Some Observations on the Election of Donald Trump

November 11, 2016

Like so many other political scientists, I’ve been spending this week trying to sort through what the election of Donald Trump means, why it happened, and what will happen next. Here are some of my initial thoughts and observations.

1. A win for the “G.O.P.” Republicans did very well on election night, not only winning the presidency but also many U.S. Senate and House seats they were predicted to lose. I put “G.O.P.” in quotes, however, because many of those candidates—Trump included—have starkly different policy views. Trump, after all, was once far more liberal, and even now some of his policy positions (protect Social Security, spend money on infrastructure) sound more like ideas from the Democratic Party’s playbook. Expect to see clashes between Trump and congressional Republicans in the year ahead.

2. Democrats win the national vote yet again. Clinton made history twice on election night. Not only was she first woman presidential nominee of a major political party, she won the popular vote—the first time that one party has won the most votes in six of the past seven presidential elections. Clinton still lost, of course, but it speaks to the fundamental electoral challenges that face the G.O.P. It may also renew efforts to reform the way we elect presidents.

3. A massive fail for political scientists, myself included. This has been written about elsewhere, but it’s worth reiterating just how wrong most (though not all) political scientists and pundits were about the election. Among my own mistakes: assuming that the polls were right, despite knowing survey firms are increasingly unable to reach voters; giving too much credit to “get out the vote” efforts as the way to win elections; assuming that nationalism and racial (white) identity no longer matter to voters; and neglecting well-established statistical models that had predicted an extremely narrow election, some even pointing to a Trump victory.

4. The need for checks on broad executive power. This last point is what keeps me up at night. As a candidate, Trump made boasts that sounded like what one would hear from a petty dictator: jailing Hillary Clinton, firing the speaker of the House, and insisting that he alone could solve people’s problems. We have no idea if Trump will follow through on any of these promises, but they clearly call into question Trump’s willingness to follow constitutional principles. I am highly skeptical that the congressional Republicans who freely called President Obama a “czar” and “dictator” will be similarly critical of an imperial presidency if it means crossing Trump. That’s bad news for American democracy.

5. An opportunity to reform. The presidential campaign, as divisive and nasty as it was, has given us an opportunity to see just how important it is to reform our political institutions. The parties’ nomination processes are clearly broken; it’s hard to remember the last time voters had such poor choices for president. Congress should look seriously at how to strengthen and improve itself—something it hasn’t done in decades—as well as how to curtail the multitude of powers it has given the executive branch over the years. Finally, if I had my druthers, I would require every member of Congress to visit at least one district or state that voted for the opposite party, talk to people who live there, and understand why they voted as they did. That may do more to reduce mindless party conflict in Congress than anything else—and, by extension, help our representative government better represent the people.

[Original URL: http://iprcua.com/2016/11/11/ipr-fellows-post-election-reflections/]

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Same Song, New Verse: Once Again, A President is Taken Down by His Own (Minority) Party

June 16, 2015

President Obama has frequently been stymied by Republicans in Congress. But his legislative agenda was halted last week not by the G.O.P. but by an unexpected group: members of his own party in the House of Representatives.

On Friday House Democrats voted nearly 3 to 1 against Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which gives aid to those who lose their jobs due to global competition. Democrats did this because a procedural rule required approval of the TAA for the passage of another program – Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) – which would make it easier for trade agreements to be enacted by Congress.

Obama wanted TPA since it would ease the approval of a new trade agreement (known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership) being negotiated with several Pacific nations. But Democrats in the House did not support the agreement. And though they didn’t have the votes to defeat TPA, they could – and did – have the votes to kill the TPA indirectly by rejecting TAA (which Republicans are less enamored with).

Though TAA’s defeat was unexpected, it’s hardly unusual for minority parties in the House of Representatives to rebuff their own president. To give a few examples from history:

* In December 1985, Ronald Reagan’s tax reform bill came up against angry members of his own party in the Democratic-led House; nearly all of them voted against the rule for considering the bill, forcing its delay.

* In October 1990, three-fifths of House Republicans (led by minority whip Newt Gingrich) voted against a tax-raising budget bill negotiated between George H. W. Bush and congressional Democrats, leading to a partial government shutdown.

* When Bill Clinton vetoed legislation in 1995 limiting the power of shareholders to sue for fraud, nearly half of minority party Democrats in the House voted to successfully override his veto.

* In September 2008, two-thirds of House Republicans voted against an emergency economic bailout measure pushed for by George W. Bush, defeating the bill.

