With Parker Griffith handily losing the Republican primary in Alabama's fifth congressional district last night, both members of Congress who switched parties in 2009 have now been defeated in primaries in 2010 (two weeks ago, Arlen Specter was handily defeated by Joe Sestak). Politico is likely correct to argue that this will likely have a chilling effect on party switching in general:
The upshot of the resounding losses by Specter and Griffith is that, at least in the near-term, it may be more difficult than ever to woo party-switchers. That's because implicitly or, more often, explicitly, a flip is made contingent on the basis that the new party will support the switcher.
That can mean securing a plum committee assignment, clearing the primary field, guaranteeing financial help and extending endorsements.
But if none of that adds up to persuade voters to renominate their convert, what's the point of jumping?
No one should be surprised at voters rejecting politicians who backstab their old friends in an attempt order to keep their job. There is little reason to trust politicians like that.
Still, two other examples in recent years--Joe Lieberman in connecticut and Charlie Crist in Florida-- suggest that it may be possible to still thrive if they leave their current political party, just as long as they do not join the opposing political party. First, in becoming Independents, they can skip primaries altogether, thus avoiding the wrath of base voters who are less likely to embrace a formner political opponent. Second, polling in these two examples suggests that the key to Crist and Lieberman was maintaining a decent base of support in their old party, something which cannot be done if they had overtly joined the other team.
Former partisans who become Independents require coalitions of Democratic, Independent and Republican voters in order to survive. These coalitions are tenuous, however, because different groups in the coalition like the politician for different, often conflicting, reasons. In order to maintian these coalitions, it is necessary that voters read what they want to read into the politician, something which becomes far more difficult when the politician explicitly joins a new team.
For example, in 2006, Joe Lieberman won re-election by 10%. In order to do this, he successfully built a short-term coalition that gave him received 70% of the Republican vote, 54% of the Independent vote, and 33% of the Democratic vote. This same coalition also allowed him to maintain positive approval ratings during 2007. However, the coalition began to collapse in mid-2008, when Lieberman endorsed John McCain for President. At the time, Quinnipiac found that Lieberman lost much of the center-left support of his coalition:
"Sen. Lieberman's approval rating has dropped below 50 percent for the first time in 14 years of polling, with nearly two-thirds of Democrats giving him low marks, probably because he is campaigning for Sen. John McCain," Dr. Schwartz said.
By the end of 2008, Lieberman's approval rating collapsed to a record low:
Connecticut's U.S. Senators get their lowest approval ratings ever, a negative 38 - 54 percent for Sen. Joseph Lieberman...
"Sen. Joseph Lieberman appears to be paying a high price for his embrace of Sen. John McCain in the presidential race. This is the highest disapproval rating in any Quinnipiac University poll in any state for a sitting U.S. Senator - except for New Jersey's Robert Torricelli, just before he resigned in 2002. Among those who say they voted for Sen. Lieberman in 2006, 30 percent now say they would vote for someone else if they could.
By embracing McCain, Lieberman lost most of the remaining Democratic and Democratic-leaning Independent portions of coalition. He explicitly picked a side, and his Democratic support disappeared.
Similarly, in Florida Charlie Crist is receiving most of his new support from Democrats. The Pollster.com trend chart in Florida shows that presumptive Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek has experienced a collapse in support since Crist switched parties five weeks ago:
However strong he looks now, Crist's position is tenuous, for the same reason as Lieberman's. If Crist were to announce that we would caucus with Republicans if elected to the Senate, then his support among Democrats would collapse and his campaign would effectively be over. At the same time, if he were to announce that he would caucus with Democrats, then he would lose a decent amount of his commanding lead among Independents, as the Republican-leaning Independents in that group would switch to Rubio. That would also likely put Rubio in the lead, likely for good, as long as there was a Democratic nominee to oppose Crist.
In short, like Specter, Griffith and Lieberman, the worst move Crist can make right now would be to explicitly state which team he would join the the United States Senate. As such, it isn't a surprise that Crist is refusing to provide any clarity on that matter. Once he does, his campaign is probably over, because it longer seems possible for a true party switcher to survive the wrath of the voters.
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