Election Depression

~ Laura

It's Election Day, and I suppose I should write a post on it even if I'm not motivated to write much.

Predictions? Well, one of the number crunching bloggers would do a better job on this than I can. Nate Silver is predicting the House will go to the Republicans with a gain of 54 seats and the Senate will keep a small Democratic majority. I defer to the stats geeks on this one.

The Tea Party Movement? I remain unconvinced that the Tea Party movement is a serious movement or that it explains any changes in party preference. Many of their picks are going to crash and burn today. The crappy economy explains everything.

Impact of divided government? So, we're most likely to have a Dem president and at least one house will be Republican. Does this mean that the Republicans are going to undo the last two years of progress? Are we looking at deadlock in Washington with two years of stalemate and inactivity? There is actually lots of research on this question, and I'll dredge up the good stuff later, if necessary. But, let me just say now that I'm not really worried that one house of Congress is going to be able to change much.

The gubernatorial races? Silver is predicting that the number of Republican Governors will increase from 19 to 30. I'm slightly more worried about this.

I'm getting dressed to go to the polls right now. I can't go after school with the boys like I usually do, because they have too many after school activities today. I'm going with a heavy heart, because I'm going to have so few choices this year. Many of the races were uncontested. This may be the first year that I do a write-in vote for "Mickey Mouse."

Published by Laura

22 thoughts on “Election Depression”

  1. “I remain unconvinced that the Tea Party movement is a serious movement or that it explains any changes in party preference. Many of their picks are going to crash and burn today. The crappy economy explains everything.”
    I think the Tea Party has made a big difference in the candidate mix. All sorts of unlikely characters (weirdos, doctors, women, a rocket scientist and Black conservatives) have decided to run this year as Republicans. Sure, a lot of them will lose, but what’s really interesting is that no Democratic seat is being treated as untouchable. A lot of the Republican candidates are going over the top (in the WWI sense) and storming entrenched incumbents. A lot of the Republicans are going to fail, but a lot of unexpected seats will change hands. I’m very curious to see how close the Barney Frank/Bielat race is going to be.

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  2. A lot of the Republican candidates are going over the top (in the WWI sense) and storming entrenched incumbents.
    A lot of the Republican candidates are going over the top in other senses, which is at least entertaining. I recall 1994, when I was a graduate student and as attentive to political scientists as I’ve ever been. I didn’t hear anyone around the department talking about Congress shifting hands. I’m not sure if the lesson is not to underestimate Republicans or not to trust the conventional wisdom. Possibly, I’d just pissed off all of the legislative politics people so they never told me anything.

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  3. I remember 1994 as a grad student as well, and I don’t remember a lot of talk about Congress changing hands either. I think much of the difference is improvements in polling technology, and then also a change in the way people think about polling; I don’t remember people making a lot of long-range forecasts, and talking about developing legislative agendas in response to such forecasts, back then. I think Gringich, as crazy as he often is, really was a game-changer in that regard.

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  4. I recall 1994, when I was a graduate student and as attentive to political scientists as I’ve ever been. I didn’t hear anyone around the department talking about Congress shifting hands.
    If today goes as planned, my planned celebratory act is to take an hour or so and assemble all the posts that political scientist professors wrote around November ’08 declaring that the Republican party was official dead.

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  5. I remember 1994 as a grad student as well, and I don’t remember a lot of talk about Congress changing hands either.
    But you were theory, right? Those guys barely remembered to wear shoes.

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  6. If today goes as planned, my planned celebratory act is to take an hour or so and assemble all the posts that political scientist professors wrote around November ’08 declaring that the Republican party was official dead.
    Predictions made by a bunch of people who never read Nixonland. First time tragedy, second time farce and all that. The question isn’t who gets elected but will the pundits have an accurate understanding of it. I suspect they will misread what happens in much the same way they misread ’66.

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  10. If today goes as planned, my planned celebratory act is to take an hour or so and assemble all the posts that political scientist professors wrote around November ’08 declaring that the Republican party was official dead.
    Yeah, I wrote something like that as well–“Left Conservatism in a Liberal America,” or something like that. I thought my post this morning would be my only one, but maybe I’ll have to pull that up for a reconsideration as well.

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  11. I always ignore all the predictions, because they don’t make any difference to me. If the predictions come true, my (uncelebratory) act will be to send my money around to send money around to my political base (which is personal liberty issues). Maybe the ACLU will get the 25K they asked for or the HRC (Human Rights Council, and not Hilary). It looks like our income tax will go down, and that will leave me some money to spend in the way most likely to offend those who voted against it.
    I had hoped that 2008 had broken the coalition of bigots and the wealthy that helped Republicans win elections in the post-civil rights era, and can only hope that’s not the coalition that explains any successes they end up with in this mid-term election.

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  12. OK. I really want to understand this whole “tag” closing business. Anyone want to send me to a website that will explain the mysteries?

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  13. BJ, See this for tags. Note that many of those tags will not work in a comment box. The ones that are listed below the “Post a comment” box are the only ones I’ve used here. To close them, you insert a “/” (slash) in front of the ‘b’ or ‘i’.

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  17. Ok, now you have to translate, so that Laura isn’t a victim of language fraud (prank/insult/harrassment?), like the couple in the Maldives.

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  19. Whatever the election results, I remember:
    “How small, of all that human hearts endure,/The part which kings or laws can cause or cure.”
    Though I suppose that isn’t the sort of thing to tell a political scientist!

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  20. Barney Frank has won. Doesn’t look like it was close. But we lost our Democratic state rep. CorruptSmallTown is very Republican–amazing he was elected in the first place (if you head east of here in our district, it gets more Democratic). I actually voted for this guy years ago when he ran against the Democratic opponent of same sex marriage.

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  22. You are a bunch of socialistic fools. “socialism |ˈsō sh əˌlizəm|
    noun
    a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
    • policy or practice based on this theory.
    • (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.
    Or would you be more comfortable with Progressives?

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