The willingness of minority parties to vote against a same-party White House on major legislative initiatives underscores how relatively unimportant presidential politics and agendas are to the minority party in the U.S. House. As I argue in my recent book, the House minority party cares a great deal about becoming a majority party, and to a lesser extent about shaping public policy and protecting its procedural rights. What it cares about least is loyalty to the presidential party.

There are a number of reasons for this. One is that Presidents want to get things done, so they often negotiate and compromise first and foremost with the party that has agenda-setting power – the House majority party – even if that means developing legislation opposed by their own party in the chamber. Another reason is that the White House often takes its congressional party’s support for granted, which creates resentment among its members.

In the case of last week’s trade vote, both policy differences and personal pique appear to explain why Democrats went against the president. Obama, like past presidents of both parties, wants to develop favorable trade agreements with other countries, and majority Republicans do too. But progressives in Congress have become increasingly skeptical of free trade. Unions and liberal activists successfully convinced many House Democrats to not only oppose TPA but to vote strategically against TAA as well.

Some House Democrats also felt neglected by a White House that assumed their loyalty did not need careful cultivation. To these lawmakers, Obama’s speech before the Democratic Caucus and appearance at the annual congressional baseball game were little more than empty, last-minute gestures. Matt Fuller of Roll Call put it this way: “House Dems are the moody teenagers who were like, uh, just ‘cause you took us for ice cream doesn’t mean I forgive you for missing my bday.” Or as Keith Ellison (D-MN) tweeted, “Now Obama wants to talk?”

The TPA and TAA face an uncertain future. On the one hand, sometimes lawmakers need to vote against something before they can be convinced to vote for it. And in three of the four examples mentioned above, the president ultimately did get Congress to go along with (most of) what he wanted. On the other hand, the TAA lost badly on Friday, getting just 126 votes of the 215 that were needed for passage. Even Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ultimately came out against it.

If Obama really wants the TPA, he’s going to have to work a lot harder at getting his party in the House to stand with him. By most accounts, it will not be an easy task. Perhaps Obama has learned the hard way that, even in the majoritarian House of Representatives, minority parties matter.

[Original URL: http://iprcua.com/2015/06/16/ipr-fellow-matthew-green-on-obama-democrats-and-the-tpp/]

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Tracking a Decaying Norm: Growing Dissent on Votes for Speaker of the House.

January 7, 2015

Tuesday’s vote for Speaker of the House of Representatives was, on one level, anything but newsworthy: as expected, John Boehner of Ohio, the GOP’s official nominee, was chosen. But on another level it was quite unexpected, because a large number of majority party members refused to back their party’s nominee – more, in fact, than has been seen on the House floor in decades, reaching what scholars Jeff Jenkins and Charles Stewart called “the modern high water mark of majority party disloyalty.”

To provide some historical perspective, I put together the chart below, which shows the percent of votes from the House majority and minority parties that were cast against their party’s nominee on the chamber floor since 1991. (It includes “present” votes, which are often cast by the nominees themselves, and excludes lawmakers who did not vote. See Aaron Blake’s piece here for raw numbers going back to 1913.)

In 1997, Newt Gingrich faced what was then an unusual degree of open dissent from fellow Republicans, following ethical lapses and a disappointing election year. But the 4% of House Republicans who voted against Gingrich as speaker on the House floor was nothing compared to what happened on Tuesday, with over one in ten House Republicans opting to vote present or cast ballots for another candidate besides Boehner. (There were also, by my count, 15 different candidates receiving at least one vote for speaker, which I believe is also an historic high-water mark.)

Worth noting as well is the degree of opposition to party nominees that has recently emerged within the House minority party. That opposition peaked in 2011, following a devastating election for House Democrats, when 19 Democrats voted for other candidates or voted “present” rather than support Nancy Pelosi. But dissent has continued within Democratic ranks since then, albeit to a smaller degree than within the GOP.

There are doubtless several unique explanations for this dissent, including ideological and political divisions within the parties and unhappiness with Pelosi and Boehner as individual leaders. But it is nonetheless remarkable to see that what was once an inviolable norm in the House of Representatives – unanimous support for your party’s nominee for speaker on the chamber floor – has increasingly decayed. It did not cost Boehner the speakership this time; but if the trend continues, winning the speakership may no longer be a guarantee, even for those with the backing of a majority of the majority party.

[Original URL: http://iprcua.com/2015/01/07/matthew-green-on-growing-dissent-on-votes-for-speaker-of-the-house/]

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Was 2014 a 'Wave' Election?

