Republicans own government at both the state and federal levels because Democrats have a turnout problem. That’s what I’m told. If so, it’s a turnout problem in the same sense that the Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground: it’s technically accurate but doesn’t quite capture the essence of the thing. So, I went looking for that essence.
I started at the state level, where Republican dominance is indisputable, using 1964 as a baseline. That year was a local maximum for Democrats after Johnson’s pounding of Goldwater. The path from there to our current, global minimum is shown in Figures 1-3.
Since 1964, partisan control of state governments has flipped three times, marked by vertical lines in the figures. (The data, found here, give the partisan count by year, which is a result of the election previous to that year. For example, the flip in governorships in 2012 resulted from the election of 2010. Keep this lag in mind for Figures 1-3.)
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3 (The data base did not include data before 1978 for Figure 3.)
The first reversal, in 1992, followed decades of Democratic supremacy. The only ripple had been in the late 1960s. That was driven by the Vietnam War, by protests of that war, and by new civil rights laws. We recovered quickly and even surged when Richard Nixon fell in 1974. From there, though, it’s been a long, downward slide. There were ups and downs along the way, which may have obscured the pattern. However, there was no obscuring the cliff we fell off in 1992. After a resurgence in 2004, we flung ourselves off another cliff in 2010.
If we look at the national data, found here, the pattern in the House and, to a lesser extent, the Senate is like that in the states. The charts below follow the the number of Democratic and Republican members. (State-by-state and district-by-district data can be found here.)
The national trend differs from that at the state-level in two ways. First, nationally, the collapse came in 1994 rather than 1992. Second, the pre-1992 decline is less dramatic.
Figure 4
Figure 5 Partisan Control
A stark visualization of what has happened to us, of the length and magnitude of our slide since 1974, is shown in Figure 6. There, the above curves for Democrats are isolated and simple linear regressions are fitted. They are a fair fit at best, but we are marking trends, not modeling data.
Figure 6 Decline of the Democratic Party
Figure 6A
Figure 6B
Figure 6C
Figure 6D
Figure 6E
These data show a Democratic Party that has undergone a long-term decline with a few step-like collapses. That is not a turnout problem.
There are several possible explanations for the pre-1992 decline. Among them are Republican appeals to racism in response to civil rights legislation, the rise of neoliberals and our turn toward Wall Street and away from labor, the weaponization of social conservatism, long-term economic and globalization trends, and the geographic distribution of each of these effects. The result has been an on-going realignment within the electorate. To counter these or other causes, they need to be identified and analyzed, not tossed in a “turnout” grab-bag.
What about the big collapses? In 1992, Bill Clinton ended twelve years of Republican administrations. Unfortunately, that was just as decades of Democratic domination of the states came to an end. That year saw the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot garner 19% of the vote. Clinton got 43%, Bush 37%. Perot was a conservative, but he also was a populist, proud outsider, and the original anti-NAFTA candidate. His votes may or may not have come out of Bush’s votes.
I believe the explanation for Clinton’s victory in the face of losses at the state level is, in part, that Clinton was a master campaigner: outgoing, optimistic, and connecting easily with people. A quality candidate can overcome a lot. The other part was the Bush recession. “It’s the economy, stupid.” State governments suffer less fallout from national economic problems.
But if 1992 was a mixed bag, 1994 was an unambiguous rejection of the Democratic Party. Between the infamous “Contract with America” and the anger ginned up against Clinton’s 1993 healthcare plan, Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey nationalized the election, invigorating and motivating Republicans, independents, and even some Democrats.
When Bush II handed the country back to Democrats, we did some heavy lifting with the Affordable Care Act. Then, in 2010, Republicans attacked, and we curled up shivering in the corner. Dick Armey’s obnoxious spawn that would become the Tea Party screamed and ranted with impunity. (It’s worth noting that Tea Party tactics elicited extensive media coverage, just as would Trump’s unhinged campaign six years later.)
In 2010, then, Republicans again presented a united front and a unifying cause to voters. Amazingly, the American electorate handed control of the ship of state back the very people who had just sunk it.
But 1994 and 2010 were midterm elections. Might they be explained, instead, by the old saw that Democrats unilaterally sit out midterms? The figure below traces the total or aggregate vote count by party for House candidates.
Figure 7 (The data are at Wikipedia, though you have to accumulate it year by year.)
Clearly, both sides yawn at midterms. To look closer, and to account for growth in the Voting Eligible Population seen in the rise to the right of both curves, the next figure shows the percent drop-off for each party in midterm elections from the previous, presidential election. Keep in mind that the data are votes cast, not a track of Party affiliation or leaning. Note, also, the negative scale of the ordinate.
Figure 8
Even the simplest metric is informative, here.
- The average Democratic fall off in a midterm from the previous election is -25.5%.
- The average Republican fall off in a midterm from the previous election is -24.4%.
Enough said – or almost. We do need to look at the steepest falls: 1994, 2010, and 2014 for Democrats and 1974, 1986, and 2006 for Republicans. We’ve discussed 1994 and 2010 and found them notable Republican successes in nationalizing midterm elections with overarching, unifying causes. 2014 is more complicated, as noted later.
In the years in which Republicans went over cliffs, Republicans again created national, unifying causes – just for Democrats instead of against them. 1974 saw Nixon resign after the Watergate drama. 1986 saw Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal. And 2006 saw the accumulated dissatisfaction with Bush and Republicans over the War in Iraq, the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, and the attempt to privatize Social Security.
The plots show a vexed, irritated, and adrift electorate reacting to events and searching for solutions rather than a series of turnout failures by each party in turn. And nothing here diminishes the data-driven narrative of a decades long, Democratic decline punctuated by the occasional devastating collapse. It is a long-term trend playing out against scandals, realignments, policy changes, recessions, wars, and a few political master strokes none of which were ours.
This matters. If we don’t get this right – the problems, their causes, and their solutions – Republicans are going to get a new constitutional convention and end American democracy.
But, but, but, … what about gerrymandering and voter suppression? Both are treacheries, and both must be fought tooth-and-nail. But both are tools to institutionalize the Republican oligarchy; they did not get us here. The level of gerrymandering we see today required a census coinciding with Republican dominance of state governments. That happened in 2010. Voter suppression took off when a Republican Supreme Court said it could. That happened in 2013. Each may have played a role in our 2014 drubbing but only a minor one during the previous four decades of decline.
For long-term patterns, we need long term explanations. Perhaps the most threatening example is the growing urban-rural divide. We owned labor, farm, and rural policy at one time. We may never again unless we recognize the problem and attack it.
None of this is to say that turnout does not require rigorous attention in every race. A turnout plan is a critical part of any campaign, but we have systemic problems that, if ignored, will cost us our democracy.
I’ve written before that Republicans own the presidency, the Senate, the House, 34 governorships, 32 state legislatures, 68% of state legislative chambers, and the Supreme Court even as they are making inroads into local government and furthering their goal of rewriting the constitution. We are that close to a Republican-fronted plutocracy.
I’ve asked before to see a turnout plan that would fix all this. I’ve yet to be shown one. Phone calls, social media, and knocking on doors are necessary, but if we expect voters to follow through and vote, we must give them a reason to do so.
That means candidates who connect with voters. That means policies that emphasize jobs and upward mobility, policies that benefit the middle class and labor. It means rural and Western policies that help and protect those Americans. It means tactics to nationalize House and Senate races behind such policies. It means presenting a consistent, optimistic, compelling, and even urgent Democratic vision to the public.
If you want voters to show up, give them a cause to believe in and to fight for. That is a turnout plan.
