A slew of new polls setting off alarms around Washington suggest that for Republicans, shutting down the government and threatening a default on the nation’s debts could mean losing control of the U.S. House of Representatives. But is a takeover a real possibility?
The short answer: maybe.
Elections in non-presidential years tend to bring out an older, less minority-laden electorate, and the party holding the White House historically tends to lose seats in midterm elections — both trends that favor Republicans holding onto the lower chamber. Add to that the redistricting from the 2010 Census, when the Republican wave gave them control of enough state Houses and governerships to gerrymander very safe seats in the House, and you’re left with an unlikely Democratic takeover. And yet, the unpopularity of the Republican-engineered government shutdown, and the alarms over the threat by Tea Party Republicans, led by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, of defaulting on the nation’s debt, have opened the door for Democrats to buck history.
The chatter about a potential Democratic wave election in 2014, similar — on a smaller scale — to the wave that swept Republicans into power and John Boehner into the speakership in 2010, began with a set of new Public Policy Polls highlighting nearly two-dozen congressional districts in swing states, where Republicans could be vulnerable in the 2014 midterms — six more than the 17 net seats Democrats would need to pick up in order to take back control of the House.
The polls, commissioned by the liberal organization MoveOn, but conducted by the polling firm that happened to have the highest accuracy rate in the 2012 elections, looked at 24 House districts in states like California, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all states Barack Obama won in 2012. It found that in 23 out of 24 of those districts, public opinion has swung far enough away from the GOP to put those House seats in jeopardy if the elections were held today. This as a number of other polls show Republicans taking the bulk of the blame for shutting down the federal government, and their approval rating at its lowest favorability rating, at 28 percent, since Gallup began asking the question in 1992,
Florida’s Bill Young a canary in the coal mine?
Rep. Bill Young of Florida is in one of those districts PPP calls vulnerable. And on Wednesday, he announced that he will retire at the end of his current term.
Young didn’t mention the polling that shows that his approval rating is just 33 percent, with 46 percent disapproving of his performance, and approval of the shutdown at an anemic 28 percent, versus 67 percent who disapprove; or that in a head-to-head matchup, he would lose to a generic Democrat 42 percent to 51 percent. And Young is 82 years old, has been in politics for 50 years, and as NBC’s Luke Russert points out, “has trouble getting around the Capitol, so this is not a huge surprise.” But Russert adds, Young’s stepping down is “beneficial for Democrats because Young represents a Tampa-area district where President Obama got 50 percent of the vote” in 2012 — when the president also won the state of Florida.
Steve Schale, who ran Barack Obama’s Florida campaigns in 2008 and 2012, says Young’s retirement may not be a leading indicator.
“All things being equal, the House is tough” to win back for Democrats, Schale says, “but given the dynamics in Washington today, we are clearly not operating in normal times.”
Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons agrees.
“it’s tough for the Democrats to take the House back in 2014,” says Simmons, “but [it’s] not impossible. Every day the GOP keeps the government shut down is a day Democrats get more evidence that [Republicans] cannot be trusted in power. The political divide these days is not between liberal and conservative but between rational and radical, those who want the country to work and those who want to shut progress down.”
Other vulnerable Republicans on the list are just as difficult to peg.
Schale says of Young and Daniel Webster, who represents Florida’s 10th District and would lose to a generic Democrat 44 percent to 49 percent if the election were held today (according to PPP):
“While the numbers in Young have always suggested a competitive seat, reality is Congressman Young had excellent local politics and constituent work. In the Tip O’Neill sense, he knew all politics were local and took care of his district. He would have been tough. Webster is also a very capable and likable fellow. The district isn’t as good as Young’s, but again, given what’s happening in D.C., it’s just hard to predict what kind of environment members of Congress will face in a year.”
On Wednesday, Republicans weren’t taking the PPP poll or its implications too seriously.
The National Review’s Jim Geraghty cited polling analysts Stu Rothenberg, Charlie Cook, and even a Daily Kos blogger to knock down the PPP poll as partisan hackery.
According to NBC News’ political correspondent Luke Russert, the mood among congressional Republicans darkened considerably on Thursday, with the release of a dire NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, whose results NBC’s chief political analyst Chuck Todd called an “unmitigated disaster” for the GOP. The NBC/WSJ poll finds Republicans taking the overwhelming brunt of public anger over the government shutdown, while President Obama’s favorability remains stable, and his signature healthcare law actually improves in public esteem. According to the poll:
By a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama – a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received during the poll during the last shutdown in 1995-96.
Just 24 percent of respondents have a favorable opinion about the GOP, and only 21 percent have a favorable view of the Tea Party, which are both at all-time lows in the history of [the] poll.
And one year until next fall’s midterm elections, American voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress to a Republican-controlled one by eight percentage points (47 percent to 39 percent), up from the Democrats’ three-point advantage last month (46 percent to 43 percent).
And by Thursday, Republicans were meeting with the White House and talking openly about raising the debt ceiling (but not yet reopening the government).
Will the House change hands?
Do the bad polling and a horrid news cycle for the GOP add up to a House that changes hands in 2014? Democrats clearly hope so, and the Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America have launched multimedia ad campaigns attacking Republicans as too irresponsible to lead — a strategy that’s already being mirrored at the local level, targeting individual Republicans in their districts. (On the flip side, the Republican congressional campaign committee is targeting Democrats in ads and emails, too, and both sides are fundraising over the shutdown.)
Cook, who has long given Democrats very little chance of winning the 17 net seats they would need to take back the House, wrote this in the National Journal on Monday:
At The Cook Political Report, we have always said, given their structural advantages, House Republicans would pretty much need to self-destruct to lose control of the chamber. Today, they seem to be flirting with just that possibility, but the election is still more than a year away, and it is far too early to say that the House majority is at risk. Minimal net party change is still the most likely outcome, but we no longer forecast a GOP gain of two to seven seats; that swing could now just as plausibly go in Democrats’ direction.
Not exactly a prediction of doom, but it is an opening, and one Democrats (and in an ironic way, Republicans themselves) are fully exploiting. And for Democrats, there’s more at stake than simply handing the speaker’s gavel back to Nancy Pelosi.
“With a Democratic majority, the president could get immigration reform done, responsibly, and fix the tax code and invest in education to ensure we grow the economy from the middle class out,” Simmons says.
But first, they have to win.
Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @TheReidReport.