It’s becoming more and more obvious that the big dispute at the heart of most arguments about the larger meaning of the 2010 midterms elections is whether the U.S. electorate is moving ideologically to the Right in a way that gives Republicans a natural majority in the future. And the very core of that dispute involves the behavior of self-identified independents, who obviously shifted towards the GOP between 2006-08 and 2010, and who seem to be exhibiting more conservative attitudes generally.
Is this the same electorate across elections? Are these the same indies across elections? Or to put it another way, how much did the 2010 outcome depend on voters changing their minds as opposed to some voters showing up and other voters not showing up? And among independents in particular, is their voting behavior a function of reversible factors (e.g., the performance of the economy) or of new ideological proclivities?
We asked TDS Co-Editor Ruy Texeira, a well-established slicer and dicer of the electorate, these questions, and here is his immediate reaction:

Has the public shifted sharply to the right ideologically? Conservatives say the 2010 election proves this, But careful analysis of available data shows there is far less to this argument than meets the eye. Here’s why:
Conservatives turned out heavily for the 2010 elections but, among registered voters as a whole, the percentage of conservatives only increased by 3% between 2006 and 2010
In the 2006 election 32 of percent of voters were conservatives according to the exit polls. In 2010 42 percent were conservatives. So what explains this 10 point increase?
Have registered voters as a whole become that much more conservative over that time period? No, according to Pew the percent of conservatives only went up 3 points over that time period. So the increase in self-identified conservatives among actual voters is not nearly accounted for by the increase in conservatives among registered voters. This suggests exceptional turnout of conservatives in 2010 even controlling for the increase in their numbers.
The 3% increase in conservatives among registered voters occurred entirely among Republicans and already Republican-leaning independents – not because of increasing conservatism among either Democrats or genuinely non-partisan independents.
But why do we have more conservatives today among registered voters? That is an interesting question with an interesting answer. Working from the Pew data, one part of the answer is that self-identified Republicans have become more conservative (by 4 points).
The other part of the answer is that independent registered voters have become more conservative (by 7 points). But why have they become more conservative? The answer is that Republican-leaning independents, just like ordinary Republicans, have become more conservative (also by 7 points) and that Republican-leaning independents are now a larger part of the independent pool (now 40 percent of independents compared to 30 percent in 2006). As political scientists have noted over and over again independents who lean toward the Republican party act very similar to Republican partisans (and Democratic leaning independents act like Democratic partisans), so this is a hugely important fact in understanding the changing political behavior of independents.
Among the rest of the independent pool, there has either been no change in the number of conservatives (among non-leaning or pure independents) or a slight decrease (among Democratic leaning independents). So the increase in “conservatism” among independents is completely accounted for by the increased conservatism of Republican-leaning independents and the increased weight of Republican-leaning independents among independents as a whole.
There are now more Republican-leaning independents among independents in general than there were in 2006, but the main reason is that the number of actual Republicans has significantly declined.
OK, so why has the weight of Republican-leaning independents among independents increased? This is a tricky question, but possibly the most important single factor is that there has been an actual decrease in the number of straight Republican identifiers among registered voters (down 2 points) which has produced a concomitant increase in the number of Republican-leaning independents over the 2006-2010 time period. It’s also interesting to note that that this switch can account for most of the 3 point overall increase in independents over the time period.

Putting it all together, here’s how Ruy sums it up:

So overall we’re shifting Republicans around between straight identifiers and leaners, both straight Republican identifiers and leaners have become more conservative over time and they turned out at very high levels in 2010.
That’s the basic story. There is no big ideological shift here viewed across registered voters as a whole. It’s overwhelmingly an intra-Republican story.

To put Ruy’s analysis another way, people who are by and large going to vote Republican in most elections have become more conservative, and they did turn out disproportionately in 2010, for all sorts of reasons, including their age and ethnicity. This is not the same as suggesting that “swing voters” are moving to the right. It’s the failure to understand that a majority of independents aren’t really “independent” that sustains the illusion that indies are primarily swing voters who are now swinging hard to the Right and to the GOP.

According to one major narrative of the 2010 election, the key to Democrats setbacks was the fact that they “lost the independents.” The election supposedly confirmed that these voters had rejected Obama’s agenda, become more conservative and turned to the Republicans.
In this perspective, independent voters are invariably pictured as thoughtful and cautious political moderates, fearful of excessive government and seeking a “sensible center” between Democrats and Republicans. Here is how David Brooks described them last January:

Americans, with their deep, vestigial sense of proportion, have reacted. The crucial movement came between April and June, when the president’s approval rating among independents fell by 15 percentage points and the percentage of independents who regarded him as liberal or very liberal rose by 18 points. Since then, the public has rejected any effort to centralize authority or increase the role of government.

