Charlie Cook's National Overview
January 6, 2006
(Updated January 17, 2006)
Political aficionados have to wait no longer - the 2006 mid-term election year has arrived.
The filing deadlines for candidates in the first two states, Illinois and Texas, have passed and the first congressional and gubernatorial primary will take place in March. And in November we will know the answer to two important questions. First, can Republicans break the "Six-Year-Itch" jinx, in which the party holding the White House has lost large numbers of seats in the Senate and/or the House in five out of the last six such second-term, mid-term elections? And second, can Democrats gain seats after having lost seats in both the House and Senate for the last two elections?
There are two major factors in Six-Year Itch, mid-term elections: the popularity of the incumbent president since voters see these elections as a referendum on the performance of a president; and the extent of a "time for a change" dynamic that often occurs after one party has inhabited the White House for six years, particularly when that party has controlled the Congress as well.
The old expression, "if you don't like the weather, just wait, it'll change" is applicable to American politics, and 2005 served as a great example of why. President Bush began the first year of his second term as the first presidential candidate to win a majority of the popular vote since his father accomplished that feat in 1988 (Bill Clinton won with popular but not majority vote wins in 1992 and 1996; Al Gore won the popular but not Electoral College vote in 2000), with expanded GOP majorities in the Senate and House, and with a job approval rating that averaged in the low 50s.
President Bush
President Bush maintained that approval rating from the beginning of 2005 until mid-March, when he started to see a slow decline in approval. His support dropped into the high 40s, then mid-40s in the Spring and Summer, first weighed down by an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, and later by rising energy costs, particularly gasoline prices that overshadowed otherwise largely positive economic news from sinking into the public consciousness until late in the year. The President's political problems were compounded once Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and the Bush Administration came under fire for a slow and tepid response to emergency relief efforts, driving his numbers into the low 40s after Labor Day.
President Bush's approval ratings were often as low as 10 percent to 12 percent among Democrats, and 30 percent to 35 percent among independents. It was Republicans, who consistently gave the President approval ratings in excess of 80 percent that kept Bush from dropping into that "no man's land" of the 30s, where no President ever wants to go. As long as his fellow party members sided with him at that 80 percent level or higher, his approval rating would generally not dip below 40 percent.
That said, an ill-fated attempt to elevate White House Counsel Harriett Miers, a long-time Bush friend from Texas, to the U.S. Supreme Court enraged conservatives who felt she was not ideological enough and thus would not fulfill the President's promise to appoint a justice as conservative as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Others questioned her qualifications for the Supreme Court.
The result was that the President's approval ratings among Republicans dropped into the 70s in November. This, along with the continued drop among other voter groups due to the war in Iraq, increasing gasoline prices and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, caused Bush's approval rating to drop below 40 percent, averaging 38 percent for the month of November.
While the difference between 40 percent and 38 percent is just two points, those two points amount to a huge difference in terms of politics, psychology and perception. While 40 percent is an extraordinarily low job approval rating, so low that it could be described as toxic, an approval rating in the 30s, even the high 30s, is perceived to be politically radioactive. Usually, party members run away from a President in this position, and a President's proposals are routinely ignored on Capitol Hill. To use a golf analogy, a ball that lands in the deep, rough grass at the edge of a lake is horrible, but not as horrible as the ball landing in the lake, even if the difference between the two is just a matter of inches.
November was the President's low point for 2005 and he enjoyed a bit of a rebound in December, averaging 43 percent, a five point increase from November. Dropping gasoline prices, conservatives "getting over and moving beyond" Harriett Miers and an important change in the debate over the war in Iraq caused the uptick in Bush's numbers.
Increasingly during 2004, the focus of the debate over the Iraq war centered on the decision to go to war, particularly the intelligence that suggested that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that in turn led to the decision to invade, and accusations that the Bush Administration had lied, fabricated or at least exaggerated the evidence of WMD, while ignoring contradictory or inconclusive evidence.
In December of 2005, conservative Democrat John Murtha, a former Marine, broke with the President on the war and publicly called for a withdrawal of U.S. troops. Murtha's statement essentially shifted the debate on the war from the decision to invade to the question of the next steps in the war--a question on which there is no consensus in the Democratic Party, or for that matter, among voters. This shift, from the worst place for the President to win the issue to a place where Democrats are all over the map, benefited the President enormously. He then took advantage of it by scheduling a series of four major addresses on the war in which he did a better job of articulating the importance of 'staying the course' as opposed to 'cutting and running.'
