The beginning of the present.
I think there are three trends that make the Democrats more likely to win than the current odds suggest: the changing demographic composition of the electorate, the likely strength of the economy and a short but very significant list of absolutely terrible policy positions that the Republican nominee will have to embrace in order to be nominated. I will write about each of these trends below. At the current odds, the smart money is on the Democratic party. But it is far from a lock.
I. Demographics and Historical Trends.
One of the biggest challenges with handicapping presidential elections more than a year out is that we only have so many previous elections to go by. There have been more than 50 presidential elections. But only twelve in which both gender and all races could vote in every state. (Yay for us. We finally have 50 years of true democracy on the books.)
But one under-appreciated fact is that there usually is a dominant presidential party. From 1896 to 1932, the Republicans won seven out of nine presidential elections. The only losses were to Woodrow Wilson, who only got into office because Teddy Roosevelt made the 1912 election a three way race. Wilson won less than 42% of the vote and was only re-elected by a margin of fewer than 4,000 votes in California. From 1932 to 1968, the Democrats won seven out of nine elections. The only exceptions were when General Eisenhower chose to run as a Republican rather than as a Democrat. (He could have had either party's nomination.) And from 1968 to 1992 the Republicans won five out of six elections, with the only exception being a very narrow loss by Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter than can be chalked up almost entirely to the Watergate scandal. The Republicans won all of the other elections by landslides, including two elections in which they lost only one state. (Massachusetts in 1972, Minnesota in 1984).
Since 1992 the Democrats have won four out of six Presidential elections. They have not run up any 49 state victories but both wins by Clinton and by Obama were by clear margins and with an average of 369 electoral votes. In between these wins were two narrow losses to George W. Bush, including one where the Democrat won the popular vote and another in which he almost became the first war-time incumbent to lose re-election.
The Democratic advantage has been less obvious than during these prior periods of party dominance. But it is growing,a dn the reason for that is demographics. In 1996, 79.2 of voters were non-Hispanic whites. That number has dropped to 77.7, 75.2, 73.4 and 71.1 in each subsequent presidential election. These voters are disproportionately young and are much less likely to turn out for midterm elections, which explains why Republicans have held the house during all but four of the past 22 years. (During the earlier period of 36 years with Republican presidential dominance, they never had control of the House.)
This demographic shift is projected to continue and to favor the Democrats. This trend has been exacerbated by the Republican party's decision to concentrate on policies favored by its older, almost entirely white base and by their political decision to undermine the first black President at every turn. Consider that Mitt Romney won 59 percent of white voters in 2012 but only 27 percent of Latino/a voters, 26 percent of Asian voters and just six percent of black voters. Age demographics are also discouraging for the GOP. They won 56% of people over the age of 65 in 2012 but just 37 percent of people under 30. Some of that is attributable to people growing more conservative with age. But another part of it can be attributed to the fact that a lot of lifelong Republicans are dying and being replaced in the electorate by millenials who are much more racially diverse, culturally accepting of homosexuality and liberal or progressive on social issues.
The long term solution to these trends will be for the Republican party to adopt less rigorous positions on issues that young people care about. By 2024 the Republican nominee will support marriage equality and will probably have stopped blaming "illegals" for the economic problems we face. But in 2016, he or she will not.
A Brief Word of Caution.
We are still more than 13 months from this election and if there is one encouraging sign for some Republican candidates, it is that the country is clearly sick of the establishment wings of both parties. The names Clinton and Bush are handicaps in this election cycle. So maybe the Republicans can nominate a fresh face and make this race competitive. The hardest election for a party to win is when it's going for it's third straight term. Since 1960, parties that have been in power for exactly eight years have lost five out of six presidential elections. The exception was George H.W. Bush in 1988. If the Republicans nominate a relative centrist, there is a path for them to win. More on that below.