November 17, 2014

The term “wave” has been bandied about by numerous journalists and pundits to describe the most recent midterm election. “Yes, this was a wave,” wrote Stuart Rothenberg immediately after the election. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post agreed. Most recently, Dana Milbank ridiculed House minority leader Nancy Pelosi for calling the election an “ebb tide.” “If Democrats lose three of the five undecided races,” he wrote, “they will have ebbed all the way back to the day Herbert Hoover won the presidency. To fail to see that as a wave, Pelosi must be far out to sea.”

There is no doubt that 2014 was a very good election year for Republicans. As Milbank rightly observed, the G.O.P. will come away with, historically speaking, a very large majority in the House of Representatives. The party also wrested control of 11 state legislative chambers from Democrats, and there will be more Republican state lawmakers after this year than at any time since 1920. Just over three-fifths of governors will be Republicans as well. In short, the Republican Party will have an extraordinary level of dominance in state and federal government.

But for those of us who remember the 1994 “wave” election, in which Republicans won a net 52 House seats, 8 Senate seats, and 10 governorships, this past election seems to be a fairly moderate party victory by comparison. This time around, the Republicans’ net partisan seat swing – that is, the net number of seats they will gain – will be at least 10 in the U.S. House and 8 in the U.S. Senate (plus 2 governorships, and a third – Alaska’s – going from the Democrats to an Independent). That’s not small, but is it of “wave” proportions?

One problem in determining whether we have seen an electoral wave is that the term “wave” is not firmly defined in political science. Most definitions have in common the idea that in a wave election, an unusual magnitude of seats or offices switches from one party to another. The nature of that magnitude is open to debate, however.

(Some, including Rothenberg and Blake, have called the 2014 election a “wave” in part because of the closeness by which some Democratic candidates won reelection. Nonetheless, it seems more reasonable – and less prone to arbitrary judgment calls – to define a wave based on which party actually won races, not the margin by which they did or did not do so.)

Doing a quick Google search, I came across the following definitions of an electoral wave in the House and/or Senate that was made before the elections. (I added one of my own as well.) I then noted whether the 2014 congressional election qualifies as a wave according to each definition.

The pattern is clear. By most definitions, the Senate elections constituted a Republican wave. The House elections, however, did not.

Why a wave in one chamber but not in the other? Perhaps candidate quality made a difference; some very strong Republicans ran for Democratic-held Senate seats this year. More obviously, Republicans had much more fertile electoral terrain in the Senate than the House. Seven Democratically-held Senate seats (7% of the chamber) were in states that had voted for Romney in 2012. By contrast, 10 Democratically-held House seats (only 2% of that chamber) were in districts that leaned G.O.P. (based on Charlie Cook’s Partisan Voting Index). Put another way, the 2010 House midterm election—an obvious electoral wave for the G.O.P. in the House—brought the party’s seat total in that chamber to nearly its high-water mark. There simply wasn’t much beach left for them to take this time around.

Thus, as tempting as it may be to provide extra drama and significance to the 2014 election by calling it a wave, it seems to be something of an exaggeration, at least as far as Congress is concerned. Saying otherwise obscures the role of candidate quality, district and state partisanship, and the previous midterm elections in shaping the outcome. Besides, given how dominant the G.O.P. will be next year – not only in Congress but in the states – it seems that the election was plenty significant without having to compare it to unusual oceanic disturbances.

Notes

¹ See e.g. Stuart Rothenberg; Lou Cannon, Real Clear Politics.

² See e.g. Daily Caller.

³ Chris Cillizza, Washington Post .

⁴ Stuart Rothenberg.

⁵ Stuart Rothenberg. Rothenberg rated 11 House seats as “pure toss-up” as of 10/29/14, nine D (AZ-1, AZ-2, CA-7, CA-52, IA-1, IL-10, MN-8, NY-1, and WV-3 ) and two R (FL-2, IA-3). Democrats lost five of those 11 (IA-1, IA-3, IL-10, NY-1, and WV-3) and won four others (AZ-1, CA-52, FL-2, and MN-8), with two races undecided (AZ-2 and CA-7). In early November he rated 4 Senate seats as “pure toss-up” (Georgia, Iowa, Kansas and North Carolina); Republican candidates won all four.

⁶ Chris Cillizza couples this with “substantial gains” electorally and unexpected candidates winning. According to CNN Exit Polls, the “most important issue facing the country today” in 2014 was the economy (45%), followed by health care (25%). In 2010, by contrast, the economy was a concern among 63%, with health care garnering 18%.

