The 2014 midterm election demonstrated voters’ dissatisfaction with the current state of campaigns and campaign spending. More and more money is being spent each cycle, voters feel bombarded by advertisements from opaque outside groups, and they have no doubt that Congress is bought and sold by special interests and campaign donors. Voters are acutely aware that wealthy interests have an increasing influence on the political process and they now have a strong appetite for change.
A nationwide survey conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner during and immediately after election day, on behalf of Democracy Corps and commissioned by Every Voice, sampled both 2014 voters and those likely to participate in 2016, allowing for analysis of this issue’s impact this year and its relevance moving forward. The survey shows the extent to which candidates’ positions on campaign spending had a clear electoral impact in 2014 and how much more important the issue will become in the next presidential campaign.
There is no doubt that voters find the status quo unacceptable – most find Super PACs disturbing and bitterly regret the amount of money spent on campaigns today. And as we have found numerous times before, voters across party lines endorse Every Voice’s proposed solutions. But rather than seeing this as a long-term ‘pie in the sky’ policy goal, we find here important evidence that campaign spending mattered to voters’ choice in the ballot box and that they demand Congress make reform a priority.
Read the full memo here

MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald weighs in with a post-mortem on the 2014 elections, noting “The Democratic 2012 playbook included aggressive use of opposition research to attack opponents, superior field organization and tight coordination among outside groups and wealthy donors. Republicans’ mistakes during that election included candidates who made lots of gaffes. This year, both scripts were flipped…n 2014, Democrats took the lead in verbal flubs, even as they waited in vain for Republicans to slip up.”
The Center for American progress Benton Strong explains how “Deep Voter Pessimism and Lack of Economic Agenda from Democrats, Not Just Structural Obstacles, Drove GOP Gains in 2014.” Strong quotes TDS founding editor Ruy Teixeira “The path forward for Democrats seems straight,” said Ruy Teixeira, CAP Senior Fellow and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “In order to maximize support among core constituencies and reach further into the Republican hold on white voters, they must develop and promote a sharp vision of economic equality and greater opportunity for those left out of the recovery.”
Taylor W. Anderson notes at the central Oregon Bulletin that “In a year that saw perhaps the lowest turnout in decades elsewhere, Oregon probably had the highest voter turnout in the nation, according to preliminary results…Oregon’s 69.5 percent turnout is highest in the U.S. for the second-straight midterm election. States have about a month to certify vote counts, but it is unlikely that any state’s official results will rise above Oregon’s…Elections officials are taking the high turnout to trumpet Oregon’s mail-in ballot system and other election reforms that they say have helped drive up votes.”
On Meet the Press Howard Dean put it this way: “Where the hell is the Democratic party?…You’ve got to stand for something if you want to win…You cannot win if you are afraid…You’ve got to strengthen the state parties. It requires discipline, accountability, but it also requires money to go to the state parties and we have to trust the state parties.”
The Intercept’s Juan Thompson explains “How Voter Suppression Helped Produce The Lowest Turnout in Decades.”
David Lauter of the L.A. Times shares the perspective of TDS founding editor Stan Greenberg on the midterm elections outcome: “On the central issue of the economy, Greenberg said, Obama was “out of touch” and “tone deaf” in his insistence on talking about a recovery that many voters don’t feel…”He isn’t speaking to the main economic problem,” Greenberg said, adding that the lack of an economic message directed at the anxieties of average families had contributed heavily to low turnout of Democratic voters.”
Crystal Ball has some bragging rights about their predictions for the 2014 midterms, and they are not shy about claiming it. As Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley write, “On Monday, we offered our final calls in all 507 of the Senate, House, and gubernatorial races…As of this writing, 490 of those races have been called for one party or the other, and we got 476 correct (97%)…We did best in the category everyone was watching most closely, the battle for the Senate, successfully calling 32 of the 33 called races.”
At Daily Kos Armando considers the role of Gov. Scott’s late ad blitz attacking Democratic candidate Charlie Crist, who had a six point favorability edge going into the election.
Democrats also got clobbered at the state level and now hold majorities of both houses in only 11 states, compared to Republicans majorities in both houses of 30 state legislatures. Maybe it’s time for Dems to show what they can do in these states and set some high standards in infrastructure upgrades, employment and education. National Journal’s Kaveh Waddell addresses some of the possibilities in his post, “When Liberal Causes Don’t Stand a Chance in Washington, Activists Go Local.”

