In a piece at The New Republic Walter Shapiro argues that voters are more polarized now that at any other time in American history:
The current level of sustained political balance in Congress is unprecedented.
Since the Civil War, there never have been back-to-back congressional elections in which the margins in both the House and the Senate were this tight. The closest parallel came during the George W. Bush years, when neither party had more than 51 votes in the Senate from 2001 to 2005. But thanks to the Republicans gaining House seats in the 2002 election (largely because of the rally-around-the-flag aftermath of the September 11 attacks), House Speaker Denny Hastert possessed more breathing room than Kevin McCarthy (or whoever arises from the coming GOP chaos) will have in January.
Looking at a map of the United States, Democrats might understandably feel anxious. The small-state bias in the Senate (and, as a result, the Electoral College) prompted Mother Jones’s Ari Berman to calculate that 30 Republican senators hail from 15 states whose population collectively is smaller than California with its two Democratic senators. The 2024 Senate map makes these calculations seem even more daunting with Democrats having to defend such ruby-red states as Montana (Jon Tester), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), and West Virginia (Joe Manchin).
Small wonder that smart political commentators assume that the current status quo will continue ad infinitum. Writing for CNN, Ron Brownstein anticipated that the 2024 presidential race (no matter who is on the ballot) will again come down to Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin. As Brownstein put it, “Each side in an intensely polarized nation of 330 million recognizes that the overall direction of national policy now pivots on the choices of a minuscule number of people living in the tiny patches of contested political ground—white-collar suburbs of Atlanta and Phoenix, working-class Latino neighborhoods in and around Las Vegas and the mid-sized communities of the so-called BOW counties in Wisconsin.â€
I don’t think that’s what’s been happening at all. I think that
- Information and technology have made gerrymandering more successful than at any other time in American history.
- The party leadership in both political parties, largely driven by money, have become more extreme.
- Both parties, driven by the extreme politics of their leaderships, are being transformed into programmatic parties—something they’ve never been before.
- The stakes as measured by the power and reach of the federal government are higher than ever before.
The net outcome is that voters have largely retained the views they’ve been holding while the parties are decreasingly representative of those views. As evidence for that I’d submit the decreasing party roll for both parties and the increasing number of those who identify themselves as independents.
I’m not very sanguine about fixing that. There are all sorts of things that might help like increasing the size of the House, divvying up some of the states, reducing the power of the Congressional leadership, and cracking down on gerrymandering. Under a system with representation based on geographical-based districts is it really too much to ask that the districts be geographically based? Here’s the 2022 Illinois Congressional district map:
As should be obvious it’s one gerrymander after the other. Grotesquely so. Adopting the measures above might have the effect of moderating both parties as they actually needed to compete for votes.
But the incentives would remain and the incentives point to large, corrupt, autocratic parties so that’s where we’re headed.
Shapiro seems to equate 50/50 outcomes with excessive partisanship. Maybe that’s a factor, but he overstates continuity. That the next presidential election “will again come down to Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin” seems short-sighted. Not too long ago, the commonplace complaint was the next presidential election will again come down to Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Everything boiled down to winning two of three states given their larger EV counts, represents something that is not continuity and also indicates a wider field of competitive play.
Senate races are usually poor indicators of national trends because only one-third of seats are at risk, but they make easy reads. There will be seven Democratic Senate seats in play in 2024 that are Republican leaning, and whether people like Manchin, Sinema, Tester and Brown keep the seat blue will probably come down to not nationalizing the election (or in Sinema’s case whether she staves off a progressive primary challenge). If Rs take all seven, does that mean the so-called era of hyper-partisanship is over? I would say the opposite; the persistence of incumbents that buck national trends and national identifications reduces partisanship.
Sometimes I look at the data and I don’t understand how people come up with certain conclusions.
For example, that the small state bias favors Republicans over Democrats in the Senate and the electoral college.
Here is a list of small states (defined as where the number of representatives is fewer of equal to the number of senators).
