Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), right, is one of five Democrats in Romney 2012 districts.
For a lot of progressive electoral junkies, the time has come when they have entered an intermediary zone somewhere between "bargaining" and "acceptance" as it relates to the recently completed 2014 midterm cycle.
While most on the blue end of the political spectrum have come to terms with the disappointment of the evening, before the confetti (or the tears) were cleaned up, there was a nearly universal optimism on the left about the potential state of play in 2016.
A quick look at the polling for the 2016 presidential (general) election makes it awfully easy for Democrats to feel upbeat, to be sure. But that sunny assessment extends beyond the battle for the White House, and extends to discussions of a potential reclaiming of the U.S. Senate, and perhaps even making serious inroads in clawing back towards parity in the U.S. House of Representatives (though a Fix piece this week does offer several rough points of rebuttal). For those whose political interests are a bit more localized in nature, Democratic allies are already casting ambitious glances at recently lost legislative houses from coast to coast.
The impetus for this newly renewed faith in a Democratic surge in 2016 is founded, in no small part, in the belief that a presidential-level electoral turnout, as opposed to the sparse crowds at the polls this past November, will play into Democratic hands. History tells us that this faith is not totally without foundation.
However, there may be some other dynamics afoot that could (at least in part) blunt any turnout-fueled Democratic resurgence. Simply put, the phenomenon known as "split-ticket voting" might be disappearing. That alone could be a long-term problem for the Democrats, absent some kind of serious shift in national fortunes for the two parties.
Head past the fold for a look at how the results from 2014 may tell us that a Democratic renaissance, particularly at the legislative level, might be harder than it appears at this point.
On paper, the state of Minnesota is one of those states that virtually everyone in the political community characterizes, almost reflexively, as a blue state.
After all, a Republican presidential candidate has not carried the state in my middle-aged lifetime (Nixon in 1972, for those wondering), and Democrats control both Senate seats and the governorship. Furthermore, the state was one of the few relatively bright spots for Democrats in 2014. Both incumbent Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and incumbent Democratic Sen. Al Franken were re-elected with relatively little drama. In addition, two Democratic members of the U.S. House viewed as exceptionally vulnerable (Rep. Collin Peterson and Rep. Rick Nolan) managed to fend off strong Republican opposition and earn another term in Congress.
All that said, the blue tint in the land of a thousand lakes is actually pretty deceptive. The state has some reliably red turf in the outer ring of the Twin Cities metro area, and if one looks at the long view of presidential races there, you can see that Democrats have only, in recent cycles, run a few points ahead of their national margins in the state. Republicans have a modestly firm hold of three of the state's eight congressional districts, and most seem to agree that they are liable to have an even 4-4 split whenever Peterson, who has served for decades in the state's rural and reddish 7th district, decides to retire.
What's more. the state has elected Republican majorities in its state legislature periodically over the past decade. Most recently, an 11-seat gain in the lower house of the state lege led to a GOP takeover of the state House in November.
With Minnesota's reputation as Democratic territory, and the common consensus that 2014 was simply a lousy Democratic year, it would stand to reason that most outside observers would put the Minnesota House of Representatives at or near the top of a list of chambers that could flip back to the Democrats in 2016.
And it very well might. But don't assume that it is a lock, because a look inside the numbers shows that a Democratic majority in St. Paul in 2017 is not a given.
Indeed, if you look at the 2014 results in Minnesota, and you look at Jeff Singer's invaluable compendium of presidential results by legislative district, some faintly problematic patterns emerge for Democrats. Of all the seats that the GOP was able to successfully flip from the Democrats last year, the overwhelming majority of them (eight) were districts carried by Mitt Romney in 2012. Therefore, if all the Democrats are able to do by the time 2016 rolls around is reclaim the seats where President Obama beat Mitt Romney on a district level in 2012, they will still be just shy of reclaiming a majority.
What seemed to happen in Minnesota in 2014, when all was said and done, is that voters were not quite as willing to split their tickets as they had been in the past. Consider the case of former Democratic state Rep. Andrew Falk. Falk had been elected, though never easily, in a swingy and mostly rural district about 125 miles due west of the Twin Cities. He even survived the utterly horrid 2010 midterms, albeit in a slightly different district, by a 52-48 margin. This time around, alas, he was not so fortunate—Falk lost a rematch 55-45 to Republican Tim Miller (whom he defeated in 2012 by an 8-point margin).
