One of the biggest fears among GOP insiders these days is what effect presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump will have on down-ballot candidates. With or without Trump, the Senate map was going to be unkind to Republicans this election cycle, so blaming the presidential nominee for losing the majority (though it would likely happen) would be unfair. But new Quinnipiac polls released Wednesday hold forth some hope for Republicans in the Senate.
The poll shows Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., up nine points over his Democratic opponent, Katie McGinty (other polls show a closer race). In Florida, Sen. Marco Rubio announced he was running for re-election (after repeatedly saying he wouldn’t and just two days before the filing deadline), and is now up seven points over Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy and eight points over his primary opponent, Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson. It also shows an even race in Ohio between Sen. Rob Portman, R, and former Gov. Ted Strickland, D.
Toomey and Rubio have been deeply critical of Trump in the past. Toomey criticized the New York business mogul’s comments about the judge presiding over Trump’s fraud trial, and announced that he was voting for Sen. Ted Cruz for president. Rubio ran for president against Trump and participated in a nasty little exchange of insults when his campaign began to struggle (though in recent weeks his views on Trump have become … well, complicated).
Let’s assume for a moment that the conventional wisdom in Washington is right and Trump is going to lose to Hillary Clinton in a massive blowout. What does that mean for the chances of other Republicans running for the House and Senate? One would assume that a landslide election would seriously harm their fortunes, but history doesn’t offer a clear-cut answer to this.
It’s been a long time since we saw a true landslide in a U.S. presidential election. Even 2008, a seven-point Obama win, doesn’t really qualify. What has happened in actual landslides? President Richard Nixon, a Republican, won a landslide re-election in 1972, but Democrats actually picked up two Senate seats, increasing their majority 56 to 42 (one conservative and one independent held the last two seats). Republicans gained only 12 seats in the House that year. In 1984, despite the landslide re-election of Ronald Reagan, the GOP lost two Senate seats, but still retained their control over the upper and lower chambers.
Given the strong possibility that a third-party candidate will do well this year, we can also look at Bill Clinton’s win in 1992 — not a landslide — in which Democrats didn’t pick up any Senate seats. When Clinton was re-elected by a wider margin in 1996, Bob Dole got only 41 percent of the vote nationwide, but Republicans did not do badly — they still picked up two additional Senate seats, to increase the majority they had won in the 1994 election cycle, and Democrats picked up only two House seats.
Sometimes landslide elections have had “coattails.” In 1964, the re-election of President Lyndon B. Johnson gave the Democrats two additional seats in the Senate for two-thirds majority, and 36 House seats. In the electoral landslide of 1980, Reagan’s big win gained Republicans a whopping 12 Senate seats (and the majority) and 35 House seats.
Some people believe that ticket-splitting is dead today. In recent times, even moderately large wins at the top of the ticket have resulted in a substantial “coattail” effect. The election of President Obama in 2008 brought Democrats 21 net seats in the House and eight net seats in the Senate. Obama’s re-election in 2012 gave House Democrats an additional eight House seats, but not enough to win back the majority. Senate Democrats picked up two seats and retained their majority.
It’s anyone’s guess which version of this story we would see in the event of a decisive Clinton win, or even a landslide. Each party is running the most despised candidate in the history of modern polling. Republicans have a candidate that has sparked a movement called “Never Trump.” Democrats, meanwhile, are probably willing to pull the lever for Clinton, but certainly not with the great enthusiasm that accompanied Obama’s rise. This November we’ll get a test of just how much damage (or assistance) a presidential candidate can do to down-ballot candidates.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
