Future prospects for Republicans regaining Congress.

Great Debates
1

Firstly, I intend this thread for discussion of what the title says, namely the chances of the Republicans regaining Congress in the near future. It is not for Democrats to gloat, so lets keep that to a minimum, please.

I think the chances of Republicans gaining ground in Congress during the next two cycles are not very good. There are two trends that work against them: growth and gerrymandering.

Growth. After the 2000 election divided America into red and blue zones, many Republicans delighted in the fact that the fastest-growing parts of the country were all red. Now it’s no longer true. Nevada, the state that’s growing fastest percentage-wise, is now in the Democratic column. So is Florida, the state that’s growing fastest in absolute numbers. So are Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina, all of which are drawing millions of migrants. And while Georgia and Arizona still tipped to McCain, the prospect of those states turning blue is not as far-fetched as it once was.

Meanwhile, the strongholds for the Republicans in this most recent election are places not experiencing much growth: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the like.

In 2010 there will be a census, and seats in Congress (and electoral votes) will be shifted according to the movement of population. While the blue states in the northeast will lose a fair number of seats, it now seems that blue states elsewhere will pick up most of them.

In short the Republicans ignored one minor detail. When a state experiences rapid growth, people must be coming in from elsewhere. If blue states shrink while red states grow, it’s likely that migrants from the blue states will bring their liberal voting patterns with them.

Gerrymandering. This is when the Congressional districts in a state are divided up so as to favor one party. It happens all the time. In fact, without it the Republicans might have lost their Congressional majority much earlier than 2006. They used gerrymandering to snag six seats in Texas, five in Florida, and three or four in each of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Virginia. (Not that the Democrats are blameless either, but the Republicans got more advantages because they controlled more states.)

Now they face two problems. One, the Democrats have gained partial or total power over the state government in most of those states, so we’ll control the redistricting process. Two, it may be possible for President Obama’s Attorney General to simply overrule extreme cases of gerrymandering; it seems to be a legal gray area. The bottom line is that the Republicans will no longer get away with what they used to get away with. As a result, they’ll lose seats.

Here’s an example. Take a look at Congressonal districts in central Illinois. Note the bizarre shape of District 17. It was cut that way to put left-leaing cities together in one single district, which the Democrats always win. Meanwhile, the rest of central Illinois has a slight tilt to the Republicans, allowing them to win Districts 11, 15, 18, and 19. When the map of Illinois is redrawn in a more fair way, all of those districts will become more competitive. This favors the Democrats, since four Republican seats will be at risk.

Now imagine the same thing happening in large states all over the country, and the Republicans losing 10, 15, or more seats from un-gerrymandering alone.

So in toto, combining these trends with changing demographics nationwide, and the picture looks bleak for the Republicans.

2

Historically, the leads that the Democrat party now enjoys are not that big. Also the out of power party usually gains in the off year elections.
Much of the increased turnout that elected Obama was attributable to increases among young voters and black voters. Since Obama is not running in 2010 the turnout in these demographics is likely to revert toward the mean. Also the conservative vote was down this year and two years of Nancy Pelosi running the country should get more of them motivated to vote.
Karl rove had a good op-ed about this in the WSJ today. The last time a Democrat President has two years of Democrat control of Congress, the GOP had one of its best years in the next election. Of course events over the next two years will have the most effect on the election and no one knows what they are.

3

There’s a problem with your analysis - and it can be seen clearly in the even more strangely shaped District 4. As there are no Republicans around for this bizarre arrangement to benefit, this clearly was done to create a majority-minority district.

Do that too much, though, and you’ll bunch up tons of urban Democrats and create districtss favorable for Republicans to win, or eventually win.

As the Democratic Party hasn’t stressed representative politic so much as it has identity politics over the last umpteen years, this kind of thing can create tons of problems all by itself.

4

The country has been on a glacial march to the left ever since it was founded. There are ups and downs, but the general trend has been left. However, this does not mean it’s time to count the Republican party out. They are incredibly disciplined and they will restructure and figure out how to win votes back within the next 1 or 2 election cycles.