At this writing it is unclear whether the President has simply stabilized his political situation and recovered a bit of lost ground in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the Miers' nomination, or whether this is the beginning of a genuine and more durable recovery in his approval ratings. Early signs show that the intensity of opposition to the President is still high. In most surveys, about 43 percent continue to "strongly disapprove" of his performance. This suggests that Bush may have difficulty improving his standing above the low 40-percent range, but that is far from certain.
Other than President Nixon, no other President who was elected, served a full-term and was then re-elected had ever seen such low approval ratings at any point in their second term, at least not in the last half century. President Eisenhower's lowest point in his second term was during a scandal involving his Chief of Staff, Sherman Adams, when his approval rating in the Gallup Poll plunged to 48 percent. For President Reagan, though he had seen much lower approval ratings during the 1982 recession in his first term, his approval ratings during his second term never dropped below 43 percent. Although President Clinton had dismal approval ratings in the first two years of his first term in office, his second-term approval rating never dropped below 54 percent even during the depths of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Historian Joseph Ellis said recently on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that second-term presidencies are about "ducks, chickens and bubbles." He explained that second-term "lame duck" Presidents do not have the clout to enforce discipline among their party members on Capitol Hill, losing many legislative battles. He went on to say that during the second term many "chickens come home to roost," that is, actions and decisions made during the first term bounce back with negative consequences. Finally, Ellis pointed out that second-term Presidents and their White House staffs effectively live in a "bubble" that isolates and insulates them from the electorate, and thus have a tendency to make decisions too far removed from public attitudes and a changing political culture. This is a very apt description of what took place in 2005.
While polls are merely diagnostic instruments that measure a President's popularity, which is directly related to his clout on Capitol Hill, the important numbers are the results of the mid-term elections because they will determine whether President Bush will continue to have Republican majorities in the Senate and House during the last two years of his term and whether those majorities are large enough to advance his agenda.
While it is certainly desirable for a President to have his party holding majorities in both houses of Congress, it is far more important to have working control - large enough majorities that enable the White House to prevail on key legislation - of those chambers. Conversely, if the opposition party holds a majority in one or both chambers of Congress, then they will have the subpoena power to investigate a President's Administration and drive their own arguments much more forcefully than if they were still in the minority. For example, they would control the Rules Committee in the House of Representatives, which decides which amendments will and will not be allowed on the floor. Obviously the worst thing for a President is if the opposition has a working majority, true control of one or both chambers, which gives them the upper hand over the President. So this is not just political gamesmanship. The consequences of these ups and downs in presidential popularity and the subsequent mid-term elections, a referendum on the President, are important in terms of policy that comes out of the legislative process.
The Senate
In the Senate, where Republicans have a 55- to 45-seat majority, Democrats need to gain six seats to secure a majority. A five-seat gain that would bring the chamber to 50-50 does not help Democrats much since Vice President Cheney would break tie votes in favor of the GOP.
Even in November when President Bush's approval ratings had hit rock bottom, averaging about 38 percent, the chances were still quite strong--probably about 80 percent--that his party would hold onto their majorities in the House and Senate. The fact that there was only one Republican retirement in the Senate, the seat currently held by Majority Leader Bill Frist in conservative and Republican-leaning Tennessee, helps Republicans enormously. Open seats are almost always more difficult to defend than seats held by incumbents, who possess enormous re-election advantages. The re-election rate for Senators averages 80 percent. It's closer to 95 percent in the House.
So in order for Democrats to win a majority in the Senate they would have to win the open seat in Tennessee, which is hardly a sure bet, and then defeat five incumbent Republican Senators. The last time five or more incumbents of the same party were ousted in a single cycle was in 1986 when seven GOP incumbents were defeated, six of whom were elected on Ronald Reagan's coattails in 1980. The other had been appointed that year. Today, only three incumbents are locked in toss-up races: Sens. Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island and Mike DeWine in Ohio. Assuming for the sake of argument that Democrats defeated all three of these incumbents and won the open seat in Tennessee, they would still have to win two more seats, a difficult task since only three of the remaining 11 GOP Senators up for re-election in 2006--Sens. Conrad Burns in Montana, Jon Kyl in Arizona and Jim Talent in Missouri--are considered vulnerable. Of the three, Burns is considered the most endangered, as he has been loosely tied to controversial Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to federal bribery and fraud charges.
