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To say that this year’s midterm elections were a disaster for President Obama and the Democratic Party would be an understatement. Undecided voters broke for the Republican Party in droves, enabling it to capture the Senate for the first time since 2006, increase its House majority to near historic levels, and preserve control of governor’s mansions across the country. For the next two years, the Republicans and President Obama will be engaged in a Cold War-style faceoff on Capitol Hill, with each side trying to position the other as obstructionist ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Since the new Congress will not be seated until January, extempers can expect to draw questions about the lessons each party can learn from the midterms and how President Obama should respond to the results.
This topic brief will breakdown the results of the midterm elections, discuss the chances of bipartisan cooperation over the next two years, and analyze how the 2016 presidential campaign may or may not be affected by this year’s midterms.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
Midterm Results Overview
Astute extempers have probably been telling their judges for over a year that 2014 was shaping up as a bad year for Democrats. The party was defending more Senate seats than the Republicans and never had a great chance of reclaiming the House due to redistricting efforts by Republican controlled state legislatures after 2010. Democrats defending their Senate seats in this cycle had won during the 2008 presidential election when the financial crisis and scandals destroyed Republican chances across the board. In those elections the Democrats and their allies captured eight Senate seats, thereby creating a near filibuster proof majority of fifty-nine seats (it became a filibuster proof majority when Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter changed parties in 2009), and they won twenty-four House seats. The 2010 midterms created a wave that gave the House back to Republicans, but this was the year for Republicans to recapture Senate seats in states that vote for them in national races. Democrats were defending seats in Arkansas, Alaska, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Montana, and West Virginia, which either voted Republican in the 2012 presidential election or were tossup states. To preserve their control of these states, Democrats needed to hope that President Obama’s diverse coalition of progressive interests, women, minorities, and young people would turn out in large numbers and other issues such as national security and the economy had a positive spin. Unfortunately, a series of blunders by the Obama administration over the last two years regarding Russian aggression in the Ukraine, operations in the Syrian war and against the Islamic State, the Ebola virus, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the running of the healthcare.gov website, and a scandal at veterans’ hospitals made this impossible. President Obama became so toxic that many Democrats spent the midterms running away from the administration, which undermined party morale and likely hurt turnout among some key Democratic constituencies.
Presidents tend to do poorly in elections that are held during their sixth year in office. Republicans fared poorly in the 1986 midterms when Ronald Reagan was president and George W. Bush oversaw the loss of Congress to Democrats in the 2006 midterms, which became a referendum on the Iraq war and several corruption scandals that plagued Republican members of Congress. Voter anger at the way the Clinton impeachment was handled in 1998 prevented Republicans from making gains in that year’s midterms, as the GOP lost five House seats and gained no Senate seats. This contributed to Newt Gingrich’s subsequent resignation as Speaker of the House. It should also be said that Democrats current strategy of relying on minorities and young people hurts their prospects in midterm elections as these groups usually tend to vote in large numbers during presidential years but miss other elections. The absence of these groups makes midterm elections such as those in 2010 older and whiter, which benefits Republican candidates.
The Republican Party showed much greater discipline in waging this year’s midterms, showing that it was willing to adopt new campaign tactics and more aggressively back establishment candidates for office. The Washington Post on November 5 writes that Republicans ensured that more mainstream candidates such as Cory Gardener, Scott Brown, Thad Cochran, and Joni Ernst were nominated instead of Tea Party types such as Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, and Ken Buck, all of whom lost Senate races that the Republicans should have won over the last two election cycles. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, running in a close contest in Kentucky, also exercised greater leadership within the party. The Washington Post credits McConnell with helping beleaguered Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, who nearly lost his seat to an independent challenger this year. Republicans primarily benefitted from President Obama’s low approval rating, which was mired in the mid-40s by the time of last week’s vote. Republicans blasted Democratic incumbents for voting with the Obama administration in excess of 95% of the time and chose not to lay out a platform of what they would do if they were elected. In essence, the Republicans turned the midterm into a referendum on President Obama. If you liked his leadership, you were urged to vote Democratic, but if you had any problems with Washington, you were urged to elect Republican candidates.
When election returns came in on Tuesday night, things did not start off well for Democrats. McConnell’s race against Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes was called for him very early and Republicans won an easy victory in West Virginia, where Shelley Moore Capito became the first Republican in more than fifty years to represent the state in the Senate. Republicans would go on to capture seven seats – West Virginia, South Dakota, Arkansas, North Carolina, Iowa, Montana, and Colorado – at the time that this brief was written and that enables them to retake the Senate for the first time since 2006. The Hill on November 5 notes that Republican Senate candidates won by margins that were much larger than expected. For example, polls showed Arkansas Representative Tom Cotton leading Senator Mark Pryor by single digits and he eventually won by seventeen. Roberts, who faced a stern challenge from independent Greg Orman, had his race called once fifty percent of the votes came in. In Georgia, David Perdue scored more than fifty percent of the score and avoided a runoff against Michelle Nunn, who saw her level of support plummet in the closing days of the campaign when undecided voters decided to break for the Republican Party. Democrats even suffered a scare in Virginia, where polling indicated that Senator Mark Warner would easily win re-election. Instead, Warner had to be bailed out late by votes in Fairfax County, a Democratic stronghold, and barely defeated Republican challenger Ed Gillespie. If Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis had not run and taken more than two percent of the vote, Gillespie may have been able to score a shocking upset. Going into election night, Republicans thought they had long odds of capturing North Carolina and New Hampshire, but they ended up taking North Carolina when State Speaker of the House Thom Tillis edged out Kay Hagan to capture a Senate seat that has flipped each election cycle since Republican Jesse Helms vacated it in 2002.