⁷ Since 1955, the average net partisan seat swing in the 6^th year of a presidential party is 27.8 House seats and 5.5 Senate seats. There have been six such elections (1955, 1966, 1974, 1986, 1988, and 2006).

⁸ Jacob Smith, Spes Publica defines this as winning control of Congress or reaching a level of seats higher than its mean for the decade; AND having a seat swing greater than average for the decade; AND seeing a seat swing higher than any the other party received in the past election.

⁹ Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

[Original URL: http://iprcua.com/2014/11/17/was-2014-a-wave-election/]

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What the...?" What Eric Cantor's Shocking Loss Tells Us About Congress and Elections

June 11, 2014

Eric Cantor can now claim the dubious distinction of being the first House majority leader in history to lose a primary election. What, if anything, does this unexpected event tell us?

1. Election outcomes are never a sure thing. Incumbents usually know this, which is a big reason why they raise huge amounts of money for their reelection—even those who seem safely ensconced in office. But that’s not always sufficient to guarantee victory, because…

2. Money doesn’t necessarily buy elections. As of May, Cantor had spent forty-one times more money than his primary opponent, Dave Brat. Even taking into account outside spending on Dave Brat’s campaign, Cantor still overwhelmed Brat financially. And he still lost. What matters is not what you spend but how you spend it—and even that doesn’t always do the trick.

3. The momentum in Congress for campaign finance reform could grow. Brat was apparently helped by an outside group, ForAmerica, a 501c group that does not have to disclose its donors to the public, and a Super PAC called We Deserve Better. This should set off alarm bells in the minds of incumbents from both parties, and may increase their incentive to try to rein in such groups in the future.

4. This doesn’t mean the tea party is powerful, but people will say it does anyway. The news media love a simple, strong message, and it’s an easy one to take away from this election upset. But consider: the “Tea Party” is not a single entity, but a collection of both national and local groups of varying strength, influence, and policy goals; Brat had been ignored by national conservative groups like FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots; and conservative primary candidates have lost in a number of other congressional races this cycle.

What appears to have happened is that, in Cantor’s district, conservative activists (who may or may not call themselves “tea partiers”) were well organized and had developed a strong following. That’s important, but hardly a sign of anything approaching a national trend.

5. Immigration reform is almost certainly dead in this Congress. As my graduate student mentor, David Mayhew, once observed, lawmakers believe that elections carry a message—and since Brat campaigned heavily against immigration reform, other Republicans will now consider the issue politically radioactive.

6. Watch for big leadership races in the House GOP. Cantor was the heir apparent to Speaker Boehner. Now his leadership spot will be open, and there are a number of Republicans eager to fill that vacancy. And there could be more contested leadership races if Boehner decides to step down (as has often been rumored).

[Original URL: http://iprcua.com/2014/06/11/what-the-what-eric-cantors-shocking-loss-tells-us-about-congress-and-elections/]

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Reflections on Boehner as Speaker

October 9, 2013

In an earlier post I was fairly critical of the leadership of the House Republican Conference and Speaker John Boehner in particular. Now that we've entered the government shutdown's middle game, I've had more time for reflection about Boehner, how he compares with some of his predecessors, and what our current politics tells about speaker leadership more generally. Four thoughts:

1. Speakers—including Boehner—do care about more than their congressional party’s (policy) preferences. As I have argued elsewhere, for decades speakers have been willing to exercise legislative leadership on behalf of bills and initiatives that were not necessarily supported by their party in the House. Sometimes they have tried to pursue legislation that benefits the House as a whole, for instance; other times, they have shown a willingness to act on behalf of the institutional presidency, even if the president is of the opposite party. (Randall Strahan makes a somewhat similar argument in his outstanding book on speakers.)

Boehner is no different. Yes, he has had to repeatedly back down on proposals when faced with opposition by a majority (or at least a vocal minority) of his party. And the government shutdown—which Boehner seems to support only because his outspoken partisans demand it—is imposing more harm than good on the country, the House, and perhaps the institutional presidency. On the other hand, Boehner has shown a willingness to challenge his party on more than one occasion.

Take for instance his refusal to follow the so-called “Hastert Rule” several times this year (i.e. passing bills over the voting opposition of a majority of the majority party)—usually on bills important to the reputation of his party, if not the chamber. More recently, the speaker has asserted that he would not let the federal treasury default even if it meant breaking the Hastert Rule again. This sense of broader national responsibility is something that all speakers possess, albeit to varying degrees.