The main message of the election and take-away from Democracy Corps’ election-night poll is surely a call to the Democrats’ national leaders to address this new economy where jobs do not pay enough to live on, working women and men are struggling and need help, and good American jobs are not being created while the government is beholden to those with the most money.
The voters want to vote for change, and this poll shows that the Democrats and their supportive coalition would rally to a message that understands people are struggling with the new economy; but that was not President’s economic narrative for this election and it showed. Tackling the new economy is a tremendous undertaking, but also one that will be well received by a large audience of voters and that is the best path forward for Democrats.
But for all that and two consecutive off-year wave elections, there is no reason to think Republicans have raised their odds of electing a president in 2016. Looking at this poll, one would rather be in the position of the Democrats than of the Republicans.
In the presidential electorate that we surveyed, some of whom voted on Tuesday, Democrats have a 6-point advantage in party identification; the congressional vote is even; and Hillary Clinton defeats Mitt Romney by 6 points – well ahead of Obama’s margin in 2012. Moreover, this does not reflect the projected growth in Millennials and Hispanics in the 2016 electorate.
The election was fundamentally important, but has not disrupted the national trends and coalitions – even on the day of electoral triumph for the Republicans.
Read the memo here.
View the Data.
See the graphs.

The following article by John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira is cross-posted from the Center for American Progress:
American voters remain deeply pessimistic about their own economic prospects and those of the country as a whole and distrust all major institutions of government, including the president, Congress, and both major political parties. As a result, the 2014 elections mark the third consecutive midterm election in which voters turned against the incumbent party to flip partisan control of one branch of Congress. In this election cycle, the Republican Party successfully mobilized discontent with President Barack Obama and the state of the economy to pick up at least seven seats for a minimum 52-seat majority. Democratic-held seats that went to Republicans include Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia, with Louisiana going to a runoff. The GOP solidified its hold on the U.S. House of Representatives, picking up at least 14 more seats for a commanding 243-seat majority so far. It also added three more governorships to its ranks, for a total of 31 states with Republican governors.
The loss of Senate control was largely expected given the difficult task Democrats faced this year: In order to keep their majority in the Senate, they needed to hold seats in Republican-leaning states whose voting bases were more conservative, older, and less diverse. But the GOP’s hold on the Senate remains tenuous, with the party facing the prospect of defending 24 Senate seats versus 10 for the Democrats in the 2016 presidential election year. As longtime political journalist Ronald Brownstein notes, as of the 2014 results, neither party has successfully held control of the U.S. Senate for more than eight years since 1980–a trend Republicans will surely need to keep in mind as they organize their agenda going forward.
American politics has entered a long phase of electoral volatility and divided government, with Republicans holding distinct advantages in mobilizing their coalition in many statewide and local contests and Democrats having a seemingly firm grip on presidential politics. The longer-term demographic and geographic shifts that are rapidly changing American society have yet to coalesce into clear partisan majorities across multiple levels of government. Given the seemingly intractable economic difficulties facing American families, as well as voters’ distrust of the government’s ability to address these problems, this lack of strong partisan control of American politics means we should expect more wild shifts between election cycles and more divided government and gridlock.
Why did the Republicans do so well in 2014?
A combination of factors contributed to the GOP’s victories. First, incumbent parties nearly always lose seats in midterm elections, especially in the middle of a president’s second term. Second, the electoral map in 2014 manifestly favored the GOP from the start–as was long known. Five of the seven GOP gains came from states that voted for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) in 2012; Colorado and Iowa are the exceptions. Third, the Democrats suffered from poor turnout of their key supporters. Indeed, this drop-off has reached historic levels.
Finally, and critically, the 2014 national exit poll highlights the extent to which voter pessimism, fear, and anxieties about the economic future benefited Republicans despite the party’s abysmal ratings in Congress. Keeping in mind that no one exit poll explains voting trends that develop over time, it is notable that 65 percent of 2014 voters said the country was “seriously off on the wrong track,” and 69 percent of this bloc voted Republican. Seventy percent of voters rated the national economy as “not so good” or “poor,” and 64 percent of them voted Republican. Fifty-nine percent of 2014 voters believe economic conditions are “poor and staying the same” or “getting worse,” and more than 6 in 10 of these voters chose Republicans.
Despite clear signs of economic recovery in the aggregate, many American voters heading into the polls this year were not feeling improvements in terms of their own jobs, wages, and benefits and subsequently took it out in force against the president’s party. Absent any clear or far-reaching national agenda and message to address people’s real economic concerns about jobs, wages, and opportunity, the Democrats essentially ceded control of the national campaign, opting to try their luck with a series of localized and targeted campaigns. Outside of important victories on minimum-wage ballot initiatives in five states and paid sick days in Massachusetts, this strategy produced little in partisan terms for the Democrats. The GOP similarly lacked a unifying national economic agenda, but given the level of anxiety and anger among voters, it did not appear to play a determining factor in their victories. Both parties will need to do much more to prove they can effectively address voters’ overarching economic needs going into 2016.
Notably, neither the president himself nor his signature policies, such as the Affordable Care Act, appear to have played an outsized role in voting. Only one-third of midterm voters said that their vote was “to express opposition to Barack Obama,” while a plurality–45 percent–said President Obama was not a factor and around one-fifth–19 percent–said they voted to support him. In addition, 48 percent of voters said the 2010 health care bill “went too far,” and these voters overwhelmingly chose Republicans, while 46 percent said it “was about right” or “didn’t go far enough” to reform the health care system. Although President Obama served as a powerful symbol of GOP frustration and anger and was certainly a focus of GOP voter mobilization, the midterm itself was not determined primarily by reactions to him.
As both Democrats and Republicans go forward following these results, both parties and any future presidential candidates must find a compelling and convincing way to address voters’ ongoing pessimism about the future and the need for more widely shared–and felt–economic gains. Even with unified control of Congress, Republicans risk falling into a familiar pattern of pursuing legislative tangents and extremist tactics that must be addressed if they want to solidify gains going into 2016. Democrats need to find a way to ensure that the economic recovery since 2008 is reaching more people and that they have significant new ideas post-Obama to improve the lives and financial security of American families.
Who voted?

