Is the United States Becoming More Parliamentarian In Congressional Elections?

A re-posting from WFAE's The Party Line with the graphics included:

As many of the post-election commentaries pronounce a host of reasons (the better candidate in political workmanship, the novice challenger, a localized race that went national) why the once disgraced, now redemptive, Sanford won, we might want to view a more important component of his victory: the voters of the first congressional district.

If it wasn’t for Sanford and his baggage, most all analysts would have written off the Lowcountry contest as a “safe Republican” seat, due to the fact that Mitt Romney carried the district by 18 percent in the 2012 presidential election.

In fact, this kind of “landslide” district has become the national norm in U.S. House contests.

In Nate Silver’s analysis of the 2012 U.S. House races, he found that in 2012, only 35 districts—less than ten percent of the 435 contests—were “swing” districts, meaning that the district results were within five percentage points of the national popular vote margin.

More importantly, it appears that House elections are showing a closer alignment with the overall electoral patterns of voters, especially using the presidential returns.

In the 1^st Congressional District election, I took the precinct returns from the 2012 presidential election and asked, would those presidential results have any possible predictive power to an election six months later? 

Meaning, would Romney performance in each precinct give an indicator of Sanford’s performance as well?  Conversely, would Obama’s performance indicate how Colbert Busch would perform as well? 

Using Romney’s performance on the horizontal axis and the preliminary numbers for Sanford on the vertical axis for the largest county (Charleston) in the 1^st District, here’s the result:

Romney’s Vote Share in 2012 Presidential Election and Sanford’s Vote Share in 2013 Special Election in Charleston County

With a few exceptions (most notably a precinct where Romney got only 8% of the vote, but Sanford got 34% of the vote), the vote share alignment between Romney and Sanford is pretty striking. 

And even though Obama won Charleston County in 2012, the relationship between his vote share and Colbert Busch’s vote share in that county is also striking.

Obama’s Vote Share in 2012 Presidential Election and Colbert Busch’s Vote Share in 2013 Special Election in Charleston County

So what might this mean?  One explanation might be that the United States is becoming more “parliamentary” in its national legislative elections: it doesn’t matter who the candidate is (hiking boots and all the relevant baggage), but what does matter is the voters’ party allegiance. 

This would tend to make us more along the lines of British elections, where the voters cast their ballots for the party; the “candidate” standing as that party’s choice to be the member of Parliament really doesn’t matter, because that candidate was picked by the party without any voter input. 

Granted, U.S. primary elections have become “the” election, rather than the general election, because, as Silver pointed out, more and more districts are “landslide” in their behavior (117 Democratic and 125 GOP districts in 2012’s House elections were 20 points or more above the national popular vote). 

So, it appears that even in a contest, headed by candidate who suffered from both self-inflicted wounds and a deep drive to win, the district behaved as it should—and gave the landslide win that most of us should have expected, but didn’t.  

The Need for Independent Redistricting in North Carolina

This post appeared on WFAE's The Party Line. 

A bi-partisan bill has been introduced into the N.C. House of Representatives to hand over the redistricting process in the state to an independent commission, and thus give up one of the most important powers that any majority party has: pre-determining which party will win each district through political gerrymandering.

The legislation would charge the Legislative Services Office with drawing congressional and legislative districts without the use of “political affiliations of registered voters, previous election returns, [or] demographic information, other than population head counts.” 

In addition, the bill states that no district “shall be drawn for the purpose of favoring a political party, incumbent legislator, or member of Congress, or other person or group, or for the purpose of augmenting or diluting the voting strength of a language or racial minority group,” along with barring the use “of any of the addresses or geographic locations of incumbents.”

In the game of politics, this would be a radical departure for the next round of redistricting in the state in 2021—but one that would probably earn the legislators some form of public admiration, because the parties would be giving up their power over the voters.

In looking at the consequences of the most recent redistricting done by Republicans in 2011, we can see what the “victors” do with their spoils in winning control of the redrawing process. 

In the 2012 election under the new legislative maps, Republicans created safe districts for both themselves and for Democrats—but created disportionately more districts for the GOP than the opposition.

In the state senate, six contests out of fifty could be considered “competitive” (meaning that the winner received less than 55% of the vote).  In fact, three times as many seats (18) had no opposition contesting the election.

