PHILADELPHIA, October 8 (RIA Novosti) – Despite a shocking lack of fanfare the US midterm elections are set to take place in little more than a month. Few people in the US pay much attention to them (as this article is being written just 15% of Americans said they were following them closely) and even fewer people overseas have any idea what they really mean. Midterms, however, are a crucial, if poorly understood, part of America’s system of democratic governance.
Probably the single most important thing to keep in mind about the midterms is that the electorate that takes part in them tends to be much more elderly, male, white, and wealthy than the US population as a whole. Given the voting patterns of these sub-groups, this means that Republicans have a systematic advantage in midterms. The high-touted coalition that brought Obama to victory in two presidential campaigns, primarily youth, women, and minorities, simply doesn’t show up to vote during midterm elections, and there’s no indication that this is going to be any different in November.
When added to the structural advantage that Republicans possess in the House of Representatives (Democratic voters tend to be heavily concentrated in a small number of densely populated congressional districts in and around big cities) these demographic factors mean that midterms usually aren’t very dramatic affairs: absent unusual political dynamics, Republicans are more likely than not to win.
Control of the House is virtually certain to remain with the Republicans. None of the fancy statistical models published by “data-driven” websites like 538, the Monkey Cage, or The Upshot even bother to look at the House, and the next realistic chance the Democrats have to capture it will come during the 2016 election (and they will need a landslide victory by Hilary Clinton in order to do so).
The Senate is where the real action is. According to 538, which has been far and away the most accurate predictor of election results over the past several cycles, the Republicans have a 57.6% chance of winning the senate, which would give them unified control over both house of congress for the first time since 2006. This percentage has been ticking up gradually over the past several months, suggesting that the polls are very gradually turning in the Republicans’ favor.
If putting a percentage on an outcome seems a little strange it’s worth taking just a second to unpack how 538 analyzes elections. The site uses a probabilistic model in which odds for different outcomes (e.g. "democrats maintain control of the Senate") are tested against the most recent polling data, which has been categorized according its level of reliability. Polls from reputable organizations with large sample sizes, consistent methodologies, and strong track-records are heavily weighted: polls with smaller sample sizes, sloppy methodology, and a past history of error (most polls!) are correspondingly under-weighted.
538’s methodology is very different from the way that most media outlets report on political campaigns, a method that relies heavily on describing how far “ahead” of “behind” a candidate is, but is much more informative.
But what happens if, as 538 suggests, the Republicans actually do win? In terms of domestic policy, not very much is likely to change: even if the Republicans gain control of the senate, there’s virtually no chance that they will have a veto-proof majority. So, yes, Congress would pass quite a few bills to cut taxes, slash social spending, and “de-fund” Obamacare, but they would all be vetoed by the president before they became. In the long term that could lead to a serious political crisis, but in the short term it would be similar to way that things worked back when Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office.
It is in foreign policy that things are much more likely to change and where renewed Republican control of Congress would be likely to be felt in the short and medium terms. Obama’s natural instincts are towards accommodation and negotiation: yes he has employed military force, but he might very well be the least naturally hawkish president since Carter. For the most part this derives not from weakness or any personality flaw but from Obama’s accurate understanding that America has spread itself too thin and that, if it is going to be effective, it needs to concentrate its foreign policy efforts more narrowly. Republicans, however, fundamentally disagree with this diagnosis, rallying around the tag-line of “decline is a choice.” Republicans genuinely believe that any weakening of the US’ position is the product not of economic reality, but weak presidential leadership. Should they take the senate, Republicans will apply pressure to Obama to be more confrontational and aggressive in his foreign dealings.
Perhaps Obama will be able to resist this pressure, but as time has worn on he appears to be less and less effective in doing so: after keeping the US out of Syria for the past several years, he has recently accented to a limited bombing campaign that seems likely to expand in the near future.
There is still a chance that the Democrats hold on to the Senate and that the legislative stalemate of the past several years continues until 2016. As things stand now, though, the odds are in favor of Republican control over both houses of Congress and an American foreign policy that is more in the vein of the last Bush administration.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official position of Sputnik.