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The following article by George Lakoff, Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley and author of “The ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant,” is cross-posted from HuffPo. His website is: georgelakoff.com.
It is time to shine a light on the strategies used by Democrats, and on the Democratic infrastructure that uses those strategies.
Democratic strategists have been segmenting the electorate and seeking individual self-interest-based issues in each electoral block. The strategists also keep suggesting a move to the right. This has left no room for the Democrats to have an overriding authentic moral identity that Americans can recognize.
Those strategists form an infrastructure that all Democrats have come to depend on; not just the candidates, but also the elected officials, Democrats in government, and citizens who either do, or might, find progressive policies morally and practically right. The strategic infrastructure includes PR firms, pollsters, consultants, researchers, trainers, communication specialists, speechwriters, and their funders.
It is an important and powerful infrastructure and we all depend on it. I believe it is vital to separate this infrastructure from the strategies it has been using. I believe the strategies can be greatly improved so as to give a true, deep, and moral picture of what progressive politics is about — one whose content and authenticity will resonate with, and inspire, a majority of Americans.
I have just published a book about how to do this: The All New Don’t Think of an Elephant! It is an updated and much expanded version of the original, which introduced the concept of conceptual framing, which is about ideas, not just about slogans. The present book includes what I have learned over the past decade by bringing to bear results in my academic discipline, the Brain and Cognitive Sciences. The book is short, easy-to-read, and inexpensive.
At this point, some details are in order. Here is what is widely done according to present strategies. Not everyone uses all of these, but most are common.

Use demographic categories to segment the electorate, categories from the census (race, gender, ethnicity, age, marital status, income, zip code), as well as publicly available party registration.
Assume uniformity across the demographic categories. Poll on which issues are “most important,” e.g., for women (or single women), for each minority group, for young people, and so on. This separates the issues from one another and creates “issue silos.” It does not include segmentation for moral worldviews that differ between conservatives and progressives.
Assume language is neutral and that the same poll questions will have the same meaning for everyone polled. In reality, language is defined relative to conceptual frames. And the same words can be “contested,” that is, they can have opposite meanings depending on one’s moral values.
Assume that people vote on the basis of material self-interest and design different message to appeal to different demographic groups. In reality, poor conservatives will vote against their material interests when they identify with a candidate and his or her values.
In polling, apply statistical methods to the answers given in each demographic group. This will impose a “bell curve” in the results. The bell curve will impose a “middle” in each case.
Assume that most voters are in the middle imposed by the bell curve. Move to the middle. If your beliefs are on the left of the “middle,” move to the right to be where most voters are. You will be helping conservatives, by supporting their beliefs. And you may ne saying things you don;tje
Check the polls to see how popular the present Democratic president is; if he is not popular, design you message to dissociate yourself from the president. It will reinforce the unpopularity of the president when members of his own party, as well as the opposition, disown him.
Attack your opponents as being “extremists” when they hold views typical of the far right. This will help your opponents, as they will appear standing up for what they believe in among those of their constituents that share any of those views.
Attack your opponents for getting money from rich corporations or individuals. This will help your opponent among Republicans (and some Democrats) who respect the values of the wealthy and successful.
Argue against your opponents by quoting them, using their language and negating that language. Negating a frame reinforces the frame, as in the sentence “Don’t think of an elephant!” This practice will mostly reinforce the views of your opponent.