If all of the state senate votes for Democratic and Republican candidates were added up respectively across the state, Democratics garnered 47% to Republican’s 53%.  But Republicans ended up with 66% of the seats to Democrats’ 34%, creating a disproportionate advantage for the Republican party.

In the state house, a similar pattern emerged: Republican candidates garnered 51% of the total state-wide vote, but won 64% of the seats in the chamber.

In fact, nearly half of the 120 seats in the house went uncontested (27 automatically went to Republicans, while 28 went to Democrats).  A little over ten percent (14 seats) could be considered “competitive” in terms of the winner securing less than 55% of the vote.

So it appears that political gerrymandering seems to exist in the North Carolina General Assembly districts.

Another way to look at this gerrymandering is to explore the relationship between presidential voting in the district and the voting for the district’s legislative candidates. If the district was “competitive,” then there could be districts that, for example, voted for Obama while, at the same time, voted for a Republican for the state house.

In only ten percent of the 120 state house seats did the presidential candidate of one party win in the same district as the opposition party’s legislative candidate.  For example, in District 92, Obama carried the district with 54% of the vote while the Republican state house candidate won with 51% of the vote. 

In District 119, Mitt Romney won the district with 51% of the presidential vote while the Democratic legislative candidate won the same district with 52% of the vote. 

With so few districts having ‘split-ticket voting’ patterns, it is notable that the Romney vote in a district has a strong correlation to the vote cast for the Republican House candidate. 

Correlation between a District Voting for Mitt Romney

and the Republican State House and Senate Candidates

In the upper chamber, only two districts out of 50 saw the two parties split the contests at the presidential and state senate. 

In District 19, Obama won by a little over 500 votes, but the Republican won the state senate seat with 54% of the vote.  In District 25, Romney won with 58% while the Democrat claimed the senate seat with 53% of the vote.

One could attribute the strong correlation in both chambers between the presidential and state legislative races to the drawing of district lines that favor one party over another from the top of the ballot down. 

But if the districts were drawn without regards to party affiliation, past election results, and ignorance of an incumbent’s address, the legislative races in North Carolina might reflect a long-held belief of American democracy: that the voters should pick the candidates, rather than the candidates picking the voters.

Welcome a new addition to NC Politics blogs

Welcome to Thomas Mills' new blog about North Carolina politics: http://www.politicsnc.com/

So Now What Happens Inside SCOTUS?

This entry appears at WFAE's The Party Line: 

So now the briefs and oral arguments are filed in the same-sex marriage cases with the U.S. Supreme Court—now what?

As probably one of the least transparent institutions of our government, the court’s decision-making process is left up solely to the nine members of the high court.  But we do know, from the research on judicial politics in political science, that this period between the court’s public arguments and the release of a decision (expected in late June) can be just as crucial as any public discussion.

Typically at the end of a week of oral arguments, the justices will gather in the court’s conference room to deliberate on the cases heard that week.

The Chief Justice leads the discussion and moves the deliberation along from justice to justice.  Each associate justice has the opportunity to present their perspective to the other justices.  No other official, be it a clerk or staff member of the court, is allowed in the room during their deliberations. 

Following their discussions, the justices take their votes (if not already determined by their discussions).  This is just the opening stage of the process, though, in that whichever side gains the critical number of votes early on (5 in the case of 9 justices), the real process of voting comes with the opinion writing.

This process of opinion writing turns into a critical component of negotiations and deliberations on paper between the various justices.  Based on some “tea-leave readings” by some commentators, the DOMA case appears to have at least 5 members of the court (the four more liberal justices—Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan—joined by the “swing” justice, Kennedy) on striking down the federal law. 

California’s Proposition 8 case appears to be truly up in the air as to how the court will decide it.

One other critical facet is the role of the Chief Justice in the opinion writing stage. If Chief Justice Roberts is in the majority, the chief has the option of assigning a justice to write an opinion for the majority, or could assign the opinion to himself. 

This could mean that if the Chief Justice wants to control who writes the opinion, he would vote with the liberals and could assign it to Kennedy, thereby getting potentially a more moderate decision that the four liberals would want.  If Roberts isn’t in the majority, then the senior associate justice in the majority would control the opinion assignment, and that’s Anthony Kennedy. 

