Referendum: The 2006 midterm congressional elections

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 122, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 1-24

  Jacobson, Gary C ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34247522788     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2007.tb00589.x     Document Type: Review

References (53)

1. For a discussion of this literature and a full set of citations, see Gary C. Jacobson, The Politics of Congressional Elections, 6th ed. (New York: Longman, 2006), 154-170.
2. The model is in ibid, p. 156, updated to include 2004; with Bush's approval at 38 percent and real per capita income up 3.0 percent between the third quarter of 2005 and the third quarter of 2006, and with Republicans' seat "exposure" at 2.3 percent, the point prediction is that Democrats pick up twenty-six seats. Other models predict modest to considerably larger Democratic gains.
3. The principal reason for this Republican advantage is demographic: Democrats win a disproportionate share of minority and other urban voters, who tend to be concentrated in districts with
4. lopsided Democratic majorities. But successful Republican gerrymanders in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and, after 2002, Texas did enhanced the Party's advantage, increasing the number of Bush-majority districts by 12, from 228 to 240. See Gary C. Jacobson, "Polarized Politics and the 2004 Congressional and Presidential Elections," Political Science Quarterly 120 (Summer 2005): 201-203.
5. The substantive point is unchanged if the standard is five rather than two percentage points; entries are missing for 1962 and 1966 because redistricting altered too many to allow a reliable estimate.
6. Democrats have also done worse in the dwindling number of evenly balanced districts. From the 1950s through the 1980s, they won 66 percent of these districts; since 1992, they have won 53 percent.
7. Gary C. Jacobson, "Competition in U.S. Congressional Elections" in Michael P. McDonald and John Samples, eds., The Marketplace of Democracy (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution. 2006). 46-50.
8. Bush job approval is the Lowess-smoothed summary of responses to 771 polls conducted by the Gallup, CBS News/New York Times, Los Angeles Times, NBC/Wall Street Journal, ABC/Washington Post, Quinnipiac, Newsweek, Time, CNN, Bloomberg, Associated Press, and Pew Center for the People and Press polls reported at http://www.pollingreport.com. Support for the Iraq War is the Lowess-smoothed summary of 579 polls asking a wide variety of questions (more than forty different wordings in all) assessing opinions on the war from the same survey sources as well as Fox News, Knowledge Networks, and Zogby polls.
9. In secondary analysis of 107 of these polls, mean consistency was 83.8 percent with a standard deviation of 2.9 percent.
10. See Gary C. Jacobson, "Public Opinion and the War in Iraq" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, 30 August-3 September 2006), 25.
11. See Gary C. Jacobson, A Divider, Not a Uniter: George W. Bush and the American People (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007), 224-232.
12. The independent category includes those who, when asked, say they lean toward one of the parties, because data on partisan leaners are not consistently available in the surveys analyzed here.
13. Jacobson. Divider, 6-7.
14. See http://www.pollingreport.com/CongJob.htrn, accessed 6 November 2006.
15. These include the seats formerly held by Tom Delay, Bob Ney, and Mark Foley, all of whom had resigned under a cloud, as well as those defended by Don Sherwood, Curt Weldon, and, in the Senate, by Conrad Burns.
16. "Public Disillusionment with Congress at Record Levels," survey report, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 20 April 2006, accessed at http://people-press.org/reports/display. php3?ReportID=275,17 November 2006.
17. See the numerous poll results on these questions, accessed at http://www.pollingreport.com/ right.htm, 6 November 2006.
18. Gary C. Jacobson and Samuel Kernell, Strategy and Choice in Congressional Elections (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 19-34;
19. Gary C. Jacobson, "Strategic Politicians and the Dynamics of House Elections, 1946-86," American Political Science Review 83 (September 1989): 773-793.
20. The five were Larry Kissel (NC 8.49.9%), Victoria Wulsin (OH 2,49.4%), Sharon Reiner (MI 7, 48.4%), Nancy Ann Skinner (MI 9, 47.3%), and Larry Grant (ID 1, 47.2%). By Charlie Cook's calculations, the number of Republican seats in play (defined as toss-up or leaning Democratic) grew from 11 in May to 42 in October; see The Cook Political Report accessed at http://www. cookpolitical. com/races/house/default.php, 6 November 2006.
21. "House Winners Raised a Record Average of $1.1 Million," press release, Campaign Finance Institute, 8 November 2006 accessed at http://www.cfinst.org/pr/110806b.html, 27 November 2006.
22. Jacobson, Politics of Congressional Elections, 41-47.
23. The list of Democratic challengers in the seven tightest races includes three candidates who had held statewide offices (governor, attorney general, auditor), two U.S. Representatives, a president of the state senate, and a former secretary of the navy. The Democrats who retained open seats for the party were also experienced candidates: the attorney general for Minnesota's largest county and two U.S. Representatives (counting Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats).