Such strategies miss the opportunity to present an overriding moral stand that fits the individual issues, while saying clearly what ideals Democrats stand for as Democrats. There happens to be such an overriding ideal that most Democrats authentically believe in.

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In my last post here, I basically called for a renaissance of Democratic strategic debate as an urgent priority, and am gratified it got a robust response.
Probably the best way for me to encourage this debate along at this point is to note some real obstacles to clear-eyed strategic thinking. And I’m afraid we’ve been offered one by a Democratic senator who very nearly lost a “safe seat,” Mark Warner of VA, as I noted today at Washington Monthly.

Anybody who paid close attention to Mark Warner’s 2001 gubernatorial campaign probably remembers it as a strategic masterpiece. Facing a Republican with a Richmond-area base, Warner spent a lot of time in rural southwest Virginia, where no statewide Democratic candidate had done well for quite a few years. He won these areas, and no, the legends of Mudcat Sanders notwithstanding, he didn’t do it by sponsoring NASCAR race vehicles or even by putting up those ingenious “Sportsmen for Warner” yard signs festooned with hunting rifles and fishing gear (which I remember distinctly as a resident of rural Piedmont Virginia at the time). He won by spending a lot of time in the area and talking convincingly about how technology could enable poor and isolated rural areas to escape their geographical limitation and even leapfrog cities in growth and prosperity. It was pretty inspiring, actually, and it worked. Until it didn’t.
Four years later Tim Kaine ran to succeed Warner, and in part because his opponent had his own base in SW VA, he adopted an entirely different strategy focused on metro suburbs, and that worked just as well as Warner’s. A year later Jim Webb, a guy far better positioned to appeal to Scots-Irish mountain people than Warner could ever have been, won almost entirely by winning traditional Democratic urban/suburban areas. By the time Creigh Deeds–himself from rural central Virginia–ran for governor in 2009, Democrats were just getting killed in rural areas, as they were pretty much all over the country. And then Terry McAuliffe broke VA Democrats’ brief losing streak by concentrating on turning out “base” voters in the cities and the NoVa suburbs probably more than anyone ever had, and won narrowly.
I cite all this history as prologue to a comment by Mark Warner this week (as reported by WaPo’s Jenna Portnoy and Rachel Weiner), when he was asked why he didn’t emulate T-Mac’s strategy of focusing on Democratic “base” areas in a campaign where turnout was everything:

“My path has been very different from Terry’s or Tim’s or others’,” Warner said in an interview with The Washington Post before the election. “To the annoyance of some of my so-called staff, I’m going to Abingdon and Russell County now because Southwest Virginia gave me a start, and I’m not going to cede one part.”
The counties in that region voted for Gillespie, sometimes by more than 30 points over Warner.

Even the most brilliant strategy becomes a millstone when it’s not adapted to changing political circumstances. So beware of anybody’s iron “model” from the past on how to win elections. More often than not, the real lesson taught by successful political strategies is to remember that yesterday’s audacious and innovative approach can become today’s stale CW and tomorrow’s upset loss.

At U.S. News Lindsey Cook reports on midterm voter turnout declines and increases between 2010 and 2014. Here are some figures for U.S. Senate and Governorship battleground states turnout differences between 2010 and 2014, based on data from the United States Election Project :

AK +2.4
AR +3.3
CO +0.7
FL +0.9
GA -6.5
IA -0.1
KY -0.1
KS +0.2
LA +3.9
MA -5.5
ME +3.4
MD -1.2
MI -2.5
NC +0.9
NH +2.7
PA -6.3
SD -12.5
TX -4.1
VA -2.4
WI +4.5

Dems won in LA (w/ run-off), MI, NH, PA and VA (not yet certified, but pretty solid), and had a split decision in CO where we re-elected Gov Hickenlooper, but lost Udall’s Senate seat. But its a mixed bag in terms of voter turnout, with modest increases from 2010-14 in three of the states we won (CO, LA and NH), and turnout declines in the rest. It seems safe to guestimate that Dem GOTV was better than average in those three states. Elsewhere it was inadequate to offset voter discontent and/or Republican GOTV.
We can credit the campaigns and state Democratic parties in those three states with heroic turnout work. And it may be that Dems had good GOTV in some of the other states, but were just swamped by voters who favored Republicans. What is clear now, however, is that the value of high-tech GOTV operations ascribed to the Democratic Party was overhyped — and there’s no substitute for strong candidates and campaigns and a favorable economy.