Oklahoma's state capitol—ancestrally Democratic, but now heavily Republican
Allow me to reintroduce a term that you might not have heard or thought of in quite some time: 50-state strategy.
One of the hallmark projects of Howard Dean's tenure at the DNC roughly a decade ago, the 50-state strategy was a source of vigorous debate in Democratic circles from its inception. The internal squabbling over the strategy is beautifully crystallized in this 2006 piece by Matt Bai. Largely abandoned (at least financially) for the past five years, there has been talk of resurrection, both from the DNC and the Clinton 2016 team.
A new study by the team at SmartPolitics will add some interesting fuel to that discussion. The study notes that nearly two-thirds of the states in the union are currently entrenched in long partisan streaks in terms of who they've supported in presidential elections. What's more, the majority of the states have backed the same party for the White House since Bill Clinton's initial victory in 1992.
On the surface, this would seem to play a bit of hell with the 50-state strategy. But a deeper look reveals a more complicated picture. Keep reading as we try to decipher it.
What this SmartPolitics analysis is concluding, at a basic level, is that we are in the midst of one of the sharpest regional political polarizations in our more than two centuries as an elective democracy.
Of course, regions of the country have long had a tendency to perform similarly. This amazingly cool graphic from our own Daniel Donner shows how there is actually a little bit of a synchronized movement in voting patterns between states huddled fairly close together:
Besides, it doesn't take an in-depth analysis of election returns to know that this phenomenon is taking place. New England is, at least of late, all but lost to the GOP, while the once-solid Democratic South is all but obliterated at this point, replaced by a dark-red hue. That red now extends beyond presidential elections all the way to state legislatures where the only drama, once upon a time, was in the Democratic primaries.
The polarization, if anything, is even incrementally worse than it appears in the study. As it happens, it doesn't include the District of Columbia (which has never voted for a Republican), nor does it include some clearly tilting states (Illinois, Montana, and Maryland) that have had longer streaks earlier in their history.
There are other ways to document the same evidence, as well. A 2006 study by FairVote noted that:
In 1976, 24 states were presidential battlegrounds, representing 345 electoral votes and most of the nation. By 2004, that number had fallen more than half, to a mere 13 states representing 159 electoral votes. What’s more, in 2004, 48 of 51 presidential contests went to the same party as in 2000 – underscoring how difficult it is to overcome rigid state partisanship in presidential elections, even when your side has more than half a billion dollars to spend. So why sink resources in 50 states, rather than just 13?
A similar phenomenon occurred in 2012. Even as Barack Obama was cruising to re-election by half the margin he enjoyed in 2008, only two states slid back to the GOP: Indiana and North Carolina (the single electoral vote for NE-02 also reverted to the GOP).
On the surface, this would seem to suggest that a 50-state strategy is something of a fool's errand. After all, if the result in roughly three-quarters of the states is essentially preordained, and has been for the better part of three decades, what percentage is there in throwing money into states where the outcome seems immovable?
Well, let's start with a point of dispute regarding the premise. One could argue that the utter lack of true "blowouts" in recent elections may play a role in why the state numbers look so immovable. After all, the average margin of victory in the seven elections since Reagan left office (1988 to 2012) was 5.1 percent. The average margin of victory in the seven elections prior to that (1960 to 1984) was 10.9 percent.
Which gives rise to a classic chicken-and-egg political dilemma. Are the relatively small swings in the elections of the last generation created by a hardening of partisan preferences in the states? Or have relatively light national tailwinds led to those small swings, giving the false impression that the states have cemented their partisan views?
Those who advocate for a more inclusive and ambitious outreach, in the Dean tradition, would argue that the only two recent strong Democratic electoral results across the board came in 2006 and 2008, when Dean was at the helm of the DNC and the 50-state strategy was in its heyday. As a 2013 retrospective on Dean's tenure by Louis Jacobson in Governing magazine noted:
The patterns are suggestive. In the 20 states we looked at -- those that have voted solidly Republican in recent presidential races -- Democratic candidates chalked up modest successes, despite the difficult political terrain. Then, after the project stopped, Democratic success rates cratered.
Again, however, we see a chicken-and-egg issue (one which, incidentally, author Louis Jacobson acknowledged). Did the 50-state strategy look artificially effective because it happened to coincide with two Democratic wave elections? Or did those two Democratic wave elections take place because of electoral momentum generated by the 50-state strategy?
Even if we accept the basic premise of the SmartPolitics study, and assume that the vast majority of states have partisan leans that are growing more rigid, there may still remain a decent argument for trying to employ a 50-state strategy, anyway.
The only halfway decent thing about the current state of rigidity is that it appears to give the Democrats a mild yet firm edge in the electoral college. When you factor in Illinois, Maryland, and DC, the "rigid blue" states total 19 in number, which is two fewer than the GOP has a tight hold on (the record states plus Montana). However, there is a big caveat—the Democrats lead is firm in much larger states, on balance. When measured through electoral votes, the Democratic "record streak" group plus the three states listed above lock in 242 electoral votes. The Republican "record streak" group, when married with Montana, lock in just 169 electoral votes for them. Which means that the GOP has to have an impressive run in the "persuadable" states in order to win, all other things being equal.
But that is a somewhat hollow victory if legislative majorities seem unobtainable. For now, the House, and majorities in the bulk of the state legislatures, appear out of reach. What compounds that wound is that the most gerrymandered states, in many cases, are in that small handful that are not yet at record winning streaks for one party or the other. Consider: Of the states that have split their victories in recent cycles, five of them (Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida) have GOP-favored maps that give the Republicans majorities well above what their "normal" presidential performances in those states would suggest. This is also true, as well, for the delegations they send to the U.S. Congress.
Which means, in the short run at least, that the only realistic way for the Democrats to claw back into contention for control of the U.S. House (to say nothing of at the state legislative level), is to fight for relevance in states where they've essentially given up the ghost. Even if the state may be beyond reach in the electoral college, a House seat here and there would be a huge help in the fight to get back to 218 seats.