My guess for how? They are going to have to stop making certain issues Left vs. Right and just embrace them. I’m talking stem cell research, environmental regulations, alternative fuels, regulation of certain huge industries that “Joe Sixpack” perceives to be exploiting him. EVERYBODY I talk to, liberal and conservative, wants these things. They may want them in different ways, or to greater or lesser extents, but they want them. And it’s going to take a lot of work for people to truly believe that the Republicans want these things. Most people who believe in global warming, for instance, don’t seem to be comfortable voting for a Republican, and more and more people are believing in global warming. They are going to have to work hard not just to change their stances on these issues, but to reverse their whole image on them.

They also - and I’m heavily biased here and I could be wrong - in my opinion they also need to rein in the religious issues. More and more people are losing their religion or becoming more liberal in their beliefs and the perception of Republicans as the hardline Christian conservative party is turning a lot of people off. The number 1 thing that I heard from people who were turned off by Sarah Palin was not that she was dumb or inexperienced - it was that she was too fundamentalist in her religious beliefs and people were afraid she would bring them to the white house.

5

I’m going to have to agree with you, here. The main reason I voted heavily Democrat in this last election is that I don’t like the Republicans using religion to inform their politics.

Stop telling my friends they can’t get married. Stop telling my friends they can’t get an abortion. Stop treating me as a second-class citizen because I don’t worship your god. Basically, just run the government, leave religion to the churches, and I’ll seriously consider voting for your party.

6

The People want results.

If the Dems do not provide them, the Reps have a chance.

Be practical.

7

From what I understand, this sort of thing is pretty much court-mandated. I think they frown on it if your state is (to use Illinois data from 2000) about 16% black and 12% Hispanic, yet all 19 Congressional districts are majority non-Hispanic white. There was some big federal lawsuit out here in Massachusetts about the matter, after the last redistricting. I don’t know how it turned out, other than our Speaker of the House being convicted of perjury for his testimony denying involvement in the process. Of course, the redistricting plan had nothing to do with disenfranchising minorities, that was just a side effect of him carrying out a personal vendetta against one of our Congressmen for supporting clean elections legislation.

8

You have to look at why the Republicans lost Congress. It’s been a combination of moral miscues by lots of Republicans and growing rejection of Republican results. They can do better if the Dems screw up, or if they change course. With shifting demographics, standing up against immigration reform is going to be a big loser. I think try to block Democratic programs will be another big loser. Despite the ranting of how people had a lower approval rating of Congress than of Bush, the polls actually showed that the Dems in Congress (except for Pelosi) had a higher rating than the Republicans. People elected the Dems to, among other things, get out of Iraq, and they were smart enough to see who was keeping this from happening. If on the other hand the Republicans are cooperative, and the reforms don’t work, they can say that they gave it a chance and reap the benefit.

I’d expect some Republican gains in 2010 unless things really get better or they are obstructionist.

9

It would really help if Republican candidates stopped intentionally insulting large groups of their constituents by insinuating that they are not “real” Americans.

10

The calculus seem to be that those so insulted would not vote Pub anyway. Maybe they need to rethink that assumption. But, it will remain largely true until the party purges its hard-right wing.

11

“Democratic Party,” please. Or “Democrats.” The phrase “Democrat party” is used by GOP asswipes to get under our skin. When you use it, no one of good faith will pay attention to anything you have to say.

–Cliffy

12

Precisely put.

13

I don’t know about that . . . The Depression was still going on in 1936, but FDR and the Congressional Dems got re-elected anyway. The people at least appreciated an effort was being made.

14

I agree. I think any level of Congressional control is strictly temporary, for either party.

15

As a Republican, if I were running for national office in 2010, the first thing I would do is point out that Obama and the Demos were enthusiastic for this clusterfuck of a bailout plan while the Reps (forget for a minute that we did vote for it eventually) were the cynical ones. The entire stratigery of my campaign would be that Americans in general have a short memory and that if the economy problems are not cured by 2010 (and few think that it will) that it would be easy to blame the Demos for it.

It’s true that both sides of the aisle are responsible and that no one has a clue how to fix the economy - but situations like that always hurt the party in power. Just ask John McCain.

16

This is all pretty much exactly what I think. If Iraq and the economy and social security and house prices aren’t fixed to the expectations of the nation by 2010, the people will vote their dissatisfaction and give the Republicans some power back.

Two years is a long time, though. It’s certainly possible to start seeing improvements in all of these areas enough to convince Americans to keep Democrats in power. We have better economic times under Democrats than Repblicans in the past 20 years.