Consider also Boehner’s embrace of a more open legislative process when he became speaker in 2011. The proposal was met with no small degree of resistance from members of the G.O.P. Conference who preferred to get things done speedily and with minimal Democratic input. Granted, the House is not quite as open a place as many hoped for (me included). But I think Boehner truly believes that fewer restrictive rules improve the chamber and the policy process—an attitude that does not comport neatly with the idea that speakers act solely as agents of their party.

2. Nonetheless, powerful forces make it hard for speakers to think past narrow party goals. In my study of the speakership, I noted a declining frequency over time of speakers undertaking significant acts of leadership that were unrelated, or in opposition to, congressional party preferences. We are seeing some of the reasons for this right now: lawmakers have become more ideological; team-play has become the mode of conduct within Congress; partisan media has enforced partisan behavior; and campaign finance deregulation has empowered conservative groups at the expense of the political parties.

In addition, commentators and the press do little to discourage this hyper-emphasis on party. Boehner got nowhere near enough credit, in my opinion, for his initial efforts to open up House proceedings. And describing violations of the Hastert Rule as “huge political defeats” hardly encourages such behavior in the future.

Given these powerful pressures to conform to absolute partisanship, it’s actually quite remarkable that Boehner has been able to exert as much leadership against his party as he has.

3. Personal authority matters. As I (and many others) have already noted, Boehner lacks the kinds of carrots and sticks other speakers have possessed that could be used to build floor majorities within his party. But also key to effective congressional leadership is the ability to develop strong personal authority. Congressional leaders do not govern solely through transactional politics; they also engender fear, loyalty, respect, or some combination thereof. They may develop their authority by offering benefits or threatening punishments, to be sure; but they also do it through charisma, through their governing style, and through sheer force of personality.

Who wants to follow a leader whom they do not respect and/or fear—or even worse, as Noah Bierman of the Boston Globe recently suggested, they pity? My worry is that Boehner’s style of leadership is simply too relaxed and easy-going, and would-be rebels in his party have taken advantage of it to assert their independence, exacerbating the factional divisions that exist in the G.O.P. (One astute observer of Congress even suggested to me that Boehner’s impetus to be a more assertive speaker diminished after his tough aide, Barry Jackson, left the Hill early this year.)

Contrast Boehner with Nancy Pelosi. Before Democrats won the House in 2006, Pelosi had few means of punishing Democrats who were disloyal because her party was in the minority. Yet through a combination of personal approbation and the symbolic, selective distribution of the few rewards and punishments she did control, Pelosi had established considerable authority and personal loyalty by the time she became the first woman speaker in history. In a telling quote (which I also mention in this paper I wrote about the importance of loyalty to Pelosi’s leadership), Pelosi once declared that “anybody’s who’s ever dealt with me knows not to mess with me.” Can we imagine Boehner ever making a similar boast?

4. A speaker is only as good as his or her leadership team. And Boehner’s team is not very good. Eric Cantor, the majority leader, may be a more loyal soldier than I previously suggested, but his past ambitions for the speakership make me wonder if he is entirely trusted by Boehner. And I remain dumbfounded that Kevin McCarthy, the Republican whip, has repeatedly failed to get the information (and votes) that are essential for any successful leadership operation. One Republican recently told a reporter that his party’s leaders “got surprised a little bit by” the August push for Congress to defund Obamacare—something that a better leadership information network would have almost certainly detected.

Other speakers have been similarly hobbled by incompetence or infighting within their leadership team. Take, for instance, the leadership of Speaker Jim Wright (1987-89). In his definitive congressional history of the period, The Ambition and The Power, John Barry notes that Wright worried that his majority whip Tony Coelho was scheming for power and could not be entirely trusted. Partly as a result, Wright lost a key budget vote on the House floor, and the turmoil that followed exacerbated partisan tensions and weakened Wright’s support among Democrats.

In short, Boehner appears to be a well-meaning speaker whose instinct is to do right by his party, his chamber, and the country. But without a stronger leadership style, better leadership team, and a way to overcome the pressures to be purely partisan, it seems unlikely Boehner will be able to follow through.

[Original URL: http://iprcua.com/2013/10/09/reflections-on-boehner-as-speaker/

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The Congressional Power Vacuum

September 30, 2013

As of this writing, it appears almost inevitable that we will see a shutdown of the federal government because Congress has failed to enact any appropriations bills for the next fiscal year. Having worked in Congress during the ’95-’96 government closures, I can tell you: a shutdown is not good. National parks and museums close. Food safety inspections may be delayed. Economic growth may be endangered. And even if a shutdown does not happen, we have already suffered: there is considerable uncertainty and turmoil in the economic markets and thousands of government workers have had to waste time preparing contingency plans for it.

