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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Of Dramatic Comebacks and Great Pushbacks

Reihan: And Republican strategists are confident that the president’s approval rating will continue to erode, which is why they’re banking on even bigger gains. Were any of these the same strategists who speculated that the GOP would gain seats in 2008? It’s easy to forget that there were more than a few pundits and analysts […]

Reihan:

And Republican strategists are confident that the president’s approval rating will continue to erode, which is why they’re banking on even bigger gains.

Were any of these the same strategists who speculated that the GOP would gain seats in 2008? It’s easy to forget that there were more than a few pundits and analysts on the right who believed this, which was based on the same assumption that the Democrats held too many “naturally Republican” seats, but there were. Obviously, the unusually high Democratic and unusually low Republican turnout in 2008 will not be repeated this year, but it is worth remembering that we have heard this story about a sizeable comeback in Congress once already in the last few years and it proved to be false.

What is the basis for this confidence in the future erosion of Obama’s approval rating? Since Obama’s post-Massachusetts nadir and some weakness during the final stages of the health care debate, Obama’s approval rating has improved slightly and held steady in the high 40s ever since. His approval has never dropped anywhere as low as Clinton’s did, and his average rating is higher than Clinton’s Gallup rating was at any point in 1994. It is likely that Obama’s approval rating has dropped about as far as it is going to drop.

There are two other problems with the assumption. For one thing, the economy has been growing steadily for the last three quarters, and there are some signs of steady job creation, which probably means that Obama’s approval will at the very least stay where it is. Considering how high the unemployment rate is, it is more than a little amazing that Obama’s approval rating has consistently remained above 45%. The other problem is that Obama’s approval rating has dropped below his 2008 share of the vote as much as it has largely because of disaffection among his core constituencies, and it seems that he has now stopped losing those supporters and could be slowly winning them back. Disaffection on the left may depress Democratic turnout, but over the last few months we have actually seen the “enthusiasm gap” narrowing. Republicans remain more highly motivated to vote, but they are typically more highly motivated to vote in midterm elections.

It hasn’t been remarked on much yet, and it may change in the coming weeks and months, but the generic ballot average on which so many ludicrous Republican predictions depend has been slowly shifting back to the Democrats in the last few months. As of today, the Democrats have a minuscule lead in the RCP generic ballot average. If the parties remain tied on the generic ballot, everyone acknowledges that Republicans will benefit because of their higher turnout, but it is still difficult to see how this translates into gains of more than 30 seats. It may now be a “commonplace observation” that the GOP can retake the House, but it remains a far-fetched prediction that the GOP definitely will do this, but that has not stopped pundits and House Republican leaders alike from issuing increasingly crazy forecasts of landslide triumphs with gains far in excess of the necessary 40 seats.

The more one looks at the individual seats that the Republicans have to win, the harder it is to see how they get there. I have mentioned Travis Childers’ local political appeal in MS-01 as an example of a House Democrat who may be able to survive in what has been heavily Republican territory for over a decade, and there are other races where local quirks and candidates may allow some vulnerable Democrats to hang on. Reihan mentions the Tea Party several times in his column, so it is worth adding here that Tea Party Express endorsed Walt Minnick, the Democratic incumbent in ID-01. That endorsement may or may not help Minnick in the fall, but it reminds us that Minnick is not a typical Democratic incumbent and may not be as vulnerable as he may appear. The quality of candidates matters and can turn a race one way or another. Minnick also has a substantial fundraising advantage. Most commentary on the midterms has consistently ignored the advantages that incumbents continue to have even in a cycle dominated by anti-incumbency sentiment, and chief among these is the ability to raise more money than their challengers.

Pennsylvania’s 12th District is one district that Republicans had no realistic chance of winning when Murtha was alive, and it is not certain that they will win it today, but I mention it here because PA-12 is one of the districts that Republicans must have and must hold to get anywhere close to gaining 40 seats this year. Pennsylvania’s 7th District, left open by Sestak when he left to run for the Senate, is another must-have seat that might see the conservative vote split between the Republican Joe Meehan and the independent Jim Schneller, and whose Democratic nominee will be decided today. Sestak won that district with 56% and 59% of the vote, and it is a district that was carried by Gore, Kerry and Obama. The district has a Cook PVI of D+3. Many analysts list the seat as a toss-up, but there is reason to think that this may be exaggerating the Republicans’ chances here. The primary upset of Mollohan in WV-01 has removed an incumbent tainted by hints of corruption and replaced him with a new Democratic nominee, which may make it more likely to be held by the Democrats. All of these examples suggest that local political conditions will define many competitive House races this year, and many of the districts that Republicans have to have to realize their “dramatic comeback” may not cooperate with the party’s self-congratulatory narrative.

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