Posted on 11/03/2010 4:57:45 PM PDT by mathprof
Republicans won a huge victory in the House, and -- as Nate Silver explained at 4:15 AM, a time stamp that makes me only slightly skeptical of his conclusion -- they won more seats than you'd expect given their share of the overall vote. This is the third straight "wave" election in the House, and one might think the pattern could recur for a while, with control shifting back and forth. I doubt it. Get used to Republican control of the House of Representatives. It's going to stay that way for a long time.
Why are Republicans in strong position to hold the House? Three reasons:
1. Natural geography. Even if House districts were drawn up with no partisan tilt in mind, Republicans would have a natural advantage. Democrats are frequently clustered together in overwhelmingly Democratic districts, creating ultra-safe seats that waste votes. There are fewer districts that are equally concentrated with Republican voters.
Thus Republicans can win the House even if they don't have more voters who support them. The median House district is about 3 percentage points more Republican than the nation as a whole. In order to hold the House, Democrats need to control a lot of Republican areas, some of them extremely Republican areas. The GOP is much less dependent on holding onto seats in unfriendly territory.
2. Redistricting. If that's not a problem enough for Democrats, it's about to get a lot worse. Republicans had their wave election at a very convenient time, putting themselves in position to control numerous state legislatures and thus control the next round of redistricting, which will last a decade. Partisan gerrymandering can be an extremely powerful tool, and combined with the natural geographic gerrymander, can give Republicans an overwhelming advantage, if not quite an absolute lock.
3. Timing. The best way to have a wave election is to have the other party control the presidency during a bad economy or some kind of major scandal. Democratic waves in 2006 or 2008 owed a great deal to the non-existent income growth during the Bush years. The GOP wave owed a great deal to the economic crisis. But in 2012, Democrats will still have the White House, so they won't benefit from an anti-incumbent wave. (They may pick up some seats due to sporadic voters re-engaging.) The best hope of a big wave would come from a deep and extended economic crisis that gives Republicans control of government in 2012, continues through 2014 and paves the way for a midterm backlash. But that's not exactly a positive scenario.
As long as Republicans control the House, the prospects for progressive or even good-government technocratic legislation (to reduce the deficit or reform the tax code, say) are probably nil. So enjoy the legislative triumphs of Obama's first two years, because that's going to be it for a while.
I thought it was the Republicans who wanted this?
Never say never.
Does no one remember 0bama said Republicans usually do what they’re told?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/10/22/obama_republicans_do_what_theyre_told.html
4. Looking at the state level races, the Republicans did even better, decimating the field of Democrats. Republicans simply have more players on the field now, at every level. Republicans will gain more experience and will field better candidates for the next national races.
nothing like starting with arrogance on day one. some lessons are never learned
Yahbut, is it conservative or is it RINO?
Yayyy, 40 more years of republican control.....oh wait....
Isn't it wonderful?
I was going to take a few days off after the pessimistic reaction last night but decided why should I. I want to celebrate the night and see no reason not to. I got most of what I wanted.
Republican House. Control of legislatures and Governor mansions just in time for re-districting. McConnell can't screw up handling a majority because he doesn't have one. Added some more stalwart conservatives to the Senate. Lost a few I'd have liked to join them but Marco, Toomey, Johnson, Paul and Lee are a nice haul. Then I got some nice bonuses. State income tax failed here in Wa. Those activist judges went down. And something entirely unexpected by me, California voted to have a "non partisan" re-districting. Brown winning now means nothing and maybe this might produce a few more GOP districts by accident.
Absolutely correct! That is why the victory yesterday was so important for conservatives in Maine. Will we get rid of Snowe in years, probably not. However, we conservatives will have a large group of candidates in 2 years, 4 years, and beyond to mount credible challenges against Rhinos and Rats.
Remember Bush’s 50 year majority? Yeah, unless we stick by principle the Republican Party is not a lock to hold anything.
One silver lining about having some of the old time Dem leftists in the Senate is they can take the blame for ‘old establishment Dem hacks’ tag to be applied in the future.
I don't buy electoral volatility or that 2008 was also a wave election. 2006 went to the Dems mainly because of an electorate disillusioned over the Iraq war. Throw on top of that in 2008 an economy diving into recession and the country decided to give the Dems a try. Besides, Barry talked like a Clintonite, DLC sorta Democrat. This wave formed when Obamareidpelosi tried doing things they had no mandate to do. This election just brought the country back to the center-right majority where it's been for over 40 years.
It was Jonathan Chait who counseled the Democrats to commit political suicide by voting for Obamacare.
The Democrats need friends like him they need enemies. I hope they keep on taking his “advice.”
Heh
“Democrats are frequently clustered together in overwhelmingly Democratic districts, creating ultra-safe seats that waste votes.”
Gosh, if only we could be like China, we could FORCE those recalcitrant liberals to leave the big cities and live in the exurbs, thus creating parity.
Oh wait, if we were like China, we wouldn’t have elections anyway!
And this is from a liberal source. I might add that the split congress makes it very difficult for Obama to blame a Republican congress as Clinton did in 1995.
Nice post! I actually go to China a lot. It is a weird country-—a strange mixture of “free enterprise” and what you mention. Until recently, I was thinking that for sure they’d soon have more freedom than we do if 0bama and company continued having unfettered power (”net neutrality”, “fairness doctrine”...). On top of that, you can bet that China would never have “cap and trade”, but we seemed doomed to it.
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