How did we get to this point? Plenty of journalists, commentators, and scholars have weighed in on the politics of the moment. To my mind, the impending shutdown underscores the tremendous importance of effective political leadership in our political institutions. There is, in particular, a major power vacuum in the House of Representatives right now—a power vacuum that has prevented any reasonable solution to the ideological and partisan conflicts that threaten to immobilize our national government.

It’s been clear for months that the House of Representatives is in shambles. The House has passed only four appropriations bills and none have been signed into law. Immigration reform passed the Senate but is withering in the House. The House initially defeated the must-pass (and normally uncontroversial) farm bill. Meanwhile, the chamber has voted over 40 times to repeal or delay all or parts of Obama’s health care initiative, despite there being zero chance of either Senate or the president going along with that scheme. Today’s House is truly the “lower” chamber of Congress.

There are strong outside forces that explain the House’s dysfunction. Obama and Senate Democrats are naturally in opposition to the Republican House. House Republicans are themselves divided between more legislatively-minded lawmakers and a group of strong conservatives who insist on a more confrontational and ideologically-pure approach to politics. The latter group draws support from outside groups like Heritage Action that threaten to “primary” any Republican deemed too “squishy.” Boehner has been opposed by over 40 Republicans, most of them conservatives, on at least three major floor votes since January. In addition, House leaders do not have the kinds of tools at their disposal to reign in their party rebels, like earmarks—and even if they did, many House conservatives actually gain in stature with voters when they are seen as defiant (as Greg Koger also notes).

But these difficult political challenges cannot shield the House Republican Party’s leaders from blame. The sad fact is that their leadership, especially that of Speaker John Boehner, has been weak, contradictory, and—quite frankly—inept.

Take Kevin McCarthy, the G.O.P. whip. Either McCarthy is not being asked to count votes on bills or he doesn’t know how to count properly. The result is embarrassing losses on the floor (most notably, the farm bill in June) and measures that are then proposed, but then pulled from consideration because they lack enough support (such as the leadership’s plan in mid-September to decouple Obamacare defunding from the continuing resolution that would have funded the government).

Eric Cantor is little better. Though he claims to be working with the rest of the leadership team, his ambition for the speakership is blatantly transparent. He may well be secretly aligning himself with G.O.P. conservatives, exacerbating party divisions and making Boehner’s job all the more difficult (see also Ryan Lizza’s article on Cantor for more on this). He even voted against Boehner on a major tax bill on New Year’s Day (as did Kevin McCarthy).

And what of the speaker himself? According to a story by Paul Kane in the Washington Post, Boehner’s leadership style is thoroughly hands-off. He has “sworn off intimidation and punishment,” writes Kane, and “never—ever—is there a sense of real anger from” the Ohioan. If this is true, it should come as little surprise that the so-called “purge” of four Republicans in January for insubordination hasn’t worked as intended in maintaining party discipline.

In addition, Boehner appears unable to communicate well with rank-and-file lawmakers, particularly (though not solely) conservatives. When the speaker met secretly with President Obama in 2011 to discuss a potential budget deal, it caught House Republicans by surprise and further eroded their trust in him. Trust, in fact, is absolutely vital for any leader in Congress seeking to establish authority and influence: legislators have to believe their leader has their interests at heart and will consult them on major decisions.

It may be instructive to contrast Boehner with the last speaker whose party controlled neither the Senate nor the White House: Tip O’Neill. After Reagan was elected in 1980 and Democrats lost the Senate the same year, O’Neill realized that he was both the head of the opposition and the leader of the House. Accordingly, he established himself as a likeable, well-spoken public figure who articulated the Democratic agenda while also criticizing President Reagan. The speaker also understood that respect for the institution of the presidency, and the need for the government to function, were vital roles of every speaker. And O’Neill did all this while remaining a true-blue liberal and squelching the occasional rebellion within his ranks (albeit none as big and stubborn as what Boehner faces).

Maybe Boehner has a long-term game plan. If he lets the government come close to closing, or even close briefly, he allows his conservatives to proclaim that they fought the good fight. The speaker then gets Republicans behind a compromise spending bill that has minor tweaks to Obamacare, ending the standoff. But the risk of this strategy is that it makes his party look extremist, frays American’s faith in their democratic institutions, and hurts the national economy – without really placating true-blue conservatives.

