Sorry to burst your Beltway bubble boys

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Off-year elections are typically the subject of wild speculation and over interpretation by political observers. The conventional wisdom (CW) of the media villagers and Beltway bloviators is that the governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia are "bellwether elections" that are a "referendum" on newly elected presidents and are predictive of the outcome of mid-term elections.

Sorry to burst your Beltway bubble boys, but as Larry J. Sabato, Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, has noted What are the national implications of the "mini mid-terms" in Virginia and NJ?

We go through this exercise every four years, just like clockwork. Perceptions matter in politics. Still, from 1965 to 2005, only twice did the NJ & VA off-year elections have any real predictive value for the next year’s midterms. In 1993 the GOP captured both, an omen for what awaited in 1994, and in 2005 Democrats won both, the vanguard of a pro-Democratic trend that culminated in 2006 and 2008.

But mere facts and electoral history won’t stop the torrent of speculation.

In other words, it is simply an obsession of the media. It doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Sadly, however, the results in the governors’ races will drive the political narrative of the media villagers and Beltway bloviators for the next year. This is why I despise these over-paid losers.

Each election is a unique event that turns on its own dynamics. The outcome is largely driven by the quality of the candidates for governor, not the president occupying the White House.

New Jersey is a reliably Democratic state. You can color it blue and put its 2012 electoral votes in the Democratic column right now regardless of who is elected governor. Jon Corzine has never been a popular governor in New Jersey, but he may eek out a narrow win in the end. His Republican opponent Christopher Christie has been dogged by a series of scandals in the past month. But this is New Jersey – political scandals are a way of life – "fugeddaboutit."

Virginia is a border state undergoing huge demographic changes. Northern Virginia is becoming a Democratic stronghold, while Southern Virginia (or real Virginia as Republican candidates are wont to call it) is conservative Democrats and Republicans. Barack Obama was the first Democrat since 1964 to win Virginia. The Democrat R. Creigh Deeds is a Blue Dog conservative Democrat and one of the worst candidates I have seen in some time.

Deeds will lose to the Republican candidate Robert McDonnell, who curiously has tried to appear more moderate than his conservative credentials suggest. McDonnell does not identify himself as a Republican, and his campaign has been borrowing themes from the Obama campaign. I guess this makes him a stealth Republican. I don't see how this race is predictive of anything.

The same goes for the special congressional election in the 23rd congressional district of New York. A Democrat has not represented this region of New York since 1854 – before the Civil War. It was always the Republican's race to lose.

But wait, the Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava already withdrew from the race over the weekend and endorsed her Democratic opponent, Blue Dog conservative Democrat Bill Owens. The Teabagger Taliban supported the Conservative Party candidate, Douglas Hoffman, over the GOP establishment candidate Scozzafava. Now that she has endorsed the Democratic candidate, the GOP establishment has reluctantly embraced Hoffman. The GOP establishment understands that a Hoffman victory means that more of its moderate Republican incumbents will be targeted in GOP primaries by the Teabagger Taliban demanding conservative ideological purity. This race is a loss for the Republicans regardless of how they try to spin it.

The significance of this race is how well Blue Dog Democrat Bill Owens may finish. As Jed Lewison has pointed out at Daily Kos:

[T]he thing that teabaggers don't like to mention is that for at least the past three decades, Democrats have been unable to break the 38% mark in any election. Check out the Democratic congressional performance in the district since 1982:

2008 - 35%
2006 - 37%
2004 - 29%
2002 -  0%
2000 - 23%
1998 - 21%
1996 - 25%
1994 - 18%
1992 - 21%
1990 - 38%
1988 - 25%
1986 -  0%
1984 - 29%
1982 - 28%

(NY-23 was known as NY-26 from 1982-1990 and NY-24 from 1992-2000. Data: Office of the Clerk.)

That span includes two open seat races — 1982 and 1992 — but Democrats couldn't crack the 30% barrier in either of those years.

Now, in 2009, the Democratic Party — for the first time in decades, if not ever — actually has a shot winning the seat.

Even if Hoffman manages to win this election, how can the GOP possibly claim tomorrow's results as some sort of big win? Sure, teabaggers will be excited that they rolled Scozzafava with a right-wing loon, but they'll also have turned NY-23 into much more competitive seat than if Scozzafava had won. Suddenly, the NRCC will be forced to defend a seat they had expected to take for granted.

If that sort of scenario is what qualifies for a victory these days in GOP circles, then this won't be a story of a party that has finally found its footing: it'll be the story of a party that doesn't have any idea how far it's fallen.

UPDATE: Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post shares my low opinion of off year election prognosticators Ruth Marcus on empty harbingers in Virginia and New Jersey:

Advice to readers about the coming orgy of analysis about the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections: Ignore it. Disquisitions on The Meaning of It All for President Obama or the 2009 results as a harbinger for Congress in 2010 have scant basis in reality.

Over-interpreting election results is an occupational hazard for political reporters. This problem is particularly acute in the year after a presidential contest, when we are suffering from a bad case of electoral withdrawal.

* * *

[A] look at the history of these races suggests the prognosticators might as well be watching sunspots.

In the 15 gubernatorial elections since 1949, the voters of New Jersey and Virginia have chosen governors belonging to the same party 10 times (seven Democrats, three Republicans). In five of those 10 elections, the party winning both governorships went on to pick up seats in the House and Senate the next year. In three, a sweep of the statehouses augured precisely the opposite result in the subsequent congressional election. Once, Democrats won both governors' races and went on to get a split result (losing seats in one chamber of Congress, gaining them in another). Once, the same thing happened to Republicans. Not a particularly compelling pattern.

* * *

Well, you may wonder, what about the five most recent elections since 1989? After all, the states have changed and elections have become more nationalized. Fair enough — except that here the correlation is just as weak. Democrats took both governorships three times (1989, 2001, 2005). In two of the subsequent congressional elections (1990 and 2006), they gained seats. In one, 2002, they lost seats. And in the two cycles in which Republicans won both governorships (1993 and 1997), Democrats lost seats once (1994) and gained seats once (1998).

Finally, do the off-year results foreshadow anything for a president's reelection three years down the road? Hardly. Of the 10 elections in which one party won both states, a president of that party was elected six times in the following presidential contest.

* * *

But as to the question of whether Tuesday's results portend very much for Congress in 2010 or Obama in 2012, the answer is: not really, all the commentary notwithstanding.