During the opinion writing stage, justices send their drafts back and forth, seeking comments and suggestions.  Sometimes justices can change their votes during this stage, moving from the minority to the majority if there are accommodations made to include their viewpoints.

Othertimes, the “majority” opinion can be badly splintered across the justices, with some justices supporting different sections of the opinion (what some law students call an “Excel” opinion, because you need a spreadsheet to keep up with who is in the majority at what point in the opinion). 

This can create a coalition of justices supporting different parts under different judicial reasonings.

But pointing back to the oral arguments discussion and the eventual opinion released, things can change dramatically, as in the case of Chief Justice Roberts—usually associated with the more conservative justices—who spared Obamacare from an unconstitutional ruling. 

The Affordable Care Act decision, in which it appeared to be a 4-1-4 ruling, aparently came about due to Chief Justice Roberts apparently switching his vote during the opinion crafting stage. 

This process of negotating and bargaining during the opinion writing stage can be one of the most influential components to the eventual decision by the Supreme Court, but one that is often hidden from public view.

And now the country waits to hear the high court’s ruling and reasoning. 

Can The GOP Appeal to Voters Who Roll Their Eyes?

This blog post appears at WFAE's The Party Line and includes the graphics for the 2012 general election that was not included there.

In their rather blunt assessment of the debacle that was the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee came to a simple conclusion: we can’t continue down the path we’re currently on and remain political relevant.

In particular, the report acknowledged that “[y]oung voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us” (page 4).

With North Carolina being the closest state that the GOP presidential candidate won in 2012 and that continues to be a battleground presidential state, the Republicans should also look more in-depth at these two voting blocs to see what specifically they are up against in future electoral contests.

In the 2012 general election, voters who were 18-25 years old made up 10% of the ballots cast, while those 26-40 were 22%, those 41-65 were 48%, and those 66 and older were 20% of the ballots cast.

Granted, 10% of the total electorate isn’t that much, but considering that Romney won this state by only 2% out of 4.6 million votes cast, GOP and Democratic strategists should investigate their perspectives. 

If you look at the party registration figures within these various age groups, you will find the reason why GOP is bringing new resolve to attracting younger voters.

For those voters who entered the political realm in 2012, barely a quarter of them were registered Republicans.  Among the next age group, registered Republicans were tied with registered unaffiliated voters, which should be a worrisome sign for the Grand Old Party. 

Within the youngest voter bracket, the party registration figures between white votes and non-white voters show a devastating difference between the two groups.

Only 4% of non-white voters were registered Republicans, in comparison to non-Hispanic/Latino white voters, a plurality (42%) a plurality of whom were registered Republicans.

Granted, we would expect Southern white voters to lean Republican, but the groups that are experiencing the largest growth in population, and soon to be electoral strength, are non-white voters. 

In breaking down non-white voters casting ballots, we would expect black voters to be overwhelmingly registered Democrats, and the numbers from last year’s general election show that 81% of 18-25 year old black voters were registered Democrats, with 17% being registered unaffiliated. Only 2% of young black voters were registered Republicans.

Among the other key demographic group, Hispanic/Latino voters, registered Democrats made up nearly half of each age group, but as you go from older to younger Hispanic/Latino voters, the percentage of registered Republicans drops from 25% to 13%. 

If your party can’t even get a growing population to register with your party, how do you expect them to vote for your part?  The only saving grace for the GOP among NC Hispanic/Latino voters is the fact that 38% of young voters are registered unaffiliated, and so they may be open to future persuasion.

But if the national party choose to continue its current trajectory, that of being overwhelmingly white and older, it will work its way into minority status at the national level.

Andrew Kohut, former president of the Pew Research Center, has written that the Republican Party has found itself “estranged from America.”

According to the Pew Research Center, a plurality of GOP (45%) identify themselves as “staunch conservatives,” and of these Republicans, 92% are white.  This group is also male, Protestant, and at least 50 years old. 

And among this significant group within the GOP, the animosity to President Obama and the view that the growing number of Latinos in America is a “change for the worst” may not allow the party move its message into one that is more welcoming to minorities and young voters. 