24. Jacobson, Politics of Congressional Elections, 176-182.
25. George W. Bush, "President Discusses the Global War on Terror," transcript of speech delivered 6 September 2006, accessed at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/print/20060905-4. html, 10 November 2006.
26. George W. Bush, "President's Address to the Nation," transcript of speech delivered 9 September 2006, accessed at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ news/releases/2006/09/20060911-3.html, 10 November 2006.
27. th annual American Legion national convention, Salt Lake City, Utah, 29 August 2006), accessed at http://www.defenselink.mil/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1033. 10 November 2006.
28. Richard B. Cheney, "Vice President's Remarks at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention," (speech, Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention, Reno, Nevada, 28 August 2006), accessed at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060828-4.html, 10 November 2006.
29. Quoted in Dan Froomkin, "Off Message," accessed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879. html, 18 September 2006.
30. George W. Bush, "Remarks by the President at Georgia Victory 2006 Rally," Statesboro, GA.
31. October 2006, accessed at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/ 10/20061030-4.html, 20 November 2006.
32. Jacobson, Divider, 196-197.
33. The first is a quote from John Boehner, Republican majority leader; the second is from James Sensenbrenner, Jr., chair of the Judiciary Committee; see Charles Babington, "House Approves Bill on Detainees," The Washington Post, 28 September 2006.
34. Doyle McManus, "Detainee Bill Boosts the GOP," Los Angeles Times, 30 September 2006.
35. A classified report from April summarizing the consensus of sixteen U.S. intelligence-gathering agencies, leaked in late September, concluded that the terrorist threat was growing rather than shrinking and that the Iraq War was increasing rather than diminishing the number of terrorists. See "Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate. Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," April 2006, accessed at http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/ Declassified_NIE_Key_Judgments_092606.pdf, 29 September 2006. Shortly thereafter, Bob Woodward published State of Denial (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), the title declaring the book's thesis.
36. Jackie Calmes, "Scandal May Further Alienate Republican Base," The Wall Street Journal, 3 October 2006.
37. Jacobson, "Public Opinion and the War in Iraq," 24-25.
38. Nancy Trejos, "UN: Iraqi Civilian Deaths at New High," The Washington Post, 22 November 2004.
39. See the collection of survey data at http://www.pollingreport.com/ immigration.htm, accessed 18 November 2006.
40. "Karl Rove on Why He Believes the Republicans Will Keep the House and Senate Despite Polls to the Contrary," interview broadcast by NPR's All Things Considered, 24 October 2006, accessed at http://www.npr.org/ about/press/061024_rove.html, 24 November 2006.
41. "Republicans Cut Democratic Lead in Campaign's Final Days," research report, Pew Research Center for the People and Press, 6 November 2006, accessed at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=295,27 November 2006.
42. Samuel Kernell, "Presidential Popularity and Negative Voting: An Alternative Explanation of the Midterm Congressional Decline of the President's Party," American Political Science Review 71 (March 1977): 44-66.
43. According to the exit poll, Lieberman won the votes of 70 percent of the Republicans, 33 percent of the Democrats, and 54 percent of the independents; only 21 percent of Republicans voted for the Republican candidate, suggesting an extraordinarily high level of strategic voting on their part. Connecticut exit poll results are available at http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/ states/CT/S/01/epolls.0.html, accessed 28 November 2006.
44. Independents who lean toward one of the parties-and who are usually as loyal as weak partisans-have to be treated as independents in this analysis, because these surveys do not consistently distinguish partisan leaners from pure independents.
45. See Gary C. Jacobson, A Divider Not a Under. George W. Bush and the American People, updated with a postscript for 2006 (New York: Pearson Longman, forthcoming, 2008).
46. Jacobson, Politics of Congressional Elections, 199-200.
47. This category would include Carol Shea-Porter, who defeated Joseph Bradley III in New Hampshire, and David Loebsack, who defeated James Leach in Iowa.
48. Jacobson, Politics of Congressional Elections, 200-204.
49. Truman's Democrats lost a net twenty-eight House seats and five Senate seats in 1950; Johnson's Democrats lost forty-seven House seats and four Senate seats in 1966.
50. Thomas Mann, Unsafe at Any Margin: Interpreting Congressional Elections (Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1980);
51. Jacobson, Politics of Congressional Elections, 48-49.
52. Gary C. Jacobson, "The 1994 House Elections in Perspective," Political Science Quarterly 111 (Summer 1996): 209.
53. Diana Evans, Greasing the Wheels: Using Pork Barrel Projects to Build Majority Coalitions in Congress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).