When it was released in the wake of the 2015 off-year elections, this tweet by GOP strategist Rory Cooper crystallized a dilemma that has had Democrats fretting—and Republicans gloating—for quite some time:
Measured from the time of his inauguration, this statement is, in fact, true. The Democrats are at a considerably weaker position legislatively, both at the federal and state level, than they were as the confetti was swept up from that exceptional Democratic landslide of 2008. On that night, Democrats padded their federal majorities, swept to the White House with 365 electoral votes, and more than held their own legislatively.
Today, the Democrats have their smallest U.S. House delegation in decades, and hold roughly 44 percent of the state legislative seats in the United States, the smallest proportion in recent memory.
Cooper, undoubtedly, intended to lay this solely at the feet of President Obama (hence the “some legacy” crack). However, as many Democrats have noted, the party in the White House is perpetually in danger of losing down-ballot strength. It comes with the territory, logically, with being inevitably conjoined with the single individual that is often the focal point of voter discontent and rage.
However, as Larry Sabato and Geoffrey Skelley pointed out in an article for Politico last year after the midterm elections, the seat loss during the Obama years has been considerably worse than most of his fellow presidents. But is there a logical reason for this that should allay Democratic fears? The answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no.
Let’s start with a potentially relevant semantic argument that was put forth earlier in this month in a persuasive case made by the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent. Sargent cites a piece by Ron Brownstein, which argues that to be perfectly fair, the beginning point of the Obama impact should include the first national election that he was a part of:
Brownstein posits that the fairer way to measure this is to look at the number of seats that Democrats held after the election that took place before Obama won the presidency — that is, after the 2006 elections — and compare that total with the number they hold today (and, ultimately, to the number they hold after the election of his successor).
This is a reasonable argument. After all, to only count Obama’s successes from his inauguration day onward is to ignore his successful presidential bid. It is ludicrous, of course, to claim that Obama’s comparably comfortable win over Republican John McCain had no impact on the down-ballot fortunes of the Democrats. In that election, one should recall, Democrats picked off eight Senate seats, 25 seats in the U.S House, and over 100 state legislative seats.
Using the Sargent/Brownstein metric, the Democrats still take a sizable hit during the “Obama years,” but not nearly as profound a shot as the Cooper tweet implied.
That said, it is still a big hit. Even going by that metric, the Democratic slide that happened during the Obama period is still considerably worse than the average losses suffered by the party of other two-term presidents during their tenure of office.
What’s more, the not-so-great numbers for some of Obama’s predecessors were skewed a bit by the disparate size of state legislative bodies. For example, George W. Bush lost over 300 state legislative seats in his presidency, but more than one-third of those came from rising Democratic fortunes between 2001 to 2007 in a single state. Hardcore Daily Kos Elections fans already know the state, but for the uninitiated, it is New Hampshire, a state where the House of Representatives has a comically high 400 members. In that NH House, the GOP went from a 256-139 majority to a 161-239 minority, according to the Almanac of American Politics. Take New Hampshire out of the mix, and the GOP lost a considerably more modest share of state legislative seats than Obama did in the past seven years (or, for that matter, President Bill Clinton did during the 1990s).
In that relatively mild Republican fade, however, lies a logical explanation for the apparent sharpness of the “Obama decline.” And that, quite simply, is the American South.
Case in point—as recently as the inauguration of President George W. Bush in 2001, Democrats had modest-to-strong legislative majorities in the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Hell, they had a narrow majority in the Texas House, and were one seat away from the majority in the Texas Senate.
The marked decline in split-ticket voting, particularly in the South, has painted an artificially bleak picture of the state legislative state of play for the Democrats. Even as the GOP was getting destroyed down-ballot in most states during the Bush years, they actually managed marked improvements in most of the states listed above. They even claimed legislative majorities in a few chambers down South, even as the Republican Party was losing a net of 13 state legislative chambers nationwide.
This trend, of course, has continued unabated during the Obama years. If anything, it has accelerated rapidly. Consider the following states:
Southern state legislative shifts, 2007-2015
State |
Dem Seats 2007 |
Dem seats 2015 |
shift |
ALABAMA |
86 (62 H, 24 S) |
41 (33 H, 8 S) |
Dem −45 |
ARKANSAS |
102 (75 H, 27 S) |
46 (35 H, 11 S) |
Dem −56
|
LOUISIANA* |
87 (63 H, 24 S) |
56 (43 H, 13 S) |
Dem −31 |
MISSISSIPPI* |
100 (75 H, 25 S) |
68 (48 H, 20 S) |
Dem −32 |
No. CAROLINA |
99 (68 H, 31 S) |
62 (46 H, 16 S) |
Dem −37 |
Tennessee |
69 (53 H, 16 S)
|
37 (32 H, 5 S) |
Dem −32 |
west virginia |
95 (75 H, 23 S) |
53 (36 H, 17 S) |
Dem −42 |
In other words, nearly one-third of the national state legislative seats lost by the Democrats were actually lost in just seven states. Plus, if you add the rest of the South to the mix (Georgia added another 25 or so, as did Texas), you are getting close to a majority of the losses suffered by Democrats being taken from the blue team exclusively in the South.
Now, of course, it has to be noted that the South does not account for all of the losses. The Democrats, even without their long-established decline in the South, also would be at or above the historic average in seat losses elsewhere, as well.
Another clear factor was the absolutely horrific timing of one of the Democrats’ pair of landslide defeats during the Obama years. Political scientists will for decades study the impact of the 2010 elections. But one of the clear impacts is that it gave the GOP critical power to craft the legislative maps that every election since (and the next three elections, for that matter) will be conducted under. The impact in many states where the Democrats are normally competitive (Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania come to mind) was enormous. It is stunning to think that in states like Michigan and Ohio, to say nothing of recently competitive states at the presidential level like Florida and North Carolina, Democratic legislative majorities would require, at this point, some sort of political perfect storm.
Conversely, George W. Bush was comparably lucky—the two “wave election” defeats that visited his party came in 2006 and 2008, and actually left some low-hanging fruit for the Republicans to exploit in the 2010 cycle.
There are some additional phenomena that appear to be in play, as well. Next week, we will look at another potential down-ballot peril for the Democrats. Is it possible that Democratic voters are more likely to split their tickets than GOP voters? The evidence suggests that it might well be the case. Check back next Sunday for the details.