Last weekend, I wrote a diary, "2010 Election Prospects & Strategic Organizing", in which I paid a lot of attention to the declining volatility of House elections, and the virtual disappearance of "swing-back" or "counterwave" elections, wave elections in one direction that follow and counter previous wave elections in the opposite direction. Looking at swing-back elections by the decade since 1900, I presented this revealing chart, showing how they've virtually vanished: Last 5
Elections Biggest
Decade Avg Swing Wave Swingback
1900 9.0 41 41
1910 8.5 61 61
1920 9.4 76 76
1930 9.6 97 52
1940 8.1 75 75
1950 8.1 49 28
1960 5.3 48 48
1970 4.7 49 0
1980 4.8 35 27
1990 3.0 54 0
2000 2.5 31 0
Once they were incredibly common, because elections as a whole were far more competitive, and the seats won in one wave election were particularly vulnerable to being lost in the next election, particularly if national fortunes changed... or failed to. But the fact that these elections are now so rare reflects the more basic fact that elections tend to be much less competitive, with relatively few incumbents ever losing compared to previous historical eras.
This was only one set of figures I presented, but it gets to the very heart of the matter--the once commonplace swing-back elections that Versailles still thinks are routine are not to be expected--though of course, they aren't impossible, either. Just rare as hen's teeth is all. In my conclusiuon, I wrote:
What the above figures strongly suggest is that the Dems are in no real danger of losing control of the House in 2010. That makes conditions ideal for progressives to shift their focus almost entirely from a "more Dem" to a "better Dem" strategy--up to and including letting some bad Dems lose this time around, to help send a message that there are consequences for lack of loyalty to those who elected you in the first place.
In this diary, rather than look at how things have changed in a historical trend of declining volatility, I want to take a look at the cycles of realignment, starting all the way back in 1800, if you'll join me on the flip.
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Known as the "Revolution of 1800," the House and Presidential elections of that year swept the Federalists out of power, never to return again. Because the Democratic Party endured throughout, we use its House strength as our continuous metric in all the charts below. The following chart shows how dramatically the power shifted from the 6 elections prior to 1800 to that of 1800 and the next five elections, more than 25 points:
Although party systems last considerably longer, the 6-election slice before and after a realignment is a particularly revealing view, since it generally contrasts the end of one party system with the beginning of another. This first one is an exception to the rule, since the First Party System is generally dated from the mid-1790s--prior to that the parties were relatively ill-defined, although historians have reconstructed de facto blocks which are used in the table above. The realignment to the Second Party system is hard to fit into this mold for a more profound reason--the Federalist Party disintegrated, after which the Democratic-Republican Party fragmented as well, into blocks that first surrounded powerful leaders, which couldn't be easily fit into party patterns. For that reason, I will simply skip that transition altogether.
The Third Party System realignment also shows a dramatic difference in partisan balance surrounding its realigning election-1860, a shift of 20 points:
Above we see that despsite the fact that Democrats had lost their commanding dominance of the Second Party system well before 1860, they still averaged almost 50% of the sets during a time when their opposition was not just fragmented, but highly fluid. Opposition shifted from the disintegrating Whigs to a number of different parties--most notably the American Party (No-Nothings) and the Republicans, who eventually triumphed.
The transition to the Fourth Party System is a particularly messy one. Usually realignment goes from a a party system dominated by one party to that dominated by the other. But the GOP dominated both of these party systems. The difference is that it had lost its dominance toward the end of the Third Party system, and the shift in House dominance clearly shows how that changed, with a slight Democratic edge dropping twelve points to yield solid Republican control:
The transition was messy for two other obvious reasons as well (along with some less obvious ones): first was the lack of synch in elections. The GOP won two House electins before 1896, but actually lost ground in the election where it captured the White House. The second messary aspect is that the GOP was deeply divided between the conservative business machine, which basically triumphed in 1896, and its more progressive wing, lead by the charismatic Teddy Roosevelt, who they tried to get rid of by making Vice President in 1900, only to have him become President when McKinnley was assassintated. Despite all this messiness, the change in hHouse balance from before to after remains quite striking, as seen above.
The realignment that looms largest in the contemporary political imagination is that of 1932, for obvious political reasons. It's also one of the largest shifts in House balance, 24 points:
There's no mistaking that this was a realignment of gigantic proportions.
Finally, we look at 1968, an election that signaled a transition between party systems, but a highly atypical one--a transition to a de-aligned system, where divided government came to the rule, not the exception. Confirming this, there was virtually no change in House balance, even as a new era began in which only one Democratic president would be re-elected over the next 40 years:
Given that this shows virtually no change, it's hardly surprising that the GOP was not able to win the House again until 1994, and then only keep a very slim hold on it. But is that pattern likely to continue now, though perhaps in reverse, with Democrats holding only a slight margin? It's possible, of course, and a GOP wave election in 2010 could certainly point in that direction. But again, I would argue that this not the most likely outcome. If we look at the last 6 House elections before 2008--even including the Democrat's 2006 wave, the Dem average was 48.58%, more than 10% lower than its 2008 share of 59.08%. Even assuming this is a particularly weak realignment, if it were to follow the pattern of 1896, the current House makeup would likely be about the average Democratic margin for the next 5 elections as well. Of course there's no guarantee of this. If the Dems were to embrace economic populism, they could well do much better than this. If they stumble, and the GOP is able to run as right wing populists they might even regain control themselves. But the historical pattern of realignments past favors the Democrats holding on to a House margin that's at least as big as the one they have now.
One more thing: the two consecutive wave elections the Democrats just won are historically rather puny. In 1930 they won an 11.9% wave, followed by 22.3% in 1932. In 2006 and 2008,the waves were 7.1% and 5.5% respectively. However, if one compares these waves to the average volatility in the two eras, the difference is rather small. Compared to the 1898-1932 average, the two-election wave as 3.8 times higher. Compared to the 2006-2008 wave, the two-election wave was 3.5 times higher. In short, this historically small double wave is still rather substantial for the era it has happened in.
This bodes very well for the chances that the Democratic majority will endure. Once again, this should encourage progressive populists to fight hard to gain dominance within this majority, rather than cowering in fear of losing it all. |
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