Long Term Congressional Control?
Maragaret Thatcher, Yitzhak Shamir and Ronald Reagan freed a genie, the old joke went, and he offered them each a wish. “Peace in Northern Island,” requested the Iron Lady. “Wow, that’s tough,” the genie said. “OK, you’ll have it in 10 years.” “Peace with the Arabs,” Shamir said. “Wow, really tough. OK, in 25 years.” “I want Republican control of the House of Representatives,” the Gipper finally said. “I’m powerful,” the genie said. “But I’m not that powerful.” The joke was wrong, of course. 14 years after the Dems’ 26-year hold on the Senate ended, their 40-year hold on the House came to an end too. It was 1994, the year the genie probably realized that Shamir’s request was the impossible one. But that’s a story for another day. It’s hard to predict, especially the future. In a two-party system the parties naturally realign. But if the parties realign towards roughly equal strength in presidential elections, the Repubs have a long term structural edge in both houses of Congress, because the Democrats’ strength is more locally concentrated. In George W Bush’s razor-thin victories, he won 30 and 31 states. Republicans have a natural advantage in Senate elections, relative to presidential elections, because Repubs do better in the small states. There will be harder years (like 2016) and easier years (like 2018) but with about 30 red-of-center states, the general trend should be towards a Republican Senate majority. In the House, as Michael Barone keeps pointing out, the big Republican advantage is also Democratic clustering. If half the country votes Republican, and many more Dem win are by big landslides, Repubs will take more districts. Repubs have two added advantages: lower Dem turnout in midterms, and (under current circumstances) control of more gerrymandering processes. It wasn’t like this in the days when all politics were local. But those days are not here right now. Blues no longer represent red districts because today’s Congressmen and women increasingly vote with their parties almost all the time. Repubs have a significant structural edge in Congress if the following are true:
Parties align to the point where they each have a roughly 50% chance of winning presidential elections.
Dems win far more landslide elections than Republicans do, and they win most of the big states.
Democratic voters have a bigger dropoff between presidential and midterm elections.
Republicans gain at least as much from gerrymandering as Democrats do.
The number of people who vote for a Republican president but a Democratic representative or Senator is not much greater than the reverse.
2, 3 and 4 are likely to be true for a long time. So the Dems have 3 choices:
Grow their coalition to well above 50% in presidential elections. Many Dems and their cheerleaders thought they had this covered, but they don’t.
De-nationalize Congressional elections, encouraging Red Dems to frequently vote against their blue state colleagues. A slight twist on this: Get the parties’ Congressional center of gravity to be the right of the Presidential elections’ center of gravity. Instead of individual Dems fighting party leadership, have party leadership fight the White House.
Accept a very unfavorable playing field in Congressional elections.
We’ll probably have a Democratic Senate between the 2016 and 2018 elections. But we may not see many more until there’s a structural change.