Personally, I believe the risks of a shutdown far outweigh the potential political benefits, and Boehner should take drastic action within his party to avoid one. Specifically, he ought to push for a cleaner spending bill in the House and threaten to resign if conservative Republicans don’t like it. I honestly don’t think it is in Boehner’s DNA to act as forcefully as that. But the speaker should at least keep this mind: if his party really called his bluff and made him quit (or, more likely, refused to nominate him again as speaker in the next congress), Boehner would finally be free from the worst job in Washington right now. And he’d have a lot more time for golf.

[Original URL: http://iprcua.com/2013/09/30/the-congressional-power-vacuum/]

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Did Republicans Draw Themselves a House Majority?

Matthew Green

There are reports that the House Democratic Party may have garnered more votes in its races this year than did the G.O.P. It’s too early to say if this is true, since some votes are still being counted. But if so, it marks a very rare occurrence in recent history.

Only once since 1962 has a party gotten a majority of the two-party vote in House races, yet failed to win a majority of House seats. (It happened to Democrats in 1996.) I’ve posted some of this data on The Monkey Cage blog. Below is a different chart that shows this discrepancy over time. (Data from the House Clerk’s office.)

Note that the party garnering a majority of the vote almost always gets an extra boost in the number of House seats it wins. (1994 and 2006 were the exceptions.) In fact, this boost was much bigger before 1994, much to the (minority) Republicans’ chagrin. But starting that year, the boost has been considerably smaller.

Why might the Republicans have managed to repeat their 1996 feat in this election? The most popular argument so far is that partisan redistricting is to blame. The idea is that Republicans effectively “drew” themselves a majority with a clever rejiggering of House district lines.

I’m hesitant to jump to that conclusion just yet. After all, both political parties used gerrymandering to skew results in their favor in this election cycle, not just the G.O.P. And if redistricting did matter, I suspect it was only partially responsible. A party that wants to win lots of House seats has an incentive to draw many districts that only narrowly favor its candidates. (To take an extreme example, if a party could draw all House districts so that they went 51%-49% for its candidates, the party would get 51% of the national vote but win 100% of House seats.) However, to get less than a majority of the popular vote yet still win a majority of House seats, the party would also need some districts that lopsidedly favor its opponents or that it doesn’t bother to challenge at all. In such districts, the other party’s votes are basically “wasted.” (Some majority-minority districts might fit the bill, especially if they saw larger-than-usual turnout among African-American voters.) Districts like this do exist, but not always or necessarily because a political party is able to draw them that way.

Regardless of the cause, what’s clear is that how we elect House members affects party balance in the chamber. Most countries use proportional representation. But our single-district method gave Democrats a sizeable advantage before 1994. And in 1996—and maybe this year too—it provided the G.O.P. the biggest possible advantage of all: control of the House of Representatives.

[Original URL: http://iprcua.com/2012/11/12/661/]

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Five Preliminary Thoughts About the 2012 Election

November 7, 2012

The Democrats’ 40-year old strategy is finally paying off. Since the 1970s, the Democratic Party has emphasized pluralism and diversity, trying to bring minorities and other groups into its electoral coalition. (John Gerring actually traces this “universalism” back further, to 1952.) That strategy often failed in presidential elections because the country’s many white (male) voters turned away from the Party. But now it has worked twice in a row, and it is Republicans who have cause for concern. Demographic trends are pointing towards an enlargement of the Democratic coalition and shrinking of the Republicans’ base (as my colleague John White has noted.)

Of course, members of that coalition may not always turn out to vote, as happened in 2010. But unless the Grand Old Party reaches out to more Latinos, blacks, women, and youth—and soon—this may increasingly become Barack Obama’s America.

Obama’s coattails were unusually short. Obama won reelection, but by an extremely narrow margin in the popular vote. Not since 1944 has a president been reelected by a smaller vote margin than his previous victory (and that was a president who was on his fourth election win). This may help explain why the Democrats did so dismally in House races this year, winning no more than a handful of seats. Though Senate Democrats did somewhat better, they were arguably saved by two G.O.P. candidates who made controversial comments about rape and doomed their chances of claiming what had been winnable seats.

Obama must beware of second-term missteps and hubris. George W. Bush brashly declared in 2004 that his reelection gave him “political capital” to reform Social Security, which it did not. Bill Clinton made foolish mistakes that threatened to force his removal from office. A second-term Ronald Reagan let his White House conduct illegal foreign policy operations. Nixon…well, you get the idea. The point is this: second term presidents tend to get lackadaisical, arrogant, and/or reckless. Please remember, President Obama: victory can be curse as much as a blessing.