II. The Economy
Ever since James Carville hung a sign that read "It's the economy, stupid." On the wall of Bill Clinton's campaign headquarters during the 1992 presidential election, it has become common knowledge that the incumbent (party) will win during a strong economy and lose in a weak one. The Obama economic record is a lot stronger than is generally perceived and can be summed up in two points. Economic growth has been modest compared to previous recoveries but it has been quite sustained. Jeb! Bush is running on a platform of economic policies intend to "unleash 4 percent growth". If you don't count 2009, when the Bush fiasco was still smoldering, growth has averaged 3.9%. The most recently quarterly statistic showed that same number: 3.9% growth. So essentially the best credentialed Republican candidate is promising to increase growth by 1/10th of 1 percent.
I don't want to be to rosy about economy. There are real problems, including wages and inequality. The problem for the Republican party is that they are still wed to a fundamentally stupid economic idea: that the way to grow the economy is to reduce taxes on the very wealthiest people. This has not worked for 35 years and it will not start to work next year. To the extent there is hay to be made on the economy, the popular proposals would be to raise the minimum wage, require paid family leave and a half-dozen other issues that the Democrats are likely to support and the Republicans are certain to oppose, vocally.
I don't want to be to rosy about economy. There are real problems, including wages and inequality. The problem for the Republican party is that they are still wed to a fundamentally stupid economic idea: that the way to grow the economy is to reduce taxes on the very wealthiest people. This has not worked for 35 years and it will not start to work next year. To the extent there is hay to be made on the economy, the popular proposals would be to raise the minimum wage, require paid family leave and a half-dozen other issues that the Democrats are likely to support and the Republicans are certain to oppose, vocally.
III. Policy (Yes, That Still Counts).
The Democrats are only modest favorites in the betting markets because Hillary Clinton has some bad polling numbers. Her unfavorable ratings are high and she polls terribly on issues related to honesty and trust. These are very serious problems for a candidate and I don't think she will be able to shake these perceptions completely. They will prevent her from winning a landslide. But they will not prevent her from winning unless one or more of the endless investigations of her turns up something disqualifying.
The Republicans have a more fundamental problem, that does not yet show up in the polls fully. Their ideas are terrible. Worse than that, they are deeply unpopular. This list could go 20 issues deep but I'll just focus on the most important landmines that the Republican nominating process will lay for its candidate in the general election:
1. Healthcare. Repealing Obamacare is absolutely dogma among conservatives. They fight each other for being most rabid in their desire to do so because they are now trying to win the votes of people who watch Fox News and think Obamacare is a failure. But it is not a failure. The uninsured rate has fallen from 15% to 10%. Millions of people now have insurance because they receive subsidies or because they no longer have to worry about lifetime coverage caps and other ways that our system allows insurance companies to deny coverage. A lot of those people are young and of modest income. They are less likely to vote in a typical election but if the choice is between a candidate that wants to take away their insurance and one who ants them to keep their insurance, they will turn out in droves. If this election is close, this will be the issue that keeps a few of the crucial states in the blue column.
2. War. There is a lot of bad things going on in Iraq and Syria and it's easy for the GOP to point at them and blame President Obama and Secretary Clinton for them. The problem is that they only tangible way to put ISIL on the run is to commit American ground forces to the fight. It would be a multi-year commitment and we would again see dozens of Americans dying every month, as they did for most of the first decade of this century.
Consider the trend of American military casualties under President Obama. These numbers come from icasualties.org:
Year Iraq Afghanistan Total
2009 149 317 466
2010 60 499 559
2011 54 418 472
2012 1 310 311
2013 3 127 130
2014 3 55 58
2015 3 8 11
That's 1,808 during Obama's first term and only 189 so far in his second. The Republicans should be able to make some hay over the dire situation in Iraq but unless they nominate Rand Paul, their candidate will be someone whose proposed solution will be to send Americans back into harms way for an indefinite duration in order to improve the lives of people that we frankly do not care about. This is a political loser.