Even if Democrats manage to defeat Burns, they still would have to unseat either Kyl or Talent. Defeating both of them (in addition to the more vulnerable GOP incumbents) would suggest a very strong anti-Republican tide on Election Night. This entire scenario assumes that Democrats hold all of their own seats, including the highly competitive open seat in Minnesota and vulnerable freshman incumbent Sen. Maria Cantwell in Washington State. They also have to defend six other Democratic seats that are potentially competitive, but are unlikely to swing to the GOP in the end.
The bottom line is that even if one assumes that Republicans are going to have a very bad election year in 2006, the odds are still quite high that they will maintain a majority in the Senate, albeit with a diminished margin. It appears today that Democrats will pick up two to four seats, which would leave Republicans with 51, 52 or 53 seats instead of the 55 seats they hold now.
The House
On the other side of Capitol Hill, Democrats would need a 15-seat gain to win a majority in the House, which is currently divided at 232 Republicans and 203 Democrats. But while the numbers are different, the dynamics are much the same: there just aren't enough competitive open seats or vulnerable Republican incumbents on the table for Democrats to have a realistic shot at winning a majority.
The number of open seats that any party has to defend is the biggest predictor of how many seats that party could lose in the upcoming election. As of mid-December, there were just 21 open seats (14 Republicans and 7 Democrats). Of those 14 GOP seats, just three of them are highly vulnerable: AZ-08 (Jim Kolbe), CO-07 (Bob Beauprez) and IA-01 (Jim Nussle). There are three more open seats that are competitive but lean Republican: CA-50 (Duke Cunningham), MN-06 (Mark Kennedy) and WI-08 (Mark Green). A big question today is how many of the four seats that are currently rated as Likely Republican end up coming into play. For example, Democrats are playing hard in IL-06, the Republican-leaning suburban Chicago district where longtime GOP Rep. Henry Hyde is retiring. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel, who represents a Chicago district, has recruited Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth into the contest.
Democrats have fewer open seat vulnerabilities, but they do have one seat in toss-up, OH-06 (Ted Strickland) and one that Leans Democratic, VT-AL (Bernie Sanders).
The next thing to look for is the number of competent challengers to Republican incumbents in districts that are not heavily Republican. As of this writing, we list just four Republican incumbents in toss-up --Mike Sodrel (IN-09), Jim Gerlach (PA-06), Heather Wilson (NM-01), and John Hostettler (IN-08). Another nine Republican incumbents are rated as Lean Republican - Rob Simmons (CT-02), Chris Shays (CT-04), Clay Shaw (FL-22), Chris Chocola (IN-02), Charles Taylor (NC-11), Bob Ney (OH-18), Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-08), Tom DeLay (TX-22) and Dave Reichert (WA-08). For their part, Democrats have just one incumbent in toss-up, freshman Rep. Melissa Bean (IL-08). Another seven sit in Lean Democratic: Jim Marshall (GA-08), John Salazar (CO-03), John Barrow (GA-12), Leonard Boswell (IA-03), Charlie Melancon (LA-03), Chet Edwards (TX-17), and Rick Larsen (WA-02).
Ultimately, as of this writing, we list a total of 28 seats as competitive --10 are held by Democrats and 18 are held by Republicans. For Democrats to pick up 15 seats - the number they need for control of the House - it would mean that they'd need to win almost every one of the vulnerable Republican seats (an almost 85 percent win rate), while not losing any of their own. Those are very long odds, even if the political winds are blowing favorably for Democrats.
While there may be more Republican retirements in the coming months and some of those might be in competitive districts, and while Democrats do have some time before many filing deadlines for candidates pass, it is unlikely that they will be able to put the 50 Republican seats in play that is thought to be necessary to have a reasonable chance of scoring a net gain of 15 seats. A more likely result is that Democrats end up with a net gain of between four and nine seats, roughly cutting the Republican margin in half in this midterm election campaign.
Under these scenarios, a Democratic gain of between two and four seats in the Senate, and between four and nine seats in the House, would result in a real fight for control of those chambers in 2008, coinciding with the presidential election that year. More importantly however, Republicans in recent months have had a very difficult time with their legislative agenda even without such losses. If their current Senate and House margins were cut in half, their majorities would only be formalities, with no one in control on Capitol Hill.
Under that scenario, with neither party in control of Capitol Hill and a president who is either a lame or crippled duck, there is a very strong chance that in terms of national governance, this country is likely to be drifting for the next three years until one party or the other manages to secure some kind of working control over the process through congressional elections or a fresh president comes into office with the honeymoon period and fresh start that inevitably accompanies a new occupant of that office. Until that time though, the drift seems almost inevitable. |
