About two years ago, Democrats were reeling from a shocking defeat, and pundits were talking of a radical political realignment as working class whites came out in droves for President Trump and Rust Belt states turned red. Now, Democrats, newly in control of the House, are celebrating victories in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and Republicans are fretting that the suburbs are lost forever.
Those of us who write about politics and analyze it for a living have a natural tendency to craft a grand narrative that offers a simple explanation for political outcomes that are influenced by a multitude of factors. And so, after every election, as we dissect the outcome, we risk weighing the most recent election too heavily when trying to predict how the next several are going to go.
There have, to be sure, been major realignments in U.S. political history. For example, the South going from a traditionally Democratic stronghold, as a holdover from the Civil War, into a Republican stronghold. After the onset of the Great Depression, from 1932 through 1964, Democrats won seven of nine presidential elections. Then, from 1968 through 1988, Republicans won five of six presidential elections. Despite Republicans’ success at the presidential level, they never controlled the House at any point during this period.
In more recent times, however, our politics has been much less stable.
After the 2004 election, there were plenty of articles about how Democrats were struggling to win “values” voters and those who prioritized national security in the post-Sept. 11 world. Within four years, Democrats had won both branches of Congress (including a filibuster-proof Senate majority) and the presidency.
Having been crushed in two straight elections, Republicans would need to moderate, all of the experts were saying, if they didn’t want to disappear into oblivion. Instead, Republicans went in the opposite direction, as Tea Party activists demanded more purity and pushed the GOP to return to limited government ideals. They stormed into control of the House in 2010.
But two years later, former President Barack Obama coasted to re-election despite a weak economy, as he was able to keep enough of the coalition that brought him into office. In the aftermath of the election, the belief that Republicans needed to adapt to win in a demographically changing America was so widespread that even Sean Hannity proclaimed that he “evolved” on immigration and supported a pathway to citizenship.
We all know how the thesis that the GOP was doomed in national elections if it didn’t moderate on immigration turned out in 2016.
The United States, though a dynamic place, does not dramatically change every two to four years. So it seems misguided to speak of politics through the prism of realignment.
In presidential elections since 2000, the national popular vote margin was within four points in every election but 2008, when Obama won it by seven points in the wake of the financial collapse. At no point did any winning candidate get more than 53 percent of the vote or any losing candidate get less than 45 percent.
What the seesaw results of recent elections, and their relative closeness, should tell us is that perhaps understanding what’s happening in politics is both easier and more complicated than is currently reflected in our analysis.
That is, any nominee from one of the two major parties is going to start with around 45 percent of the vote no matter what. There is then a small segment of less ideological voters that can flip around from one election to the next. There are various coalitions available to each party if they have the right candidate to motivate a critical mass of voters. A wide variety of factors can tip the balance in key swing states — broader political climate, candidates, the economy, the issue mix favoring one party or another in a given cycle, and so forth.
Perhaps American politics is simply in a deadlock right now and eventually one side or the other will truly realign politics and come to dominate elections for decades to come. But for those of us writing in the midst of it, it may be time to take a step back from assuming any enduring transformation after every election.