As I’ve noted before, North Carolina’s new status of presidential battleground state may offer the national GOP a chance to roadtest a new message to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate.  But if the members behind the party refuse to accept the “new message,” it doesn’t matter how many Facebook pages, tweets, or other social media initiatives the party develops.

Nationally, the Grand Old Party could continue to find itself the “not-so-Grand and very Old white Party.”  

Fiscal Cliff? Thelma & Louise Fiscal Calamity? More Like Fiscal Perfect Storm

This piece appears at WFAE's The Party Line under the title "Kabuki Dance Underway Amid Fiscal Cliff" and is reprinted here. 

The Fiscal Cliff. Fiscal Armageddon. The Thelma and Louise Fiscal Calamity. It may go by many names, but since the election is over and the status quo has been returned to Washington, the nation’s great debate turns to the fiscal and budgetary matters that are ticking down faster than the Mayan predictions of the end of the world.

In short, we hear of this great economic catastrophe the country faces, more probably accurately named the Fiscal Perfect Storm.

The first whammy: the tax rate reductions put into effect in the first two years of the George W. Bush administration are set to expire, with rates returning to what they were in the Clinton administration. 

The second whammy: “sequestration” due to the lack of Congressional will to come up with their own spending reduction plan.  Since Congress couldn’t trust itself to come up with spending cuts on their own, they took the political courage to impose automatic cuts across the board through the Budget Control Act of 2012.

These cuts affect both defense and domestic discretionary spending and are across the board.  The federal budget is made up of two basic components: mandatory spending (on things that are out of year-to-year control of Congress, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other spending that is set by law that must be spent), and discretionary spending, which includes defense spending and all domestic spending that we typically associate with the federal government.

The third whammy: the debt ceiling.  As part of the Budget Control Act, the debt ceiling was raised as part of the package, but that ceiling was only slated to get the Congress and the White House past the 2012 elections.

And so, with the elections in the rear-view mirror now, the country is getting once again close to its credit card limit.

With these three whammies—tax rates returning to pre-2001 & 2003 levels, spending cuts across the board, and the nation’s credit card being maxed out—it’s more than just a cliff we seem to be heading towards, but rather a perfect economic storm.

Demonocracy.info presents a “visualization” of many issues, especially economic perspectives, and has a great resource on the implications of what we are facing at the end of the year. 

So, how do we get past this storm? The election really didn’t send a clear signal other than both Democrats and Republicans were returned to office—and the sense from the electorate was, “work together.” 

But can both sides really work together when they have such fundamentally different views? 

One of the key reasons that we are in the midst of the kabuki theater antics of both political sides is because there is no political “middle.”

Two political scientists, lead by Dr. Keith Poole at The University of Georgia, has developed a measure to compare individual members of Congress (MoCs) to their colleagues when it comes to voting on economic issues.

Their calculations take individual MoC votes on economic issues and “line members up” in their “yea” and “nay” votes in comparison to the chamber as a whole.  The final results put the votes into a measure of how “liberal” (meaning, voting for more government involvement in economic issues) or “conservative” (voting for less government involvement in economic issues) the members are.

The measures give us a spectrum of members in both the House and Senate, lining up from -1.5 being the most liberal member casting votes on economic issues to 1.5 being the most conservative member casting votes on economic issues. 

Using an assumption that a “moderate middle” is between -0.25 and 0.25, we can map out where most members fall on this spectrum for both parties.

In the 1950s, the U.S. House of Representatives had two political parties with members in the “middle” when it comes to economic issues.  For example, the 84^th House of Representatives had Democrats who were “more conservative” than some Republicans, and Republicans who were “more liberal” than Democrats. 

The 84^th House of Representatives (1955-56): Frequency of

Democrats and Republicans based on Economic Dimension of Voting

In addition, both parties had significant numbers of members in the “middle” range (-0.25 to 0.25), meaning that these moderate members between the two red lines shared similar ideas on economic issues when it came to casting their votes on bills. 

Fast forward to the 111^th House of Representatives (we’re currently in the 112^th, but the preliminary measures aren’t that far off from what we see currently) and there is a very different set of parties.

The 111^th House of Representatives (2009-2010): Frequency of

Democrats and Republicans based on Economic Dimension of Voting

In our modern House of Representatives, the moderates are non-existent and the parties have moved increasingly to their polarized ends of the spectrum.

