With six weeks to go until Election Day, the midterms aren’t unfolding as we all expected earlier this year, when Republicans were better than even money to retake the Senate and a lead-pipe cinch to flip the House by a substantial margin. There are, of course, plenty of reasons you can cite for this change in the political climate, from the backlash to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision to somewhat better economic news to Donald Trump’s continued presence on the campaign trail to bad GOP-candidate selection. It’s nerve-racking, of course, because with Democrats holding the slightest of majorities in both congressional chambers, very small micro-trends in just a few states or districts could have enormous consequences for the parties and for the country (the consequences extend, of course, to state-level positions, not just governors but election-supervising secretaries of State).
But as political observers anxiously parse polls and hold up weather vanes to test partisan winds, Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter offers another way of looking at this election cycle:
“In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, political scientists John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck write that American politics has become more polarized and calcified. Events and the responses to them from politicians no longer have the ability to deeply and fundamentally reshape our politics or political coalitions. ‘Voters and leaders in the two major parties are not only more ideologically distant from each other but also more likely to describe each other in harsh terms,’ they write. ‘In the fall of 2020, 90 percent of Americans said there were important differences in what the parties stood for — the highest number recorded in almost 70 years of American National Election Study surveys.’
“Moreover, they write, voters are ‘less likely to change their basic political evaluations or vote for the other party’s candidate.’ This calcification of our partisanship ‘produces rigidity in our politics — even when dramatic events suggest the potential for big changes.’
“In other words, if every election is an existential fight, then every election will be close. Or, as the Democratic strategist told me, ‘notably competitive.’”
If true, this would mean not only fewer “persuadable” swing voters to produce big shifts in the results from election to election, but likely a reduction in the sorts of “enthusiasm gaps” thought to affect partisan turnout patterns in the past. Elections would be more like a series of huge pre-mobilized armies meeting in a series of huge clashes with no prisoners taken (and little cooperation across party lines between elections). Even if that’s an exaggeration of the degree of gridlock from which our government and our electorate is suffering, we might truly be entering a period in which swings in party voting are limited. And as Sides, Tausanovitch, and Vavreck note, the “calcification” of party and ideological divisions can become self-perpetuating:
“Calcified politics and partisan parity combine to produce a self-reinforcing cycle. When control of government is always within reach, there is less need for the losing party to adapt and recalibrate. And if it stays on the same path, voters have little reason to revise their political loyalties.”
To be clear, very close elections can have variable outcomes. And in our winner-take-all system, the stakes will remain high. It will obviously make a great deal of difference which party wins the White House in 2024. Control of the Senate, moreover, depends as much on near-accidents of landscape than on the overall voting strength of the two parties, since only one-third of senators face voters each cycle. Democrats are benefiting from a modestly positive Senate landscape this year. Republicans should have a big Senate advantage in 2024. There is no guarantee either party can muster a governing “trifecta” in the future. As Republicans learned in 2017–18 and Democrats have learned in 2021–22, a trifecta isn’t all that if you can’t rigidly discipline all your troops all the time.
When white-knuckle time arrives just before Election Day this year, the odds are pretty good there will remain a lot of uncertainty about exactly what will happen when the votes are all counted (assuming we can get bipartisan buy-in on the results as officially certified, which is hardly a safe assumption at present). If Democrats managed to hold onto both congressional chambers, they may well feel vindicated by voters and go on to undertake an ambitious agenda in the next two years. More likely we will have a return to divided government and even more uncertainty and gridlock as we enter still another momentous election cycle.
With the exception of some New England states, the winning of virtually *ANY* state by the Democrats in presidential elections is accomplished in just a handful of counties, primarily metropolitan ones (see Oregon and Pennsylvania, for example, in the map I’ve linked below). By no means is the phenomenon confined to Wisconsin.
I would still label Wisconsin “lean Kerry” as, in all likelihood, we’re currently in a Bush “high water” period and the race in Wisconsin is very close according to some polls (such as Rasmussen, as noted above).
http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm
The Wisconsin scandals pitched out Republicans as well as Democrats. A state which prides itself on being intelligent and clean sure had a crop of dirty idiots in charge of its government.
