Are the 2010 elections really that interesting?

In this election, the Tea Party has gotten a lot of press and it certainly had an effect in the nominating cycle in a number of races. It has also caused quite a bit of drama in the 138 elections (according to a New York Times count) in which the movement is backing candidates. But this is not all that notable – all these candidates are Republicans appealing to people who tend to be white, male, wealthy and educated – also Republican identifiers. The movement is therefore having an effect but is not fundamentally changing the landscape of politics. The Tea Party is forcing the Republican Party writ large to move to the right; Republicans had to be more conservative to win nomination fights – but it is not clear that the entire country has shifted to a Tea Party stance. In Alaska, Tea Party-Republican candidate Joe Miller is running behind Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski now running a write-in campaign. In New York, Tea Party-Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino is not going to defeat Democratic candidate Andrew Cuomo. In Delaware, Tea Party-Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell is running eleven points behind Democratic candidate Chris Coons. If the Republicans take Congress back, I am not persuaded that it will be the result of Tea Party activity as much as it is the result of the general ebbs and flows of politics in America.

Even though Utah politics are almost boringly predictable, Republicans have won handily for at least twenty years and the state is considered one of the reddest in the union, it is not immune from national trends. In this year of so-called “incumbent Armageddon”, two incumbents took a hit at the convention stage. Senate incumbent Bob Bennett went down before a primary was even called and House incumbent Jim Matheson was forced into a primary. The nomination process in Utah is two steps: first, candidates run for support from the 3,500 delegates selected at local precinct meetings. If a candidate can receive at least 60% of the convention vote, he or she is the nominee. Senator Bennett came in third behind Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater on the first convention ballot and only earned 26% on the second ballot. Thus, the Republican primary went forward without the incumbent and Lee was nominated. On the Democratic side, Congressman Matheson was unable to win the required 60% and was forced into a primary from the left, but his opponent, Claudia Wright, was unable to unseat him. Both these races indicate what is one interesting national trend this year – it is not necessarily a good thing to be an incumbent. 

When the economy is perceived as doing poorly, incumbents take a hit; when the president has been in office for two years, his party takes a hit in Congress; when the electorate is nearly evenly split on which party would do a better job in Congress, nearly half the people are always unhappy about the governing leading to unrest. This leads to an exciting, but definitely not groundbreaking, election.

Leah A. Murray is an associate professor in the political science and philosophy department at Weber State University in Utah.