That voters at the legislative level have become more likely to toe the party line is not a foreign concept. Indeed, astute observers of state-level politics have been watching the slow-motion annihilation of Democratic delegations in legislative houses across the South for decades now. Most recently, the upheaval in West Virginia in 2014 not only saw the GOP wrest control of the state House of Delegates (which was often predicted), but it also saw Republicans cough up a 24-10 majority in the state Senate, with the GOP picking up an almost unheard-of seven seats, and (insult to injury) picking off a party-switcher to complete the takeover.
But Minnesota ain't West Virginia, nor is it Arkansas. It is a state where, as stated before, Democrats have an enviable track record across the board. Also, Minnesota isn't Nevada, where the 2014 result can be clearly tied to tanking turnout in core Democratic areas. In most of the Minnesota districts where Democrats were turned from office, 2014 turnout was roughly 75 percent of the presidential-year levels, which is a drop, but isn't too shabby when compared with the rest of the nation in 2014 (where turnout relative to 2012 was considerably worse).
What allowed Democrats to take legislative majorities in places like Minnesota and other marginally swingy places like New Hampshire and Colorado, was their ability to win legislative seats in marginal political territory. In 2014, for whatever reason, that did not happen to the same extent.
It is a phenomenon that has also been taking place, albeit at an incremental pace, federally.
For the first time in a long time, you can count the number of Democratic House districts that voted for the GOP presidential nominee in the prior election on one hand. Indeed, there are only five Democrats in "GOP districts": Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01), Gwen Graham (FL-02), Patrick Murphy (FL-18), Collin Peterson (MN-07), and Brad Ashford (NE-02). With Republicans coming off of an election year with the wind at their back, they have more "Obama seats" in their collection. But even that number is comparably modest; despite winning wave elections in two of the last three House elections, less than 30 GOP-held House districts supported President Obama. Therefore, taken as a whole, over 90 percent of the U.S. House districts are now fundamentally a straight-ticket affair, either Obama/Democratic or Romney/Republican.
Ultimately, here is why that fact matters for Democrats. Gerrymandering, without question, plays a role in the Democratic struggles to attain legislative majorities, both in the U.S. House and at the state level. However, as I wrote in 2013, the Republicans also enjoy a structural advantage in the form of "geographic clustering," or the tendency of core Democratic voting groups to be tightly concentrated.
It is a real thing. Consider that in Minnesota (a state carried by Barack Obama by a 53-45 margin), over 10 percent of the state's House districts (15 of 134) were carried by the president by over 50 percentage points in 2012. At the same time, the most Republican district in the state went for Romney by a considerably more modest 27-point margin.
Therefore, it is inevitable, even if gerrymandering were somehow eradicated from the globe, that if Democrats only carry Obama districts, and Republicans only carry Romney districts, that is an express ticket to perpetual Republican majorities. Obviously, this means Democrats are far more dependent on split-ticket voters than are the GOP.
Of course, having a structural challenge does not mean that Democratic "dooooooooom" is guaranteed. Republicans, in the recent past, have done an outstanding job of pissing away electoral prosperity. Should that happen, history teaches us that a structural advantage cannot protect against a national wave election. After all, geographic clustering certainly existed 10 years ago, and it did not stop the Democrats from thrashing the Republicans legislatively not once (2006), but twice (2008).
In terms of strategy, the discussion can cut either way. Certainly, a standard "conventional wisdom" argument could be that since Democrats need split-ticket voting more than Republicans, it would behoove them to try to appeal to potentially persuadable Republican voters.
A progressive could easily argue, however, that there is much more yardage to be gained by making a base appeal that will, to put it simply, create more Democratic voters. After all, it would seem intuitive that any decline in split-ticket voting would mean that there are fewer persuadable voters to be had in the first place. Plus, it also seems logical that it is easier to generate the kind of "wave election" needed to offset any structural GOP advantage by drawing contrasts rather than adopting a "me-too" campaign approach.