Democratic-leaning — Maine, New Hempshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Deloware, DC, Hawaii.
Republican-leaning — Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska.
If anything, small state bias seems to favor Democrats.
That’s because they aren’t deductions. They’re premises from which they draw conclusions.
Washington, DC does not have voting representatives. Some think it should (“Statehood for DC!”). I’m one of the hardy few who think it should be retroceded to Maryland.
@curious, it’s the same blindness that effects people complaining about gerrymandering in North Carolina and Texas and not Illinois. The explanation is the writer is a Democrat, and the entire analysis is about the unfairness of the electoral system to the Party. The system is rigged, California should have more influence in the Senate without jeopardizing its influence in the House and in the Electoral College.
Nate Silver has written that under current party alignments, the Democrats have virtually no opportunity to get to sixty seats in the Senate (a goal they once reached for a brief time in 2009-2010), while the Republicans have a small, but reasonable chance to do so (though they never have). I understand the drum beat of an unfair system is supposed to encourage elimination of the filibuster. I think that party alignments are always shifting and parties should be looking to expand in states/regions that are in position to tilt.
That’s essentially another way of saying something that’s been observed for years: the United States is a center-right country. The more progressive the Democratic Party’s leadership becomes, the less likely a filibuster-proof majority will be.
The solution to this isn’t to reform the system; it’s for the party to appeal to more people.
I don’t think the “drum beat” as you put it is benign and neither are the calls for proportional representation. Consensus that the system is fair is needed for voters to believe that the system isn’t crooked.
BTW I actually think that California should have more influence but I think the mechanism for accomplishing that is to divvy it up into multiple states, probably six four of which would have Democratic majorities while the other two have Republican majorities.
Depends upon how you set the metrics. When you get to set the metrics you get to set the outcome. Suppose we decided to just look at the 5 smallest states by population? 4 of those are red states. If you look at the states by population there is overall a small leaning towards the less populous states being red states. 9 of the 15 most populous states are blue and as already noted California is probably underrepresented.
https://www.50states.com/population-by-state/
Steve
People keep saying the country is becoming more divided, but I think it’s mainly the political elites who have moved from the center of the American public. IOW, Republicans and Democrats going from having a lot of overlap to having very little weren’t driven by divides among the general public.
“BTW I actually think that California should have more influence but I think the mechanism for accomplishing that is to divvy it up into multiple states, probably six four of which would have Democratic majorities while the other two have Republican majorities.”
If people who live in California want more Senate representation, then that’s what they should advocate for. But Senate representation is a niche issue that only academics and Democratic political advocates care about. And frankly, a lot of those Democratic activist types like the fact that California is so big and powerful – they do not want to split California up, they want that dominance to extend to the Senate. That also explains why they complain about the outsize power of small states, yet want to make DC, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and other US territories into states. That belies the true goal of getting more power in the Senate without having to be politically competitive in more states.
By the same token, Republicans oppose this for similar political reasons.
This goes back to the fundamental problems of our party system, which has resulted in very weak parties that are easily captured by minority factions.
I haven’t seen anyone pushing for the Virgin Islands for statehood. Puerto Rico needs to decide what it wants. However, DC has a larger population than Wyoming and Vermont and about the same as Alaska and N Dakota. Not really sure why it should not have statehood or at least be a parts(s) of other state(s).
Steve
Many left-of-center commenters want at least binding referendums for many US territories. The one I know off the top of my head is Matt Yglesias because he’s mentioned it in his substack, which I subscribe to. The official Democratic party platform endorses DC statehood, self-determination for PR, and Congressional representation for territories, including the ability to participate in federal elections.
I have no strong views on DC statehood, but I’m more inclined to support retrocession, as was done with the Virginia part of DC, albeit that happened a long time ago. There’s also the issue that at least part of DC must remain independent as a Constitutional requirement. The details of how that would work in practice would need to be worked out, regardless of statehood or retrocession, or any alternative.