http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-11/obama-visits-could-help-dems-hold-the-house-scholar-says/ The Democrats Can Win the House
Deep
in red state country, the last Democratic optimist has a model that
shows Democrats keeping a slim majority. Ben Crair on how to pull it
off.Two months after White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
let slip that Republicans could take over the House of Representatives in
November, the Democrats’ prospects have only grown bleaker: No one seems
to think that they have a prayer. Nate Silver
announced Friday that Republicans have a two-thirds chance of gaining control of the House. Charlie Cook
says the Republicans will win "well north of the 39 seats needed for the
House to flip,” while, at a recent gathering of the American Political
Science Association, several academics
predicted Republican gains of 50 seats.
But not everyone has written off the Democrats just yet. Deep in the
heart of red country, Rob Mellen, an assistant professor of political
science and public administration at Mississippi State University, has
something that offers liberals a flicker of hope: a model that shows
Democrats keeping a slim majority of the House of
Representatives—between 224 and 226 of the House’s 435 seats.
Mellen’s isn’t the only model that shows the Democrats holding on to
the House. But unlike the others in this category, which look mostly at
slow-changing economic fundamentals, Mellen’s model shows that President
Obama himself can make a difference between now and Election Day.
Mellen looks at the impact of presidential campaign appearances on
behalf of House candidates in midterm elections. With just two
exceptions—George W. Bush in 2002 and Bill Clinton in 1998—the party of
the sitting president has lost House seats in every midterm election
since FDR’s Democrats picked up seats in 1934. "I’m looking to see if
making these campaign appearances can actually help to mitigate these
losses,” Mellen says.
Conventional wisdom holds that they do not. "To help Democrats in the fall, Obama may stay away,” was the
headline of a New York Times article in July. And yet Mellen’s model shows
otherwise. When the president visits a toss-up race in a congressional
district, his candidate goes on to win the election about 50 percent of
the time; when the president sits out a toss-up race, his party’s
candidate wins just 35 percent of the time.
The improvement has to do with the so-called enthusiasm gap. The dire
predictions for the Democrats in November don’t necessarily assume a
defection of voters from the Democratic Party to the GOP. Rather,
Republican voters, riled up by being out of power, are more likely to
turn out in the midterms; Democrats, resting on their laurels after the
2008 landslide, are much more likely to sit this one out.
A presidential visit to a toss-up race, according to Mellen, inspires
some Democrats who would otherwise skip the polls to actually vote.
Voter turnout always declines from presidential-year to midterm
elections, but midterm toss-up races visited by the president see a
lower decline in turnout than expected. Essentially, a visit from the
president helps his party to narrow the enthusiasm gap that
traditionally favors his opponents.
Not everyone is on board with Mellen’s findings. "It’s a stretch to
say this factor is enough to keep the House Democratic,” says Larry
Sabato of the University of Virginia. "Most models are suggesting a
strong GOP victory.” Michael Lewis-Beck of the University of Iowa says
"Visits seem to help little, if at all.” And Mellen will be the first to
admit that his model isn’t rosy for Democrats: It still predicts they
will drop 30-something seats.
"If Obama’s success rate is roughly the same as his predecessors… the Democrats would hold the House,” Mellen says.
What Mellen’s model does do is offer the groundwork for a plan for
President Obama and the Democrats to minimize their losses. With the
House likely to be split somewhere near 50-50 between the parties, a
concerted campaign effort by President Obama could save for the
Democrats the handful of seats needed to retain a bare majority. A huge
number of races this year are counted as statistical toss-ups—45,
according to The Cook Political Report. If Obama visits half of those,
he’ll steal the title of most active campaigner from George W. Bush, who
hit up 22 districts in 2002. He’s unlikely to be as successful as Bush,
who won 19 of those races, but the recent proliferation of polling data
should help his cause. For one thing, it’s already kept the Democrats
from being caught off-guard like they were by the Republican Revolution
in 1994. And it at least makes it easier for the Obama team to choose
the districts he’s most likely to save. "If his campaign team and
strategists work things properly, they’ll be able to put the president
where he matters most,” Mellen says. "If Obama’s success rate is roughly
the same as his predecessors… the Democrats would hold the House.”
Whether Obama and his team effectively use polling data to intervene
in toss-up districts remains to be seen; The New York Times article from
July seemed to suggest they wouldn’t. "I think much of the House is in a
wait-and-see mode to see how helpful the president will be,” Rep.
Elijah E. Cummings, (D-MD) told the Times. "He has to come into these
districts with the same gusto and the same sense of hope that he came
into the election with.”