It’s the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon again. Wisconsin decayed into a cesspool because the formerly public-spirited citizenry walked away from its responsibilities. Nobody wanted to run for office. Nobody wanted to work on political campaigns. (I realize that sounds odd given the current tidal wave of Kerry volunteers, but until this year, political activism at the local/state level was getting roughly zero new blood. Arguably, outside the presidential race, that’s STILL the case.)
In the absence of genuine mass political participation in Wisconsin, certain shortcuts emerged, in both parties, like using tax-funded legislative staffers to illegally build campaign voter lists, or letting lobbyists finance campaigns.
Okay, so all the legislative leaders went to prison. Still no new blood. Now what?
Kerry had damn well better win Wisconsin. Even if he gets a million more popular votes than Bush, without Wisconsin, how could he win the electoral college? Ohio, I guess, but that’s even chancier.
By the way, the 2000 election pretty well cemented the notion that Republican areas are coded red and Democratic areas blue. I used to do the opposite, but I have bowed to the overwhelming consensus. Reading the reversed version in the preceding post(“bright-red” Milwaukee? “Deep blue” suburbs?) is like being an American trying to drive a car in London.
The problem with Wisconsin is that really only the southeastern corner of the state is Democratic any more. Gore won in 2000 based on a lot of Democratic votes in Milwaukee and Milwaukee county. The GOP is surging in Sheboygan, Ozaukee, Washington, Dodge, Jefferson, Columbia and Dane (except for Madison proper) counties — true suburbs of Milwaukee. Bright-red Milwaukee is ringed by deep-blue counties. Green Bay is 50-50, and the rest of the state — largely rural — is blue.
The state went through a huge governmental scandal that’s upended politics statewide. Large numbers of incumbent Democrats, along with their effective GOTV machines, are gone.
The GOP has used the state’s same-day registration law to flood the polls with GOP voters in every race in the last three years. The Dems have done almost nothing in this regard; although their registration effort this year is going strong, it probably won’t be enough to counter the past three years of GOP voter-roll growth.
Wisconsin lost fewer jobs than any other Midwestern state, and it is gaining them faster than any other Midwestern state.
Although Iraq and healthcare are hot-button issues for Wisconsinites, Kerry has proven ineffective in posing an alternative plan to Bush’s stay-the-course on the war. And Kerry’s healthcare message is getting lost in the barrage of other issues Kerry and Edwards keep talking about in the state.
Kerry could win Wisconsin if:
1) He proposes a clear, simply plan with clear signposts/decision points along the way for getting America quickly out of Iraq.
2) Kerry begins barraging his target groups — elderly, working poor, small business owners and those who work for them — with specifics on how his healthcare plan is going to relieve them of the high cost of healthcare.
I think this latter, in particular, is do-able. Kerry’s Web site contains no specifics on the plan whatsoever. Ask most people in the street, and they think Kerry’s plan is only importation and permitting Medicare to negotiate lower prices with drug companies. Kerry’s done a very poor job of explaining what his healthcare plan is, how it will lower premiums and cover more working people, and how it will be paid for.
My suspicion is that Bush’s support in Wisconsin is weak as water. His true base there is limited to anti-abortionists and anti-tax fanatics. Bush is pulling those who believe that Bush is strong on national security. But there’s 10-15 percent of Bush’s support that would move to Kerry if Kerry only came out strong and crystalline clear on these two issue.
IMHO.
“I almost wonder if it isn’t a contrarian backlash against our progressive tradition. Anyone?”
Is fundamentalist Christianity on rise in Wisconsin? A Minnesota friend says it certainly is there. Possibly an explanation for what seems quite bewildering.
you may not agree with my take, but I think Kerry calling Lambeau Field “Lambert Field” has effectively killed his chances in Wisconsin. That whole state bleeds green and yellow and I think they felt insulted by Kerry’s gaffe. I also heard that Brett Favre may be endorsing Bush.
I’m so embarassed. My state used to be a guaranteed win for the Dems. A McGovern state!!! Home to Fighting Bob LaFollette and the Progressives!
With Illinois, Minn. and Mich. surrounding us and looking pretty good for Kerry I find myself wondering: “What’s wrong with Wisconsin? What happened?”
I almost wonder if it isn’t a contrarian backlash against our progressive tradition. Anyone?
rasmussen is a republican pollster. Do not trust them.
Rasmussen now has Bush up 49-47 in Wisconsin.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Wisconsin%20Sept%2014.htm