And again in April:

As government grew, many moderates and independents…recoiled in alarm….As government has seemed more threatening, moderates and independents have also fled from the Democratic Party. Democratic favorability ratings have dropped by 21 points over the past year, from 59 percent to 38 percent.

Clearly, this is a distinct, coherent and self-aware political group being described, one that deeply fears and rejects excessively active government and which decisively turned on Obama when he went beyond their moderate political agenda.
But here’s the odd thing: in the real world of ordinary, everyday life these “independents” are completely – and I mean completely – invisible. One never sees such normal indications of political sentiment as bumper stickers or yard signs, for example. Think about it, when was the last time you saw a yard sign or bumper sticker that said something like “I’m an independent and I vote” or “proud Independent voter” or “Independent voter — and proud of it” Around election time how many slogans did you see that said “Independents for Obama”, “independents for McCain” or “Independents for such-and-so for Senator”.
None, right? Absolutely none.
And then consider this: one never actually meets people who explicitly call themselves “political independents” during casual conversations at soccer matches, PTA meetings, neighborhood zoning debates, garage sales, street fairs, church events, bake sales, holiday parties, Boy Scout trips and so on. In white, suburban neighborhoods one will frequently meet many perfectly nice middle-aged people who will define themselves politically as “moderate Republicans” or “Conservative Democrats” but one rarely meets people who describe themselves as “a moderate Independent” or “a conservative independent” or people who define themselves politically by saying things like “Me? I’m an ‘independent’ voter.”
The fact is inescapable: in the world of ordinary daily life where people actually talk to each other about politics a distinct and coherent political formation of “independent” voters simply does not exist.

Read more…

In his latest analysis of the 2010 polling Ruy Teixeira points out that the shifts in the numbers of “independents” and “moderates” between 2006 and 2010 is actually an internal process occurring within the Republican coalition. As he says:

“We’re shifting Republicans around between straight identifiers and leaners and both straight Republican identifiers and leaners have become more conservative over time…there is no big ideological shift here viewed across registered voters as a whole. It’s overwhelmingly an intra-Republican story.”

Both of these intra-Republican groups identified in Ruy Teixeira’s latest analysis — the increasing number of conservatives who now call themselves “independents” rather than Republicans and the increasing number of Republicans who now call themselves “conservatives” rather than moderates — are actually familiar to journalists and other social scientists who do ethnographic field research and actively and systematically listen to what people say in everyday conversation. Let’s look at these two groups in turn.
1. A significant group of conservative Republicans has stopped calling themselves Republicans and started calling themselves independents instead
Six or eight years ago avid conservatives to a large degree defined themselves by their avid support and indeed fawning admiration for Bush and Cheney. Asked about their party affiliation six years ago, many conservative Republicans would have indignantly replied: “Of course I’m a Republican. What the hell else would I be – a god-damn Democrat for crying out loud? Jees, don’t be stupid”. As both domestic and foreign disasters accumulated, however, many grass-roots Republicans became alienated from the party. “I’m a conservative” they began saying “and I think that in a lot of ways the Republicans are as bad as the Democrats. I just don’t trust either one of them any more”. As a result, when asked on opinion surveys for their partisan affiliation, increasing numbers began to choose “independent’ rather than “Republican” to reflect their frustration.
2. A significant group of moderate Republicans has begun calling themselves “conservative” rather than “moderate” on surveys
During the early, pre-9/11 era, not all of George W Bush’s supporters considered themselves conservatives. Many considered themselves moderates. They would express this by saying things like “I usually vote Republican but I consider myself a political moderate and not a hard-core conservative. In 1992 I supported Bush senior, in 1996 I supported Bob Dole and In 2000 I supported George W. Bush because he seemed like a moderate too”.
Since Obama’s election, however, as the political debate has become deeply polarized with charges of socialism and fascism leveled against Obama, these same people can no longer accurately express their feelings about politics by calling themselves “moderate Republicans”. They are now more likely to use the word conservative to describe themselves rather than moderate because the latter term does not adequately convey a clear rejection of Obama’s agenda. In actual conversation this “moderate Republican now turned conservative” view is expressed in phrases like “Oh, I’m not a tea party person but I’m really a pretty conservative person in a lot of ways, you know, and I just don’t support a lot of those these things Obama’s doing.”
In fact, their political preference for Bob Dole/George Herbert Walker Bush moderate Republicanism has not significantly changed; they are expressing the same preference in a more polarized political environment.
It is these two internal changes in how both conservative and moderate Republicans define themselves that explains the trends Ruy Teixeira detected and analyzed among “independents” and “moderates”. Not only his analysis but practical ethnographic research as well confirms that the notion of a separate, moderate, independent third force that turned against Obama in 2010 is simply – as James Vega puts it — a mirage.

