"The factor that poses the greater challenge for Democrats is that the President will almost certainly be running for re-election."
Political Scientist Peter Lemieux
Twenty three senate Republicans are up for election.
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| Fox website today |
Donald Trump doesn't appear to be in trouble with Republicans. For now, Fox News and Talk Radio have Trump's back. Trump partisans hear a clear, strident message:
Democratic sore losers.
Witch hunt.
Collusion? Of course, for a good cause!
No quid pro quo.
What about Biden?
And Hillary?
And Obama
In this media context where Trump voters hear a unified message of Trump's innocence and victimhood, conviction in the Senate is nearly impossible.
A more plausible question is whether a 2020 election would allow Democrats to get the 4 extra seats necessary to gain a majority--or 3 plus the Vice President if they win the White House. They are in Maine, Colorado, North Carolina, and Arizona, states that were nearly dead-even in the 2016 presidential race, and tougher races in Montana, Texas, and Iowa. A small percentage point move could be dispositive.
Peter Lemieux is a numbers-oriented political scientist in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a college classmate; the founder and principal at Cyways, an internet consultancy; a lecturer at MIT (where he got his Ph.D.) He shares some of his political insights at his blog http://www.politicsbythenumbers.org He writes that Donald Trump will likely have coattails.
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| Lemieux |
And the economy? I consider it very fragile and possibly headed to recession, but likely not in time to rescue Democrats. We will see.
Guest Post by Peter Lemieux
I don't expect the Senate to convict Trump, but I would like to see a number of the Republican Senators up for re-election in 2020 be put in the uncomfortable position of defending him. Flipping four seats would give the Democrats the majority in the Senate; flipping three seats and winning the Presidency accomplishes the same result.How likely is a Democratic victory? My little model of Senate elections identifies a handful of factors that influence the national popular vote for Senate. One advantage for the Democrats is that the crop of Senators who won in 2014 is lopsidedly Republican. Twenty-three Republicans won election that year compared to just thirteen Democrats, and the Republicans won a majority of the national popular vote for Senate. The concept of "regression toward the mean" applies in Senate elections -- a Senate "class" that does well in one election does less well six years later. That might cost the Republicans a couple of percentage points next November.
The factor that poses the greatest challenge for Democrats is that the President will almost certainly be running for re-election. In years the President is on the ticket his co-partisans in the Senate have won some four percent more of the popular vote than in years where the President is not running. This is a substantial advantage, though it remains to be seen whether Trump is as great a positive influence as Presidents have been historically.
The other significant factor is the state of the economy. I rely on changes in real disposable income per capita as a summary measure. Right now that figure is about 2.3%, or pretty close to the postwar average. If the warning signs about the economy prove prescient, a weaker economy could hurt the Republicans chances in next fall's Senate election.
https://www.politicsbythenumbers.org/2016/02/01/a-simple-model-of-senate-elections/
For those wondering about the influence of presidential approval, I find that matters only in off-year elections.
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| Four points matter |
The impeachment and resignation of Richard Nixon had a massive negative effect on support for Republican senators in 1976. All three of the factors I mention above pointed in the Republicans favor: the Democrats had won a substantial majority of the vote in the anti-war election of 1970; President Ford was running for re-election; and, the economy was doing reasonably well. Yet the Democrats won over 56% of the popular vote for Senate that year, a result outside the bounds of statistical error. Watergate seems the most likely explanation for the 1976 outcome.
https://www.politicsbythenumbers.org/2018/04/23/the-strange-case-of-1976/
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It's not a small matter that in a reasonable world it would be Republicans who would be restraining a rogue president from their party.
ReplyDeleteWhat finally persuaded Nixon to give up was pressure from within his own party, from Senators who convinced him he would be convicted in an impeachment. He chose the somewhat lessor humiliation of resignation. That it seems remote now is a measure of how Republicans have abandoned their principles, such as they were.
The question indeed is: "What's it gonna take?"...
We need four new senators, but we must remember to retain the democrats we have who are running again, like senator Merkley. Merkley will likely be targeted by the republicans.
ReplyDeleteYou accurately said: "My Democratic readers will have a hard time believing and integrating this, but a great many voters support Trump. GOP voters may not exactly like and admire Trump, but they consider him to be on their side, fighting socialists, liberals, abortion, liberal courts, overly-woke feminists, affirmative action, uncontrolled immigration, and sharia law taking over America. Democrats may consider this ridiculous or racist, which is yet another reason why Trump succeeds, because many Republican voters resent being thought ridiculous and racist for thinking the things they think."
ReplyDeleteBut consider the sum of these two underlying poles: 1)Left: Large corporations have way too much power + 2) Right: Government has way too much power = Large corporations lobby for the government to have more power and in return the government enacts laws and regulations favorable to large corporations.