Posted on 01/02/2014 4:39:45 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
President Obama and Democrats may not be able to rely on the economic recovery to bolster their chances in November’s midterm elections.
Even though there has been a raft of positive economic news recently, experts in key battleground states caution that other issues, notably ObamaCare, could loom even larger than the economy.
They also add that congressional races, whether for the House or Senate, can swing as easily on local priorities as on broader questions of the national economy. And in some cases, the local economic story is different from the emerging national trend.
For the GOP to wrest control of the Senate, the party needs to pick up six seats.
In Arkansas, where Republicans fancy their chances of ousting incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, the unemployment rate has edged up over the past 12 months and, at 7.5 percent, is now above the national average.
In Louisiana, where Sen. Mary Landrieu is the Democrat under threat, unemployment has also ticked up year-on-year — but only to 6.3 percent, a figure that is relatively healthy, at least in comparison to the country at large.
A mirror image of that situation is found in North Carolina, a key battleground where the GOP is seeking to topple Sen. Kay Hagan (D). Unemployment has dropped more precipitously in the Tar Heel State than anywhere else in the country, falling a full two percentage points between November 2012 and November 2013. Yet it still remains high, at 7.4 percent.
“I think there is a general sense that the state could be doing better, but I’m not sure the U.S. Senate race is going to be a referendum on the state economy,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. “Healthcare will be huge and the real question for me is how much does the election end up being a referendum on each party’s brand?”
Democrats would of course hope that a rising economy nationally would help their brand. The national unemployment rate is now 7.0 percent which, a significant decrease from 7.8 percent a year ago. At the same time, unemployment remains elevated in historical terms, and much of the drop in the unemployment rate has come from people leaving the workforce.
Still, in late December, the official estimate of economic growth in the third quarter of 2013 was revised upwards, to an annualized rate of 4.1 percent.
Meanwhile, the stock market has been booming. On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the more broad-based S&P 500 both ended the year at all-time highs.
If the markets have another boom year in 2014 — even if the S&P cannot replicate its 29 percent advance in 2013 — it will surely bolster the sense of economic wellbeing among many voters.
Some experts do believe Democrats could benefit as a result, but they caution that robust economic growth during 2014 is by no means a given.
Ray Fair, an economics professor at Yale University, is best known in political circles for a complex statistical model that has predicted the outcome of presidential and congressional elections with considerable (though not flawless) accuracy.
“The basic idea is that if the economy is okay — reasonably good but not terrific — then it looks like a close election. If the economy is really good, it’s going to favor the incumbent party in the White House,” he said.
But, Fair added, it will be Republicans who will be favored come Election Day if the economy “tanks.”
There may not appear to be much chance of that happening right now, but Democrats know they have seen false dawns before — notably when the Obama administration heralded the summer of 2010 as “recovery summer.”
In any event, skeptics argue that the ways in which economic debates play out at a state level are too tangled to conform to any national model.
Take Louisiana, for example. There, Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal has been touting the state’s relative economic success, creating a complication for the GOP’s most likely opponent against Landrieu, Rep. Bill Cassidy, if he seeks to make malaise a centerpiece of his campaign.
“The economy here in Louisiana is coming back pretty strong right now,” said Robert Mann, director of the Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs at Louisiana State University. “Unemployment took a little bit of an uptick but there is a sense that we’re getting a boost from the oil and gas sector improvement. I think that probably hurts Cassidy’s ability to attack Landrieu on the economy.”
Those kinds of considerations can cut both ways. In North Carolina, state House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) is widely favored to become the GOP nominee against Hagan. While Democrats argue that this provides an opening for attacking the legislature’s more unpopular actions, conservatives insist Tillis and the state’s GOP governor, Pat McCrory, could both claim credit for the falling unemployment rate.
“Having been in charge of the Republican House, with its platform of lowering corporate and personal tax rates, [Tillis] can say their polices worked,” said Theresa Kostrzewa, a GOP lobbyist in the state. “Both McCrory and the Republicans in the House put themselves on the line to help the economy. At this point, it looks like North Carolina has finally turned the corner.”
Kostrzewa insists that, for all the talk about the economy, another national issue will likely decide the election in the Tar Heel state.
“If the storm around ObamaCare is still a hurricane-strength storm next November, then it’s over,” she said. “In order for [Hagan] to win, it’s going to take ObamaCare being a much lower-level storm.”
The Democrats CAN count of voter fraud
run by the DO”J” again,
overseen by a whoring, docile, drunk, EXEMPT,
hated Congress to maximize that voter fraud.
Where is this emerging great economic trend?
“overseen by a whoring, docile, drunk, EXEMPT,
hated Congress to maximize that voter fraud.”
I was talking to an ordinary, average retired woman yesterday. I would call her a fairly low information voter. The subject of Obamacare came up. She suddenly got very upset and yelled, “The damned Congress made themselves EXEMPT! It’s good enough for us peasants but not good enough for their royal asses!”
If she’s the average voter out there, Dems are in for a rough time.
If amnesty passes, and it will, they can count on millions of illegal aliens to vote rat.
No need to worry about the economy if you are a democrat....the media will talk it up 4 months before the election....every night we will hear how robust and growing the ecomony is and how evil mean spirited republicans will kill the economy because those anarchists tea party will be running things...if they get in power...
All based on the assumption that Obama care is just another issue, like any other, and that it will be out of mind when the elections roll around. DC is a damned bubble of ignorance…...
No doubt the media will do just that. But the citizens know that their neighbor is out of work and if they, too, are unemployed they know that there is very little prospect of them getting a job.
As we well know, a swing in just a few percentage points— (and it would seem to me that 7 percent unemployment represents a significant number of percentage points—can swing an election.
Can you imagine the media calling this dog crap a recovery in the 80s when Reagan actually recovered the economy? This is the slowest so-called “recovery” in American history. Reagan turned around a very much worse situation in about 3 years!!!!! But it was never good enough.
I believe there is no recovery and never was. I think things are getting worse.
No need to worry about the economy if you are a democrat....the media will talk it up 4 months before the election....every night we will hear how robust and growing the ecomony is and how evil mean spirited republicans will kill the economy because those anarchists tea party will be running things...if they get in power...
You are quite right, and don’t forget that the elections are cooked too.
a Fake Phony Potemkin Village Recovery to boot
What happened to green shoots?
The GOP will save the ‘Rats, their friends, like they always do.
The trend I’ve looked at is pretty much an exact parallel to the runup of the great 1929 stock market crash.
When this one goes down it will be much worse.
During the depression the money which no one had was at least worth something, when this one goes down it will be like the German inflation before the war where money will be of no value. In fact it has no value now except it is still accepted for goods.
Not just the monetary aspect will be worse.
People these days just don’t know how to feed themselves without the government and the supermarket.
Feeding yourself requires prior planning.
Most do not think beyond dinner tonight.
When people’s discretionary income is wiped out by zerocare premium increases, the economy will tank.
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