Of many events these day that make me feel my age, one prominent example is the tenth anniversary of Joshua Micah Marshall’s online enterprise Talking Points Memo.
A quick disclosure: I’ve known Josh since his days of working in the Washington office of The American Prospect; once guest-blogged for the main TPM site; and used to be a pretty regular contributor to one of TPM’s earliest sidelines, TPM Cafe (never got paid a nickel for any of this, but didn’t mind). I’m also very proud that TDS is on the very short list of “TPM Approved Sites.”
You don’t have to personally know Josh to appreciate his accomplishment; it just helps. Josh Green of The Atlantic has provided a fine explanation on the very beginnings of TPM, when the two Joshes were both still at TAP. I remember having lunch with Josh Marshall just down the street from the Dupont Circle Starbucks where TPM was first “housed” right after he left TAP to devote most of his time to the new venture. At that point he still thought of the blog (which is what it was then) in no small part as a way to advertise his writing for free-lance journalism assignments. But even when his hobby turned into his main preoccupation, he never for a moment stopped thinking of himself as a journalist, which was unusual in those early days of blogs as either personal platforms for opinion (e.g., Mickey Kaus’ Kausfiles) or political community sites like My DD and then Daily Kos, or the primitive online operations of more traditional political organizations.
TPM’s first real “score” came in 2002 when Josh managed to take a story the MSM had treated as a one-day amusement–Trent Lott’s suggestion that the world would have been a much better place had Strom Thurmond been elected president in 1948–and wouldn’t let it go until the chattering classes reflected on its significance for a while. Long story short, Trent Lott was forced to step down as Majority Leader of the U.S Senate, and suddenly it was obvious that online political writing could be something more than a vanity medium or an ideological clubhouse.
The rest of TPM’s story is probably too well known to most readers to require any recitation here, but the key thing is that Josh Marshall significantly expanded the possibilities for online political journalism, at a time when the almost universal belief of serious political players was that “blogs” were a May-fly phenomenon enabling puerile cranks to play at being pundits. Those of us who have subsequently found ways to address serious topics online–such as political strategy–owe a big debt of thanks to Josh and to TPM for making online political journalism impossible to dismiss and perilous to ignore.

it would be hard to pin-point the exact moment the Republicans pilfered the term “deficit-reduction” from the economic policy lexicon as their exclusive property. But it was one of those rip-offs that was made possible by the lack of vigilance by the victim, i.e. the Democrats. Too often, it seems, Dems have been complicit in framing a “Jobs vs. Deficit-reduction” false choice.
The meme successfully propagated by the GOP is that the only way Dems can balance budgets or reduce deficits is by levying taxes. The subtext is that Dems just don’t know how to cut government spending.
In Friday’s New York Times, David Leonhardt has an article, “OK, You Fix the Budget,” which serves as a backgrounder for the Times’ PDF widget “Get a Pencil: You’re Tackling the Deficit.” As Leonhardt explains,

…Rather than making recommendations, we are laying out a menu of major options, so that readers can come up with their own plan. We have received help along the way from the deficit panel, from Congressional and White House aides and from liberal, conservative and centrist budget analysts. The deficit puzzle on The Times’s Web site is the result.
The ultimate goal is to help you judge the deficit proposals that are now emerging. Do you think they cut spending too much and should raise taxes more? Or the reverse? Are they too aggressive or too meek on military spending? How will they affect income inequality? How might they help or hurt economic growth?

