2022 ELECTIONS
All politics in the US have calcified
The “Red Wave” that never happened
Tip O’Neill, the former Democratic Speaker of the House, who served in Congress from 1952 to 1987 was a proponent of the belief that “all politics is local.” Throughout this time period, we saw Democrats consistently hold majorities in the House, despite what was happening at the national level.
Consider the 1972 election.
Richard Nixon won reelection to the presidency with a whopping 520 electoral votes while his Democratic opponent, George McGovern, won just 17. However, at the Congressional level, Democrats retained a majority in the House with 242 seats to Republicans’ 192 — this includes the 12 seats the Republicans gained due to Nixon’s coattails. Fast forward to 1984, when Ronald Reagan won reelection with 525 electoral votes to Walter Mondale’s 13. Yet again, Democrats retained control of the House, winning 253 seats and preserving O’Neill’s position as Speaker. The Republicans did pick up seats thanks to Reagan’s popularity, but they netted only 16.
These election results are unthinkable in today’s hyper-partisan climate.
Voters are no longer split-ticket voting, or voting for one party for president while voting for another at the congressional level. Instead, voters are straight-ticket voting, choosing Republicans or Democrats uniformly up and down the ballot. This can be seen in the pendulum swing associated with congressional majorities, with Democratic and Republican control regularly switching. Looking at the House of Representatives over the past 22 years, Republicans held a majority from 2000–2007, 2011–2019, while the Democrats held a majority 2007–2011 and 2019–2023. While Republicans held the majority for longer stretches of time, their hold on power pales in comparison to the 40-year majority held by the Democrats through 1994.
So, instead of all politics being local, political scientists, like Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster, have been asserting that all politics is, instead, national.
Newt Gingrich is largely credited with spurring this switch with his nationalization of the 1994 midterm elections, when he led the Republican Party to unified control of Congress for the first time since 1952 with the Republican-sponsored Contract with America.
Since the 1994 midterms, we have seen a steady increase in party loyalty among voters. This can be attributed to a steady increase in negative partisanship, with voters pointing to important policy differences between their party and the opposition, along with increased negative feeling thermometer scores handed out to opposition party members. So what’s uniting partisans is not necessarily a deep ideological connection to, or affection for, their own party, but rather a dislike of the opposition.
The 2022 Midterms
Going into the midterms, many people expected the Republicans to make large gains in the House. It is common for the president’s party to lose seats in a midterm election — especially in this era of negative partisanship and nationalized congressional elections. Given inflation, Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, and the general angst of the American public, many were prepared for the so-called “red wave.”
In fact, many political scientists rely on the fundamentals — in-party approval rating, economic approval, and incumbency — to forecast election results. As election results started to trickle in from Florida on Nov. 8, it seemed that the fundamentals were going to once again predict the out-party would win big.
Yet, as the night went on, it seemed Florida would be an outlier. As more and more results came in across the country, the “red wave” never materialized. In fact, the Democrats picked up a Senate seat with John Fetterman’s win in Pennsylvania and flipped three gubernatorial seats while Republicans flipped just one. In the House, Republicans have so far picked up seven seats, with four more yet to be decided. Based on the trends in ballots received, the best guess at these remaining four seats will net the Republicans three more seats, bringing their gains to just 10 seats in the House.
So, what prevented the “red wave?”
To answer that, let’s take a closer look at the crossover districts. These are districts that voted for Biden for president in 2020 and now elected a Republican representative, or voted for Trump for president in 2020 and now elected a Democratic representative. In all other congressional districts, we saw alignment between how those districts voted in the 2020 presidential election with how they voted in the 2022 midterms.
In just 23 of 435 congressional districts did the voters choose a candidate of the opposite party for which they voted in 2020. So, just 5-percent of congressional seats were crossovers, while 95-percent were synced with the presidential results of 2020. These results very clearly portray a nationalization of congressional races in 2022, despite the fact that this is actually an increase from just 16 crossover districts in 2020 (or about 4-percent of all districts). There are a total of five Trump Democrats and 18 Biden Republicans, suggesting that Biden voters are more willing to cross party lines than Trump voters, at least at this point in time.
Additionally, of these 23 crossover districts, 9 of them were open races while 14 saw an incumbent seeking reelection. Incumbency advantage once again proved its importance, as 11 of the 14 incumbents won reelection. Of the open contests, only one went to a candidate of the same party that held it previously, meaning eight of these open seats saw party changes. Notably, four of those eight seats were in New York, which actually proved to be the state with the biggest Republican gains, handing Republicans five new seats in Congress.
The Calcification of our Politics
So, what do all of these results mean for our political system?
It largely implies that we are a highly polarized country and we are stuck in this hyper-partisan state until something is able to dislodge a significant enough portion of the electorate to cause a shift in voting patterns. In other words, we’re calcified — to borrow a term from the influential work by John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck.
In this calcified system we are likely to see small shocks to the system create big changes in our elected leaders. Hillary Clinton’s unpopularity and the announcement that she was under investigation by the FBI due to her use of a private email server likely helped Trump secure the 78,000 votes across Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin needed to win the presidency. The Covid-19 pandemic caused enough voters (125,000 spread across Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) to support Biden over Trump, handing him the presidency. Both of these presidents won very narrow victories in just enough states in order to secure a majority in the Electoral College — highlighting how small changes can have large impacts. This is the hallmark of calcification. Voters today are rigid supporters of their party — it takes a lot (e.g. a political insurrection, the stripping away of constitutionally protected rights) to convince even a small portion of them to vote against their party identification.
In fact, many of these emerging issues get absorbed into the partisan divide that already exists rather than creating a point of discussion and reflection for American voters. This makes for easily predictable responses from both sides of the aisle on most issues. A mass shooting at a school? Republicans are likely to call for further armament of the American public (i.e. a good guy with a gun will more easily stop a bad guy with a gun), while Democrats will call for stricter gun regulation or elimination of privately owned military-style weapons. There will likely be no meaningful discussion of how to prevent this type of tragedy from happening again.
Should the government forgive student loan debt? Republican elected officials largely argue that individuals are responsible for paying off their debts rather than the federal government bailing them out. Democratic elected officials argue that the rising cost of higher education has saddled these students with debts far beyond previous generations, preventing them from meaningfully engaging in the American economy, which will cause bigger problems in the long run. Again, this debate gets absorbed into the already-formed partisan divide, sparking little movement on either side. Instead, it entrenches partisans even more in their respective political trenches.
Moving forward we are likely to continue seeing elections play out like 2016, 2020, and 2022. Shocks to the political system may create small shifts in voting patterns, but they are unlikely to cause large swings in partisan voting behavior. However, because of how rigid we are in our partisanship and how closely Congress is divided (Republicans are poised to have just a nine seat majority in the House and Democrats will have a one seat majority in the Senate if Senator Rafael Warnock wins the Georgia runoff election), these small shifts in voting patterns will continue to cause continuous swings in partisan control of Congress. This is the pattern we appear to be stuck with until something moves a large enough portion of the electorate to decalcify our political system.