3. Fiscal Policy. As mentioned above the GOP nominee will be running on a platform of reducing taxes. They will promise reductions to everyone but those reductions will be heavily slanted toward the very wealthiest Americans, who are going to vote Republican anyway. The Democratic nominee will make this plan look terrible. Perhaps more importantly, the Dems will be able to run on the fact that the deficit has steadily plummeted throughout the recovery. The Republicans will bemoan the national debt but their dual policies of tax cuts and increased militarism will show that they are not serious about that issue.
4. Planned Parenthood. Earlier this year a group committed to criminalizing abortion made a serious of undercover films taken at Planned Parenthood locations. Federal law prohibits medical providers from profiting from the sale of fetal tissue to medical researchers. On some of the tapes Planned Parenthood employees discuss the fees they will charge for shipping the tissue to these proposed buyers. There are a few clips where employees make vague references to agreeing to the prices proposed by the buyer because they would more than cover the related shipping expense. There are also some clips where medical professionals discuss the abortion process and the resulting fetal tissue in unemotional clinical language.
Somehow, the movement conservatives have taken these tapes to be evidence of vast crimes and depraved indifference to human life. Some Republican candidates, including Marco Rubio have insinuated that some women are pressured into having abortions so that Planned Parenthood can sell this tissue for profit. There is absolutely no evidence for this accusation and it makes very little economic sense. (Can you imagine a woman being talked into an invasive medical procedure by a doctor motivated by an extra $20? Of course not. You're not a crazy person.)
The timing of this controversy is most unfortunate for the Republican party. The candidates now have to trip over one another to show off their disgust at this practice. The fact that one of the current front-runners for the nomination, Ben Carson, conducted medical research with such tissue is of no moment to the people who reflexively take the most radical positions against legal reproductive choice. This race to the bottom just might come back to bite them. Marco Rubio has said that he believes abortion should be a crime even where the life of the mother is at risk. That position is perhaps philosophically consistent but it is political poison and if he does win their nomination, he will regret making that statement.
5. Immigration. This booby trap could not be avoided. The Republican base has extremely skewed ideas about illegal immigration. The issue is especially ripe for distortion by the right-wing media who can point to serious crimes committed by undocumented individuals as evidence of systemic lawlessness. So the Republican nominee was always going to be someone that talked tough on immigration policy. But Donald Trump ratcheted up the rhetoric within mere moments of entering the race. And most of the field chose to join him out on the fringe. This is not helpful.
I list this fifth on the list because I think there was little the GOP could have done to mitigate their position on the issue. It's also not as important to voters as the ones I listed above. But it will do long-term structural damage to the Republican party as the country become more racially diverse.
Somehow, the movement conservatives have taken these tapes to be evidence of vast crimes and depraved indifference to human life. Some Republican candidates, including Marco Rubio have insinuated that some women are pressured into having abortions so that Planned Parenthood can sell this tissue for profit. There is absolutely no evidence for this accusation and it makes very little economic sense. (Can you imagine a woman being talked into an invasive medical procedure by a doctor motivated by an extra $20? Of course not. You're not a crazy person.)
The timing of this controversy is most unfortunate for the Republican party. The candidates now have to trip over one another to show off their disgust at this practice. The fact that one of the current front-runners for the nomination, Ben Carson, conducted medical research with such tissue is of no moment to the people who reflexively take the most radical positions against legal reproductive choice. This race to the bottom just might come back to bite them. Marco Rubio has said that he believes abortion should be a crime even where the life of the mother is at risk. That position is perhaps philosophically consistent but it is political poison and if he does win their nomination, he will regret making that statement.
5. Immigration. This booby trap could not be avoided. The Republican base has extremely skewed ideas about illegal immigration. The issue is especially ripe for distortion by the right-wing media who can point to serious crimes committed by undocumented individuals as evidence of systemic lawlessness. So the Republican nominee was always going to be someone that talked tough on immigration policy. But Donald Trump ratcheted up the rhetoric within mere moments of entering the race. And most of the field chose to join him out on the fringe. This is not helpful.
I list this fifth on the list because I think there was little the GOP could have done to mitigate their position on the issue. It's also not as important to voters as the ones I listed above. But it will do long-term structural damage to the Republican party as the country become more racially diverse.