Campaign spending is likely to continue to skyrocket. An estimated $8 billion dollars was spent on the presidential, House, and Senate campaigns this cycle, much of it by conservative “super-PACs” hoping to beat Obama and retake the Senate from Democrats. Given the results, a good case could be made that that money was largely wasted. But people give money out of passion, not logic. Until changes in federal law or how current law is interpreted, super-PACs will remain an attractive vehicle for anonymous donations to political causes. And there are signs that Crossroads GPS, the largest of these groups, plans to keep right on running ads even after the election—this time on issues facing Congress, like taxes and spending.

Nate Silver 1, annoying pundits 0. Kudos to Nate Silver for getting the election results correct. More importantly, Silver is to be lauded for using an empirically-based, theoretically-driven, and largely (though not fully) disclosed method for predicting the outcome. Ditto goes for other statisticians and political scientists who did the same, whether they got the prediction “right” or not.

Conversely, big boos for the talking heads that dismissed Silver out of hand, relying on ad hominem attacks or declaring that he was just “making it up.” (Ezra Klein provided an excellent summary of these criticisms.) Michael Gerson was one of the few critics who at least raised important questions about what we lose conceptually by emphasizing statistics over ideas, beliefs, and the human element of campaigns. But Bronx cheers for the rest. As John Sides at The Monkey Cage put it, this was truly the Moneyball election.

[Original URL: http://iprcua.com/2012/11/07/five-preliminary-thoughts-about-the-2012-election-matthew-green/]

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The Catholic Vote Revisited

October 4, 2012

I was recently invited to participate in a panel discussion at Catholic University on the subject of the Catholic vote in the United States. Each panelist had their own take on the subject, and a good summary of each of our comments can be found here. Nonetheless, I thought it might be useful to revisit four points I offered at the panel, along with a few slides I used during the talk to illustrate those points. To wit:

1. There is no “Catholic vote.” By that, I mean that Catholics do not constitute a clear, distinctive, and unified “bloc” of voters who cast their ballots reliably for one party or candidate over the other. As can be seen in the chart below, while Catholics were once reliably Democratic in presidential elections, by the late 1970s they were more or less tracking how the public at large votes. They remain so today.

2. Catholic voters matter. Some might argue that, because Catholics vote more or less in line with the public at large, their particular views, beliefs, or issues are irrelevant—they can be reached with the same bread-and-butter issues as the average American citizen. Maybe so. But American Catholics also make up a huge proportion—one quarter—of the electorate, and precisely because they are so closely divided between the two parties they appear to be a “gettable” group for either party. Not all Catholics may be reachable by using the same appeals, of course; conservatives, liberals, moderates, Latinos, and others may each have distinctive concerns and preferences. Nonetheless, only the most foolish candidate for the White House would ignore them. It is no accident that each party in this election has emphasized certain issues and themes—care for the poor, religious freedom—that are clearly designed to appeal to Catholics.

3. Don’t believe every poll you see. In mid-September, Pew released a poll that showed Obama way ahead among Catholic voters, 54%-39%. This garnered some headlines, but the survey was an outlier: no other major poll had shown Obama doing so well among American Catholics. Sure enough, the survey had a relatively small sample size—only about 500 Catholics—meaning its margin of error was quite large. If Pew had repeated their survey with the same sample size many times, 95% of those surveys would have generated numbers for Obama ranging from as low as 50% to as high as 58%. Ugh.

4. The election will be close. I disagree with my fellow panelist John White (and most folks, frankly) who see an Obama victory highly likely at this point. True, the odds aren’t looking good for Romney at the moment. But examining just the preferences of Catholic voters, the margin between Obama and Romney support is not especially wide. Gallup’s weekly survey of 9,000 voters (including 2,000 Catholics), which is more reliable than Pew’s and is averaged over a three week period (to smooth out any odd data from individual surveys), shows how the two candidates are doing among self-identified Catholic voters:

Yes, Obama is currently in the lead among Catholics…but by 5 points as of the end of September, a difference which lies only just outside the margin of error. (The survey also counts only registered voters, not likely voters, for whom the margin of difference is likely to be much smaller.) And note that support for Obama has sometimes been below, or effectively tied with, support for Romney. As far as Catholic voters are concerned, this race is hardly over.

[Original URL: http://iprcua.com/2012/10/04/the-catholic-vote-revisited/]