The U.S. Senate, the body once described as the “saucer” to cool the passion of the “cup” that is the House by our nation’s first president,” has experienced a similar movement from the political parties of the 1950s to today. 

So where is the group who will make the compromise between the two parties, especially in the House? 

One of the key obstacles that the House Republican leadership is facing is within their own rules, known as the “majority of the majority” rule.  As NPR has reported, House Republicans will not bring up a measure to vote unless a majority of the GOP conference (made up of all House Republicans) supports the measure. 

And by all indications, the majority of the GOP majority are not budging.

Some would argue that with what the country is facing long term, the jump off the cliff may not necessarily be the worst thing. But what the private markets (i.e., Wall Street) hate is uncertainity, and what politicians and the general public hate is a Wall Street roller-coaster ride; we may see a short-term solution after both sides are done with their kabuki dance.

But dark clouds are still gathering when there isn’t some longer-term solution to our fiscal storm. 

Tonight's the Night: Election 2012

I'll be working with WFAE (Charlotte's NPR News Station) tonight for Election Coverage. I'll also be on Twitter (my handle is @CatawbaPolitics or--if I get put into Twitter Time Out on that account--my alternate account is @BowTiePolitics) and will be tweeting a lot there, along with posting some info here.

I hope you got the chance to get out and vote today and are looking forward to tonight's results. The long hard road of the 2012 Campaign is near--hang in there!  Michael

Entering the Waning Days of North Carolina Early Voting

As we head into the waning days of early voting in North Carolina, here's the latest update (as of Tuesday, Oct. 30) on the numbers of Tar Heel voters heading to the polls before the official Election Day (the following numbers are of "accepted" ballots so far):

• 1,562,112 in-person (walk-in) ballots cast
• 132,524 mail-in ballots 
• 5,495 "others" (e-mail and fax requested) ballots

These numbers represent an increase of 26% over the cumulative same-day totals in 2008 (nearly 1.7 million so far this year compared to 1.3 million this same date in 2008). 

In looking at "walk-in" (in-person/one-stop) ballots cast so far, North Carolina is running approximately 17% ahead of the cumulative total on the same day in 2008. However, Monday's preliminary totals reflected a drop of about approximately 22,000 ballots from the same day in 2008.  This is probably due to the impact of Hurri-blizzard Sandy, especially on the coast and in the mountains.  

Cumulative Totals of In-Person Absentee Ballots Cast in North Carolina: Comparison of 2008 to 2012

In terms of the three major party affiliations in North Carolina, all three are still ahead of their cumulative 2008 totals at the same point in time; however, Democrats have dropped to 50% of the total ballots cast so far, while Republicans are 29% and Unaffiliated Voters are at 19% of the total in-person absentee ballots cast so far.

Cumulative 2012 to 2008 In-Person Absentee Ballots Cast in NC by Registered Voter Party Affiliation

In looking at each party's daily activities, Democrats, with the exception of Monday, are over-performing their 2008 numbers. Interesting, both Republicans and Unaffiliated voters also over-performed their 2008 numbers, including on Monday--but just barely (Republicans added 1,627 over their 2008 numbers and Unaffiliated voters added 589 over their 2008 numbers).

Again, my experience has been that these numbers will be revised in the next few days.

Daily 2012 Compared to 2008 In-Person Registered Ballots Cast in North Carolina by Registered Democrats

Daily 2012 Compared to 2008 In-Person Absentee Ballots Cast in North Carolina by Registered Republicans

Daily 2012 Compared to 2008 In-Person Absentee Ballots Cast in North Carolina by Registered Unaffiliated

 In looking at the racial composition of the in-person absentee ballots cast so far, both white and black voters did experience a drop in their numbers on Monday relative to their 2008 same day total.  However, this number will most likely readjust in the next few days, along with the impact of Sandy.

2012 Compared to 2008 In-Person Absentee Ballots Cast in North Carolina by White and Black/African-American Voters

Nevertheless, white voters continue to compose 65% of the in-person absentee ballots cast, while black voters are 30% (in 2008's total electorate--combining both early and Election Day--they were 22%), while "all other races" are at 5% of the total in-person ballots cast.