It’s a useful exercise in that it encourages Dems to think about the real-world choices that can help formulate a responsible budget, and more importantly shows that there are various menus of choices involving both budget cuts and tax policy that are acceptable to progressive as well as moderate Dems.
It also underscores the reality that, the non-starter Simpson-Bowles proposals notwithstanding, President Obama did not cave to conservatives simply by convening the deficit panel. Rather, he opened a new arena of progressive-conservative debate and struggle.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Only brain-dead populists believe that the people are always right. Still, in a representative democracy, elected officials who want to remain in office and get something done should listen carefully to what the people are saying. All the more so for a president challenged to reorient his administration after a devastating rebuke.
Two recent surveys should help President Obama chart a new path for the next two years.
A just-released Pew survey finds that 55 percent of respondents want Republican leaders in Washington to “try as best they can to work with Barack Obama to accomplish things, even if it means disappointing some groups of Republican supporters.” Only 38 percent disagreed. Conversely, 62 percent want Obama to work hard to cooperate with Republicans, even if it means disappointing some of his supporters.
A recent bipartisan survey–a collaboration between Democracy Corps and Resurgent Republic–mirrors this finding and offers additional insights. By a margin of 67 to 26, the people want president Obama to work harder to find common ground with Republicans rather than simply holding fast to his own agenda. By a margin of 60 to 36, they endorsed the proposition that “Congressional Republicans should be more willing to work with President Obama to find solutions” over the contrary proposition that “Congressional Republicans should do even more to stop President Obama’s agenda because his proposals would irrevocably harm America.”
On closer examination, two points stand out. First, substantial majorities of both independents and swing voters endorse both propositions. Second, while 73 percent of Democrats think that congressional Democrats should be more willing to work with congressional Republicans, only 30 percent of Republicans think that congressional Republicans should be more willing to work with Obama, while 65 percent of Republicans think that they should do even more to stop the president’s agenda. The bottom line: While Democrats and independents want conciliation and compromise, Republicans don’t.
So Obama faces a win-win situation. If he extends his hand to the opposition and they spurn it, the independents and swing voters whose views will determine the 2012 election will give him credit for doing what they want while coming down hard on Republican obstructionists. If the Republicans grasp his outstretched hand, then the country might actually make some progress. And by a margin of 49 to 30, the people think that the president–not congressional Republicans–should take the lead.
To be sure, many of the president’s supporters will be disappointed–at least at first. While 44 percent of Democrats believe that “in order to win in the future, the Democratic Party must move more to the center . . . to win over independent voters,” 50 percent disagree, arguing that their party needs to be more supportive of its core principles. But 57 percent of swing voters and 62 percent of independents, who moved sharply toward Republicans between 2008 and 2010, endorse the former course over the latter. If President Obama makes the right strategic choice, he can help himself and the country. And despite its misgivings, it’s hard to believe that his party wouldn’t benefit as well.

Ten days after the 2010 midterm elections, it’s probably about time to stop measuring public opinion by those who voted, or who said they were going to vote, on November 2. Those pollsters who have followed this common-sense prescription, and are assessing the views of voting-age Americans, are noting better feelings about the President of the United States than we’ve been used to seeing in all those 2010 LV polls of the last couple of months.
Two new very reputable surveys, by Pew and by CBS, show Obama’s job approval/disapproval ratio as dead even among all adults. A third, by AP/GfK, has disapprovals exceeding approvals 51/47, but also shows the president’s personal favorability rating at a relatively happy 55/44 margin.
What this means is that we are entering a new election cycle with a different electorate that is almost certain to be significantly more favorable to Obama and the Democratic Party. “All adults” will obviously not vote in 2012, but it’s probable that their views will turn out to be closer to 2012 LVs than are those of 2010 LVs. It’s as good a time as any to turn the page.

House Dems have got two months to kick butt. OK, less, considering the Christmas vacation and holiday slow down. I have no doubt Speaker Pelosi will do the best possible job with the resources she has. But it would be good for Dem rank and file activists to pay close attention during this period, because it’s likely to be the last chance for positive legislative action before the party of Gridlock, Obstruction and Paralysis takes over the House. After that, it’s pure defense for at least a couple of years.
Time to give all of the finger-pointing, hand-wringing and Monday-morning quarterbacking a rest and get focused on helping Pelosi, Reid and Obama get something done. Toward that end, the editors of The Nation have a good read, “An Agenda for the Lame-Duck Congress” to get the juices stirring again. Here’s an excerpt:

