Comments on: Why Did Political Scientists Miss the Midterm Wave?

By: Matthew Dickinson

Matthew Dickinson — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:34:31 +0000

Zach – The evidence is that they don’t trust the Republicans very much. But I think it is a mistake to view the midterms as an affirmation of Republican policies, so much as a rejection of the status quo as symbolized by unified Democratic control of the Senate, House and Presidency. From the perspective of recent history, voters may have decided that divided government is the best they can hope for. After all, the last time we had a surplus government control was split.

By: Zach Drennen

Zach Drennen — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:51:55 +0000

I think that the budget deficits were an issue that the Republicans especially seized for their end, despite Bush’s role in their creation. Voters have had to make significant cuts and they recognize that no one can continue spending beyond their means forever. I just don’t understand why they would trust the Republican party either on jobs or on the deficit, looking at the recent history of each party.

By: Matthew Dickinson

Matthew Dickinson — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:25:06 +0000

Martin – Excellent point regarding a possible link between the Tea Party movement and growing income inequality. I want to pick up on this in more detail in my next post, but one interesting clue comes out of the midterm exit polls, which show that 35% of voters blamed “Wall St” for the economic mess – and of that group, 56% voted Republican! This doesn’t directly address your point regarding a link between the Tea Party and concern over income inequality, but it does suggest that the conventional ideological affinity between Wall St. and Republican candidates didn’t hold as strongly in this election. That may – and I stress may – be in part due to the influence of the Tea Party, both in terms of who voted and who ran for office. If, as I’ve claimed, the Tea Party is but the latest variant of the long-running populist streak in American politics, it would be consistent with your thesis that the Tea Party movement is driven in part by concern over the power accruing to the “gilded” class – Wall St, but also the Washington power “elite”.

I’ll check on the incumbency data.

By: Martin

Martin — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:14:03 +0000

Hi Matt, one way of seeing this is that there are three rival explanations: 1) The Tea Party is predominantly an anti-tax “ideological” movement. 2) The Tea Party is an “anti-incumbency” movement. 3) The Tea Party exemplifies a citizenry of dupes undermining its own future economic interest. The scenario that holds out the most hope for a well-reasoned compromise is 2).

There could be a way of evaluating hypothesis 2): If the Tea Party is predominantly “anti-incumbency,” then it follows that the Tea Party’s target wasn’t just Democrats. Anecdotally, we heard a lot of this rhetoric. Net result: Challengers should have won at a very high rate across BOTH parties. Compared to elections past, do the data show that Republican incumbents — not just Democrats — got thrown out to a significantly greater extent in 2010?

Barring evidence to support 2), I have to be charitable and hope that there is some resentment at yawning economic inequality driving the Tea Party — not just a shift in the unemployment rate.

Emmanuel Saez’s now well-known work at Berkeley (yep, another economist) shows us that US income inequality has grown to an unprecedented extent, even since the Congressional rout of 1982. See:
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2008.pdf

Gilded-Age “corrupting” wealth inequality actually may not be front-and-center in the TP’s rhetoric, but it seems to be the one ideological bridge not yet burned between liberals and conservative discourse in America. (Consider TP disgust at Obama’s “Friends of Wall Street” economic team.)

That’s worrisome enough. Should we be more sanguine about voter polarization today?