gets interesting after your kid starts pre-school.  They become glorified little germ factories.

Republicans are obviously in relatively high spirits after the thumpin' of incumbent  challenger Jim Martin in Tuesday's special elections.  It was pretty widely expected that Saxby Chambliss would win re-election, but most people expected at best an eight-to-ten-point win (the number I had in my mind).  Chambliss won by about fifteen points.

Reactions and interpretations to the election have been varied.  For a good roundup of reactions, check out MichaelW's post at QandO.  My sense is this:  It is a good datapoint for the GOP, but it is only one datapoint.  It is far too early to conclude that the GOP is on the mend, or that Democrats' standing with the voters has begun to decline.  On the other hand,  I think we have some good evidence for the following:

1) This election is only a datapoint, but it is a useful datapoint -- Although turnout was lower than the general election, this was a very high turnout special election.  Chambliss actually received about 200,000 more votes than he received in the 2002 midterm election, while Martin received about as many votes as Cleland did that year.  In other words, I'm more comfortable with using this election as a datapoint than I am with using most other special elections (not very).

2) "Save the filibuster" is a useful slogan for 2010 -- Democrats are going to have a harder time in the 2010 Senate midterms than many expect right now.  This isn't to say that they are doomed, or are going to lose seats, or anything like that; just that we have some evidence that the size of their majorities poses a potential problem for them.  One of the theories for why the President's party has lost seats in almost every midterm election going back to the Era of Good Feelings is that voters rationally choose to counterbalance the President by beefing up the opposition party.  If this is the case, then the prospect of truly unlimited power for the President's party should act as a significant brake on that party's ability to advance to sixty seats, absent some good luck (eg if the Senate election rotation was timed such that Republicans had open seats in heavily blue states like Rhode Island and California this time around, such that voters there wanted such power for the President, against the wishes of much of the rest of the country).

Polling data show that a good chunk of Martin's voters were concerned enough about the prospect of a filibuster-proof Democratic majority to call into question whether they would vote for him.  We don't know how many of Chambliss's voters in the special election echoed this concern, but given the Rasmussen result, we may be able to infer that they are not inconsequential in number.  And that's at a time when Obama has approval ratings in the 60s, something that is unlikely to last once he gets to business of actually governing.  Assuming that Obama's approvals only decline to the mid-50s by 2010 (which would be an outstanding result for him), the "save the filibuster" attack would hold considerable promise for a GOP that is only defending three seats in states that went for Obama by more than his national average (and only marginally so at that).

3) Obama had coattails -- We knew this before the election, but this gives us some idea as to the magnitude of how many people showed up just to vote for him.  I'd been skeptical that we'd really seen a permanent upward tick of black participation in the electorate, or that youth participation would remain as high going into 2010.  This lends some support to that theory.  For a fuller explanation, see Michael Barone's excellent breakdown of the November/December election results in Georgia.

4) The real test is Saturday -- On Saturday a Republican and Democrat will face off in the election for the Fourth Congressional district in Louisiana.  What makes this election somewhat useful is that this district has a similar partisan makeup to LA-06 and MS-01, two Republican districts that Democrats picked up in special elections earlier this year by running moderate-to-conservative Democrats.  While I will urge caution here because there are still important differences -- the Republican candidate is stronger than the Republican candidate in LA-06 and the Democrat is the urban candidate here (he was the rural candidate in MS-01) -- the fact that we have two relatively similar case studies of pre-Obama special elections to weigh against a post-Obama special election could allow us to draw some useful inferences here that we would not normally be able to draw from a special election result.

This should be a close race -- Democrats after all were winning open seats in the South with regularity before 2006/2008; see LA-05, LA-03, TN-04, etc.  But if Republicans win the Louisiana district by more than a couple of points, combined with the Chambliss result, we will begin to have some good evidence that the anti-Republican backlash of the last few years has really begun to subside.  Stay tuned.

A piece by Reid Wilson today at RealClearPolitics attempts to demonstrate that the Democratic Party is building up membership in the center and on the right. But, if 2006 showed anything, it's that the Democratic tent is not big enough to house contrasting views. Liberal activists are still trying to drive out Joe Lieberman.

While it is disappointing to see the GOP reach into New England weakening, I don't think that the problem is mainly that the Party is becoming more conservative. Indeed, the current administration has done more to expand the size and scope of government than several of his predecessors. Take, for example, the doubling of the size of the federal Department of Education and creation of a whole new cabinet department (Homeland Security) by this administration. This does not even mention the Medicare Prescription Drug plan, or McCain Feingold. 

Rather, the problem for the GOP is two-fold: the war, and forgetting he successes of the Gingrich Revolution. On the war, John McCain has credibility and may well win the election. But, on conservative values of low spending, low taxes, free enterprise, and smaller government, the GOP may still lose even if it wins. Fortunately, as the national Democratic Party continues to outdo the GOP in expansion of government and excessive spending, any upsurge of comservative Democrats will be temporary. Even with that, however, the party needs to revive the brand and reinvigorate conservative governance. How soon the RNC figures this out, time will only tell.