…The period after an election is not set aside for rearranging furniture; Congress sits for two years, not twenty-two months, and it’s supposed to do its job for the entire term. That doesn’t mean Democrats should be blind to the election results; to the contrary, they should respond to them–while getting things done for the American people….
…Pelosi is smart to link the defense of healthcare reform, financial regulation and long-term commitments to maintaining Social Security with the need to create jobs. She can highlight the linkage during the lame-duck session by focusing on fundamentals: extending unemployment benefits, shoring up Medicare and Medicaid, and assuring that a stopgap spending bill contains funding not just to keep the federal government operating into the next year but to help state and local governments and school districts across the country do the same. These are all popular initiatives; Pelosi and Harry Reid–who still controls the Senate for the next two years–have no reason to accept the conventional wisdom that the election produced a mandate for conservative ideas, neglecting the plight of jobless Americans, cutting social services or forcing teacher layoffs in the middle of the school year.
…Democrats should take the moment to argue for letting the Bush tax cuts expire and using the new revenue to maintain federal, state and local services in tough economic times…If compromise is necessary, the only credible one is giving relief to working families–not billionaires. The American people will get the point if Democrats make it aggressively and without apology.
Pelosi should also move the Fair Elections Now Act onto the floor for a vote, advancing a debate on an issue that Republicans don’t want discussed. We just finished the most expensive midterm election in US history; shouldn’t House and Senate committees hold hearings to look at how much was spent by corporations and billionaires, at the impact of that money on the elections and at the influence it will have on government? Republicans will scream, and incoming House Oversight chair Darrell Issa will surely shut down those hearings in January while opening hundreds of investigations on Democratic reforms. Bring it on. In her new role as minority leader, Pelosi could use her bully pulpit to ask essential questions. What is the GOP trying to hide? What do Republicans want to roll back? That’s a fighting stance, not a surrender position.

That’s a lot to take on in a short time, and there may not be time to do justice the the last idea. Joan McCarter flags an even more ambitious agenda in her recent post at Daily Kos, including:

Not a single spending bill has passed. A stopgap bill is needed to avoid a government shutdown.
…Without action by Congress, 2 million unemployed people will lose jobless benefits averaging about $300 a week nationwide by the end of December. It’s by no means a sure thing that the benefits could be extended in the post-election session….
…Taxes: Obama supports renewing most of the Bush-era tax cuts, but not those for family income exceeding $250,000. Emboldened Republicans will insist, however, and with Democrats splintered, many observers think a one- or two-year extension of everything is most likely. Otherwise, it’ll fall to the new Congress to decide. Already expired tax cuts, like AMT relief, are likely to get done in the lame duck.
…Unemployment benefits: Congress has always extended unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed when the jobless rate has been this high. But it took months earlier this year for Congress to extend jobless benefits through the end of November, and Republicans are likely to insist that any further extension be financed by spending cuts elsewhere in the budget. That could limit any extension to just a couple of months.
…Social Security: Before the election, Democrats promised a vote on legislation to award a $250 payment to Social Security recipients, who are not receiving a cost-of-living hike this year….

And McCarter adds,

That doesn’t include the masses of judges and executive appointees that haven’t been confirmed. Nor does it include the DREAM Act, which Harry Reid needs to make good on his promise to the Latino community that was absolutely instrumental to his reelection. Nor does it include the bogged down defense spending bill and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which Defense Secretary Robert Gates is now on the record urging Congress to accomplish.

Whew! It will be a miracle if Dems get half of it passed. Pelosi and Reid will select the most doable priorities, the Republicans will go into full obstruction mode and Dem activists will have to mobilize to get it done. All hands on deck.

This item by TDS contributor and advisory board member Alan Abramowitz, Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, is cross-posted from HuffPost Pollster. (the site formerly known as Pollster.com)

“A week ago today, voters flipped the Obama coalition on its head and voted for Republicans in a mid-term landslide that has the potential to be a transformational election.” –Steve Lombardo

