The Wave

This year’s election has been going on for some time through absentee voting, early voting, or, in some states, online voting. A little less than 24 hours from now the polls will open in what, if the opinion polling has any credibility at all, promises to be a wave election in which the Democratic gains since 2006 are wiped away to be replaced by Republicans. Here’s how a Democratic “media consultant” has described what may come:

“Everybody that is tied will lose, and everyone that is ahead by a few points will lose because of the GOP wave,” said one party media consultant who is involved in a wide array of House races. “There are going to be some surprises.”

Despite the doom and gloom I continue to be skeptical this will actually be the outcome. This is precisely the sort of cataclysm against which incumbents of both parties have been defending themselves for decades by gerrymandering and otherwise creating “safe” districts. Will the safe districts hold?

My skepticism notwithstanding just for for moment for the sake of argument let’s consider what the electoral map would look like after the election. It would mean that not only the seats current safe for Republicans but those leaning Republican and those currently leaning Democratic would go to the Republicans.

That’s not completely idiotic. Nat Silver, certainly not pulling for Republicans, gives five reasons that the opinion polls may underestimate the size of the wave:

1. Down-ballot and cross-ballot effects
2. Unlikely voters voted — and they voted Republican!
3. The incumbent rule, or something like it, makes a comeback.
4. The Scott Brown effect [ed. a bandwagon effect in which unlikely Republican voters seize an unusual opportunity to elect a Republican]
5. Likely voter models could be calibrated to the 2006 and 2008 elections, which were unusually good for Democrats

Read the entirety of Nate’s analysis.

If that were the case, gauging by Larry Sabato’s district-by-district analysis, not only would Republicans turn over the 55 seats he’s predicting (slightly larger than my current gut-level intuitions), an additional twenty or seats would turn from blue to red. Republicans would take control of the House but that would be the case even according to all but the most rosy of predictions right now.

In the Senate, again gauging by Larry Sabato’s analysis, Connecticut, Washington, and West Virginia would all be carried by the Republican candidates. Added to Dr. Sabato’s 8 seat pickup prediction that would mean that Republicans would pick up 11 seats in the Senate, enough for a Senate majority.

The new House would see a large, very cohesive freshman class of Republicans. In my view if seventy or more seats change hands some of the current Republican incumbents will make common cause with them and it will provoke a leadership struggle among the Republicans in the House. The freshman Republican representatives and their new-found allies among the incumbents could comprise a majority of House Republicans.

It’s impossible to predict what the outcome of such a struggle might be. Virtually anything could happen and people you’ve never heard of could end up being Speaker of the House and holding other senior party roles.

If any of the above comes to pass, it has serious implications for President Obama. Over the last two years I’ve read many comparisons of Barack Obama to past presidents: FDR, Carter, Reagan, Wilson, Johnson. Far from being the new FDR, President Barack Obama could become the second Herbert Hoover, for much the same reasons as the original assumed the role in the popular political consciousness that he did. It isn’t that Hoover didn’t do anything about the Depression; it’s that what he did didn’t work fast enough.