IV. The Electoral College.
The 2000 Presidential election was the worst event to happen to this country in my lifetime. I know no one died that day but it had two profound outcomes, and both have been disastrous. If you think I'm wrong, go back and watch the 2000 debates between Bush and Gore. They are on YouTube and they are hard to even fathom now. The issues of the day are how to spend our enormous budge surpluses. (Cut taxes or preserve the social security trust), how generous should the medicare prescription drug plan be and some vague clap trap about restoring honor and integrity to the White House. (That didn't work out so well.)
The obvious one is that an utterly incompetent person became president. We squandered those surpluses on tax cuts and a completely unnecessary invasion of Iraq. The more subtle outcome was the polarization of politics into two identity camps called Red States and Blue States. One of my favorite political factoids is that before 2000, the colors Blue and Red did not mean what think they do. Al Gore was Blue in 2000 because the Democrats were the incumbent party. Blue being the color of tranquility, Red was used to signify the out party, who was hoping to change the previous result.
But in the Autumn of 2000, we spent a tedious month staring at that map wondering where Florida would go and ever since then we have thought of the country as two irreconcilable camps of liberals and conservatives. "Red State" and "Blue State" has become shorthand for a political identity.
There has been very little movement across this divide. In 2004 Iowa and New Mexico went Republican while New Hampshire switched sides for its neighbor John Kerry. In 2008 Barack Obama ran against a terrible candidate from a disgraced party. He reclaimed Iowa and New Mexico while moving the battle grounds of Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Nevada and Virginia into the blue column. He also won Indiana, North Carolina and one congressional district of Nebraska, but he gave those back four years later.
Forty states and the District of Columbia have voted for the same party in each of the last four elections It strike me as very unlikely that any of those states will switch in the next election.
I: 19 True Blue States worth 242 Electoral Votes.
II. 22 Deep Red States worth 180 Electoral Votes.
This means the election will be fought and won in ten states. I put them in three color-coded categories:
A, Three Baby Blue States worth 15 Electoral Votes.
The states that voted for Obama twice but for Bush once.
(Iowa: 6 New Mexico: 5 New Hampshire: 4)
B. Two Pink States worth 26 Electoral Votes.
These are states that voted Republican three out of four times
(North Carolina: 15 and Indiana: 11)
C. Five Purple States worth 75 Electoral Votes.
States voted for the winner in each of the past four elections, twice Blue and twice Red.
(Florida: 29 Ohio: 18, Virginia: 13 Colorado: 9 Nevada: 6)
The Democratic advantage is obvious. If they defend the True Blue State, they need only win Florida to get past the magic number of 270. If they hold all three Baby Blue States that Obama won twice, they get to 257 and need only win Florida or Ohio or North Carolina or Virginia. If they lose all of those battlegrounds, they could still win if they win 2 of the remaining three states. (It is unlikely that they would win Indiana in an election that close but winning Colorado and Nevada seems very possible.)
I believe the next election will be similar to the previous four. The same battle lines will be drawn and the same demographic trends will move the close contests. The simplest formula to keep in mind for now is this:
Blue (242) + A. Baby Blue (15) = 257
Red (180) + Pink (26) = 206 (AKA The Romney States)
If the Democrat defends every Blue State and Baby Blue State, they will need to win 13 of the 75 Electoral Votes in the Purple States. If that Democrat carries Florida or Ohio or Virginia or Colorado as well as Nevada, she will be the next President of the United States.
.
I believe the next election will be similar to the previous four. The same battle lines will be drawn and the same demographic trends will move the close contests. The simplest formula to keep in mind for now is this:
Blue (242) + A. Baby Blue (15) = 257
Red (180) + Pink (26) = 206 (AKA The Romney States)
If the Democrat defends every Blue State and Baby Blue State, they will need to win 13 of the 75 Electoral Votes in the Purple States. If that Democrat carries Florida or Ohio or Virginia or Colorado as well as Nevada, she will be the next President of the United States.
.
