Overreacting to election night

Republicans have won major victories before, like 1980 (ringing in the “Reagan Revolution”) or 1994 (the “Gingrich Revolution”?).  At the time, some of the analysis suggested a tectonic shift in American politics.  But while both elections were important, neither one meant quite as much as people hoped or worried.  Obama’s election is yet another example.  It may have induced both cheering and tears of joy (in certain quarters anyway).  But with respect to policy he only continued a previous trend of increased government spending, and with respect to public opinion the Democratic “tsunami” of 2008 has already disappeared.

This is because we often forget a few fundamental truths about American politics.  First, even though the parties are deeply polarized and may campaign on mighty political promises to change the way Washington works, the American people are simply not polarized.  They are a pragmatic, solutions-oriented bunch, not given to ideological consistency or accepting the complete partisan program.

As a corollary to this fact, elections often have more to do with the country’s economic and social conditions than they do with anything that the parties actually accomplished.  Both parties typically win their biggest “victories” not because the public has embraced their point of view, but because the marginal voters (those few people not committed to one party or the other) are frustrated with the state of the country—usually the sorry state of the economy.  Mandates are simply never as powerful as a party might wish.

These two facts combine with the design of American institutions to deeply frustrate partisans.  The Federal Convention of 1787 set up a system of government designed to fragment power—across different branches and levels of government—to avoid too much centralization of authority.  Though the founding fathers wanted a government with some energy, they did not want too much of it in any one place.  So when a party comes back to power, whether in the Congress or the presidency, it faces both the institutional constraints put in place by the founders and public opinion constraints on what they can reasonably accomplish.  Because of these simple facts, no party comes to power with the mandate or the ability to remake society.  This is why Democrats were upset with Obama’s inability to pass a stronger health care bill or powerfully shift the trajectory of foreign policy.  It is why Republicans will shortly be frustrated with their leadership’s inability to reverse the pattern of growth in public spending or completely undo the health care bill. 

So on election night, and in the days after, you may hear words like “historic,” “unprecedented” or “astounding.”  But bear in mind that this election, like all of the others that have come before it, has significant limitations: no matter how many seats Republicans gain in either chamber it is deeply unlikely to alter the fundamental trajectory of American politics.

For further reading:

Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, Morris P. Fiorina, Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope
Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths About American Voters, Karen M. Kaufmann, John R. Petrocik and Daron R. Shaw
The Partisan Sort: How Liberals Became Democrats and Conservatives Became Republicans, Matthew Levendusky

Jeremy C. Pope is an assistant professor of political science at Brigham Young University and a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.