Get a grip, Steve. It wasn’t a landslide and it’s not likely to turn out to be a “transformational election” either. And that “sea of red” that you see all across the country? It’s a little misleading. That’s because land area doesn’t vote. People vote. So while Republican domination of states like Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota makes the electoral map look overwhelmingly red, there aren’t many people in a lot of those red states. Rhode Island has a larger population than any of them and solidly blue California has more people than the 20 least populous states combined.
Now don’t get me wrong–Republicans enjoyed a big victory in this year’s midterm elections. A pickup of 60-plus seats and more than 240 Republicans in the House is nothing to sneeze at even though the GOP ended up falling four seats short of a majority in the Senate.
But:
• Republicans only won the national popular vote for the House by about seven points, which hardly qualifies as a landslide. Democrats won the popular vote for the House by about 10 points in 2008 and nobody was calling that a landslide.
This year’s results were based on a much smaller, older, and whiter set of voters than the 132 million voters who turned out in 2008. More than 40 million fewer Americans voted this year than in 2008 and the nonvoters were disproportionately young, African-American, Latino, and Democrats.
• Despite the strong Republican showing in the House elections, recent polling data indicate that Democrats continue to hold a significant party identification advantage over Republicans in the broader electorate.
Two years from now we can expect voter turnout to increase dramatically, especially among younger voters and minorities. And every year, the nonwhite share of the American voting-age population keeps increasing. If there’s a transformation we can count on, it’s the ongoing demographic shift of the electorate and right now the Republican Party is on the wrong side of that transformation.
Rather than a transformational election, the 2010 midterm is more likely to be viewed in the future as a short-term shift, albeit a large one, based on a combination of the normal tendency of voters to turn against the president’s party in midterm elections, a large number of Democrats in high risk districts due to big gains in the past two elections, and a high level of discontent among voters with the state of the U.S. economy.
If the economy rebounds by 2012 — admittedly a big if — history suggests that President Obama will have an excellent chance of winning a second term in the White House and Democrats may well win back a good many of the seats they just lost in the House.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Most Democrats agree (I know I do) that the effort to make adequate and affordable health care accessible to all Americans was morally correct; they believe that the health reform bill enacted last spring was a major legislative accomplishment attained against huge obstacles; and they hope that the health care bill enacted last spring eventually will make coverage all but universal while reducing costs below what would otherwise have been their trendline. There is debate, however, about the near-term political impact of the health-reform effort–and two surveys released this week have brought the consequences into greater focus.
The bipartisan Democracy Corps/Resurgent Republic survey found, as have others, a large drop-off in support for Democratic candidates among Independents–13 points since 2008, and a startling 19 points since the previous midterm election in 2006. The survey also found some clues as to why this happened. By a margin of 60 to 34, Independents endorsed the proposition that “government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals,” and rejected the claim that “government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people.” When asked whether they favored or opposed the president’s health care plan, 51 percent of Independents registered their opposition while 39 percent indicated support. The difference in intensity between these two groups of Independents was startling: 43 percent were strongly opposed to the plan, versus only 18 percent who strongly favored it. (In the electorate as a whole, strong opponents constituted 44 percent of the total, strong proponents only 24 percent.) Looking forward, 53 percent of Independents favor repealing and replacing the law (and 43 percent strongly).
I turn now to the November edition of the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, widely regarded as the gold standard on this issue. Let me begin with some basics. When respondents were asked right after the election whether they and their families would be better off, worse off, or unaffected by the new health-reform law, only 25 percent said better off, the lowest level recorded since tracking began early in 2009. When asked whether they thought the country as a whole would be better off, only 38 percent answered in the affirmative, also a new low. And consistent with the DC/RR survey, Kaiser found that 56 percent of voters favor repealing part or all of the law, compared to only 36 percent who want either to leave it alone or to expand it. Among the Independents in the Kaiser survey, 44 percent had an unfavorable view of the health reform law (32 percent very unfavorable) versus 37 percent favorable (only 13 percent strongly so). As with the DC/RR survey, Independent opponents enjoyed a considerable edge in intensity over supporters.
When asked an open-ended question about the factors that had the biggest influence on their votes, 17 percent of respondents named health care. Of those voters, 58 percent had an unfavorable view of the health-reform law, 58 percent thought it would make the country worse off, and 56 percent thought it would leave them and their families worse off. Not surprisingly, health care voters went for Republican over Democratic candidates by a margin of 59 percant to 35 percent. (Non health-care voters were divided 44 percent to 44 percent.)
But why do these respondents oppose the health care bill? There’s been debate about whether they’re unhappy about the content of the bill or, rather, because of its symbolic linkage to the general direction of affairs in Washington, D.C. The Kaiser survey probed this question in depth. Among voters opposing the health reform law, 45 percent said their disapproval was rooted more in the specifics of the bill versus 33 percent who emphasized its connection with the ills of national politics, and 14 percent who cited both equally.
Putting all these data together, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the health-reform bill had an independent impact on Democrats in the midterm election, reducing their support below the level to which the economy alone would have depressed it. A back-of-the envelope calculation suggests that health care voters contributed about 10 percent points to the Republicans’ share of the vote and only 6 percent to Democrats–a gap of 4 percentage points. No doubt a more sophisticated statistical analysis (which I hope someone will perform) would refine this estimate. But it is unlikely that this analysis would come close to eliminating the independent effect of health care on the outcome of the election.
Does this mean that undertaking health care reform in the midst of a major economic crisis was a mistake? Not necessarily. But proponents of that choice should acknowledge that it entailed significant political costs–and that it may take a painfully long time to reverse them.