2012 House

As recently as the mid-20th century, white southern men from the Democratic Party dominated the Congress. There was Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson of Texas, who, respectively, ruled the House as speaker and the Senate as majority leader for much of the 1950s. And there were numerous Southern committee chairmen, including Howard W. Smith of Virginia, the House Rules Committee head who used his power to battle liberal legislation. But the retirement Monday of U.S. Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR) brings into clearer focus a steady trend: Southern white Democratic men are an endangered species, at least in the House. After the upcoming 2012 House elections, there will be 138 representatives from the 11 Southern states: Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. It seems very possible that of those representatives, only 10 or fewer will be white Democratic men come 2013. Right now, there are 14 such Democrats in the House. Ross’s retirement means that a Republican could win the seat — the Crystal Ball currently rates his seat, AR-4, as “leans Republican.” Meanwhile, aggressive Republican redistricting in North Carolina could eliminate as many as four of the five white Democratic men from

In November 1946, a tall, mustachioed figure stood alone on a railroad platform at Washington’s Union Station, waiting for the president of the United States to make his ignominious return to the capital. In victorious times, the platform would have been full of welcomers; as it was then, at the time of their party’s defeat, Dean Acheson, the future secretary of state, was the only one waiting for President Harry Truman. Truman and Acheson’s Democratic Party had just suffered shattering midterm election losses: 55 House seats and 12 senators. No wonder that the D.C. Democratic establishment abandoned the accidental president at his dark hour. Their meeting coincided with the start of a most-unusual electoral cycle in American history — one that a new crop of Democrats, some 65 years later, are eager to repeat. Two years later, in 1948, Truman not only won reelection, but his party captured an eye-popping 76 House seats in the process, thus reclaiming the House. Can it happen again? At this point, handicapping the big picture in the race for the House is difficult because the election itself is more than a year away and decennial redistricting is not yet complete. But the playing field

We all know that Louisiana is losing a U.S. House seat this year because of Mother Nature. The terrible destructive power of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused the population of New Orleans to decrease by about 140,000 people from the 2000 to 2010 census, which greatly contributed to the state’s congressional delegation falling from seven to six. One incumbent, probably freshman Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA), will be out of a job come January 2013. This caused us to wonder: Has Mother Nature ever intervened in the redistricting process before? The best argument can probably be made for the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. The devastating Dust Bowl drought of 1931-1939 primarily affected the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas, along with most of Kansas and eastern Colorado. Iowa also had dust storms, as did a total of 21 states to a greater or lesser degree. The results suggest that, at least in some cases, the long-lasting drought held down population enough to cost some states a seat. Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma all lost one House seat in the 1940 Census. Texas held steady at 21 seats—but this is the one and only decade since Texas became a state when Lone

The nation got a preview of the Democrats’ sweeping congressional election victories in 2010 when Democratic candidates pulled off victories in three close special House elections. The results were just the first of many for Democrats in the last cycle, when… Err, wait a second, let’s start over here. Democrats lost 63 net House seats in last year’s midterm elections. That was despite winning three closely-watched special congressional elections between the 2008 and 2010 national elections, two in upstate New York and one in western Pennsylvania. So let’s be clear: Recent history tells us that no matter what happens in the special congressional election being held in New York next Tuesday, the result has negligible predictive value for what will happen in House elections in November 2012. The Washington chattering classes love to over-interpret special elections, mostly because they are hungry for any action in the odd-year political offseason. It’s as if, months before the scheduled season starts, the National Football League announced that it was holding a special football game next week. Football fanatics would be ecstatic no matter the details of the game, even if instead of a Super Bowl rematch between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh

Between 1932 and 1994, Democrats controlled the U.S. House of Representatives for 58 of 62 years. Since then, however, party control has changed three times, with Republicans controlling the House from 1995 through 2006, Democrats from 2007 through 2010, and Republicans since then. It seems clear that neither party has a lock on the House today. So the question now is, could Democrats take control back again in 2012? With 242 seats, Republicans now hold their largest majority in the House since after the 1946 elections. Still, the current GOP majority is considerably smaller than the majority Democrats held before the 2010 election. Democrats would only need to pick up 25 seats in 2012 to get to the magic number of 218 that would give them control of the House–assuming that all of their members supported the Democratic candidate for Speaker. That’s hardly an insurmountable number. In fact, two of the last three elections, 2006 and 2010, have produced bigger swings, and 2008 came close. Despite the recent volatility of House elections, some astute political observers are giving the Democrats little or no chance of regaining control of the House in 2012. For example, last December, Republican pollster Glen Bolger

If Barack Obama’s political standing is helped by a slowly recovering economy, talk among Democrats will quickly turn to taking back the House. However, control of the House of Representatives after the 2012 elections will still belong to the Republicans. There are three compelling arguments for why Republicans will keep the House. These three factors will have a snowball effect, costing Democrats in retirements, candidate recruitment and fundraising–all of which will further debilitate their comeback efforts. The first factor is that even presidents who easily win reelection do not have long coattails. Look at the last three reelected presidents–Reagan in 1984, Clinton in 1996 and Bush in 2004. Two were blowouts and one was close. In 1984, the GOP won 16 House seats. In 1996, the Dems picked up nine House seats. In the two blowout reelections, the president’s party picked up an average of just 12.5 seats. In the close election of 2004, Republicans won three seats. Across the three elections, the average pickup for the president is 9.3 seats. Obama is not likely to win a blowout reelection. Given Obama’s problems with white working class voters and the unifying effect he has on the GOP base, he is much more likely headed for

When it comes to congressional redistricting, the nation’s most populous state is in a class by itself. About a decade ago, the Democratic state legislature passed what would prove to be one of the most perfect “status quo” congressional district maps imaginable. It was designed to create a large cadre of safe seats for both parties, and it did just that. California has 53 districts. Only one has changed party hands since 2002. The other 52 districts have consistently been held by one party or the other. The result: What was a 33-20 Democratic advantage in the House delegation following the post-redistricting election of 2002 now stands virtually unchanged at 34-19 Democratic. That degree of “status quo” redistricting, however, may be a thing of the past in California. The state’s voters last fall empowered a nonpartisan commission to take over the congressional redistricting process. And many other states that have sought to create a plethora of safe seats for each party has found in recent years that electoral waves can often trump crafty cartography. Altogether, 100 House districts in 40 states switched party hands at least once after 2002, a number representing nearly one out of every four congressional seats.

Following the 2010 House “shellacking” by the GOP, Democrats are hungry for revenge while Republicans are hungry for more. While there is an endlessly long list of unknowns as we assess the November 2012 races from our current vantage point, 22 months removed from Election Day, there are also several signposts that offer some suggestion of what the 2012 House elections may bring. While the midterm meltdown by Democrats was undoubtedly a severe setback—leaving them in need of a 25-seat gain to capture the House majority—it set them on firmer footing heading into 2012. Simply put, it will be very difficult for Republicans to find new Democratic seats to contest since their 2010 gains grabbed most of the districts they could easily flip. Conversely, Democrats now find themselves in the same position as the GOP was in two years ago, with a short list of districts to defend and a long list of potential targets. Republicans are at a high watermark in House seats—their current caucus of 242 members is their largest since 1949—and many of those new congressmen hail from districts where Democrats can wage a competitive contest. The key difference between 2010 and 2012 is obvious: 2012 will