[6/20/10] November Elections: Anti-Incumbent or Republican Wave?

There are lots of establishment journalists parroting the Democrat theme that 2010 will be a throw-the-bums-out election.  Such an election would turn out the same percentage of incumbents of each party.  This would be bad for Democrats in the House, where every seat is up and the Democrats have a majority, but it might not hand control of that body to the Republicans.  It would be to their advantage in the Senate this year where those standing for re-election were last elected in 2004, and consequently more Republican than Democrat seats are up.

The other possibility is that this is will be a Republican wave election like 1994, where almost no Republicans lost but a high percentage of Democrats did.  In that case, the Republicans might take control in the House and, if not take control of the Senate, than at least weaken Democrat control there substantially.

Stuart Rothenberg is a well-respected, mostly non-partisan observer of Congressional elections.  He epitomizes the Tip O'Neill all-politics-is-local school: his analyses are generally case by case.  In a recent piece, he challenges the Dem story line, though he begins on this light note:

The narrative that this is an anti-incumbent political year is already well-established, and only a fool would fight it. So here goes. While there is some truth to the storyline, the narrative being pounded into your head daily on television and in print is clearly misleading.

After carefully analyzing the primary elections in both parties so far, he concludes

Conservatives certainly are angrier and more mobilized than I've seen them in years, and in many races they are lining up behind conservative candidates who criticize incumbent Republicans for not being conservative or confrontational enough.

And in a few Democratic primaries, more liberal voters and activists have taken on incumbents not identified with the party's left (Specter and Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, for example).

But come November, we will have a rather traditional midterm election. Angry voters will turn out to vote against the party in charge. And that's why, ultimately, 2010 will be remembered as a Republican wave election, not an anti-incumbent year.

For me, the Rothenberg take-away message is that while the primaries have been and may continue to be local, the general will be a national election on national issues.

So, if it will be that Republican wave election, how bad will it be for Democrats?  Sean Trende, one of the numbers guys at RealClearPolitics, analyzes that here.  With a focus on last week's NPR poll in districts most likely to change hands and with a wink and a nod to the Gallup registered voter poll showing a 49-44 preference for the Republican on the generic ballot question, he concludes that the most likely result today would be a Democrat loss of from 50 to 60 seats!

The NPR poll results are simply brutal for the Democrats.  Two polling firms -- one Democrat and one Republican --decided which Congressional districts were most likely to change hands.  They came up with 60 seats held by Democrats but only 10 held by Republicans.  They divided the Democrat seats at risk into the thirty at greatest risk and the thirty at somewhat less risk, on the basis of how they had voted in the Obama-McCain contest.  They called them Tier 1 and Tier 2 seats respectively.  They then polled about 450 likely voters in each Dem tier and 300 in the Republican districts.  By the way NM-02, held by Harry Teague and challenged for by the former holder of the seat Steve Pearce, is Tier 1, while NM-01 in which Sherry and I live held by Martin Heinrich and challenged for by Jon Barela is Tier 2.

They found that only a third of the likely voters in the Democrat districts would vote to re-elect the Democrat while 44-49% would vote for the Republican.  Roughly that same Democrat/Republican split held in the Republican districts.

Oh.  And since that poll another one of the Dem districts not classified as at risk, held by Democrat Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, shows her down 12 points to her Republican challenger.

Trende notes that the NPR poll shows that the messages the Dems are hoping to come back with are running the Republicans way in those districts in almost all cases.  Thus the national issues on which this national election hinges are swinging the Republicans way right now.

He concludes

The bottom line is that Democrats are on pace for an ugly November. They're increasingly running out of time to change the dynamic, and it looks about as likely that things will get worse as that they will get better. If the elections were held today, the balance of the evidence suggests they would lose 50-60 seats. If you think the political environment will improve for Democrats, you can adjust your expectations accordingly, but if you think they will get worse, you can do the same.

Remember that Republican hopes began to rise when Scott Brown won Teddy's Senate seat in Massachusetts.  I said then and I continue to believe now that portends few if any safe seats for Democrats this year.