Republicans could end up scoring two more Senate seats as well as the Republican challenger leads Alaskan Senator Mark Begich by 8,000 votes. Alaskan election officials are expected to finalize their count of absentee votes and ballots from more remote areas of the state this week. In Louisiana, Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu will face Republican Bill Cassidy in a runoff on December 6 since neither candidate won fifty percent of the vote last week. Polls show Landrieu is trailing and the Associated Press on November 6 writes that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is cancelling more than $1 million in television ads for her. Cassidy enjoys a two-to-one advantage in available funds as well, and Landrieu’s comments before last week’s vote that she was struggling because the South has a troubled history with minorities and women may not play well among voters. Since runoff elections typically produce less turnout than general elections, the demographics of who goes to the polls is likely to help Cassidy. Still, Landrieu has pulled off several runoff victories against Republican challengers before, so her seat falling into Republican hands is not assured.
While the Republican Party’s takeover of the Senate attracted the most media attention, House Republicans did very well too. House Republicans won at least twelve seats to increase their total to 245 in the chamber, giving them a sixty-one seat majority, their largest since 1929. Democrats argued that Republican House candidates did well because in several states they lacked effective candidates at the top of state tickets to get more voters to the polls. As a result, the Republicans did a better job turning out voters and rode the coattails of the public’s dissatisfaction with President Obama and Washington, D.C. to add to their House majority. Roll Call on November 6 points out that some House Democrats may want to re-evaluate whether to replace Nancy Pelosi as House Minority Leader, but her impressive fundraising credentials will likely help her maintain her position.
In terms of governor’s races, Republican candidates rode a national wave to give the GOP control of three additional states: Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts. This gives the Republicans control of thirty-one of the nation’s fifty governorships. Maryland was the big shocker as Republican businessman Larry Hogan defeated Democratic Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, an African American that welcomed President Obama’s presence during the campaign. Very few polls were done for the Maryland race because analysts thought it was a slam dunk for Brown, but he ended up losing by nine points to Hogan in a state that has been solidly Democratic for the last thirty years. Controversial Republican incumbents defeated strong Democratic challengers as well with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, Florida Governor Rick Scott, and Maine Governor Paul LePage winning re-election. This could have significant implications for 2016 (as will be discussed below). Even Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, who pundits thought would be defeated due to voter dissatisfaction with his cutbacks to state government, managed to win re-election. Brownback’s victory was likely due to Republican voters turning out in large numbers to support Pat Roberts.
All of this is not to say that the Democrats did not have any successes on election night. In Pennsylvania, Democrat Tom Wolf defeated Republican Governor Tom Corbett by nearly ten points for the Democrats lone gubernatorial pickup of the evening. In Colorado, Governor John Hickenlooper barely won re-election over Republican Bob Beauprez. Hickenlooper’s victory was notable because Colorado Democratic Senator Mark Udall lost his re-election bid. And in New Hampshire, Senator Jeanne Shaheen survived a tough race against former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. Still, positive outcomes were tough to come by on election night for Democrats.
Bipartsian Cooperation or More Gridlock?
The GOP takeover of the Senate means that President Obama will now have to work with or against a Congress completely controlled by the opposition for the first time in his presidency. Republican control of the Senate means that they might be able to pass more legislation and place it on President Obama’s desk, but that does not mean that more legislation will get passed. The National Journal on November 5 writes that Mitch McConnell has promised to return the Senate to “normal” operations, which means that he wants bills to go through bipartisan committees before going to the floor, make the amendment process open, and force senators to work on Fridays. Republicans will still face the prospect of Democrats filibustering legislation in the Senate, so that could block their ambitious initiatives. Furthermore, McConnell recognizes that Republicans still have to work with President Obama because he has the veto pen. Although the President has only vetoed two pieces of legislation in six years, he is unlikely to allow the GOP to pass legislation that would overturn some of his keynote initiatives such as the Affordable Care Act.
There are some areas where President Obama and a Republican Congress might find common ground. The Wall Street Journal on November 6 writes that Republican Representative Paul Ryan might work with the White House on elements of its anti-poverty initiatives. Ryan wants to overhaul the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which gives tax refunds to low income working families. Some in Congress wish to extend this to childless workers, but they disagree on how to fund it. Ryan wishes to cut some federal programs whereas the White House wants to fund an expansion of the EITC through taxes on financial institutions and instruments such as hedge funds. If Republicans can get broader tax reform out of the deal, which may include reducing the size of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), lowering the corporate tax rate, or reducing regulations for small business, they may work with President Obama on the EITC. They may also be willing to provide funding for President Obama’s infrastructure initiatives, which he has floated without much avail for much of his presidency. In addition, Republicans may grant the President the fast track trade authority that he wants to negotiate trade deals with Europe and Asia. Fast track authority allows the executive branch to conclude a trade deal and submit it to Congress for an up and down vote, thereby prohibiting legislators from attaching amendments that could ruin it. Foreign Policy on November 6 points out that the midterms may improve the chances of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union (EU) being approved, as well as that of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with East Asian countries. Democrats have questioned the impact of these deals on American workers and frustrated White House attempts to pass them in previous congressional sessions. With Republicans in control, President Obama may be able to expedite this part of his agenda. Al Jazeera on November 6 and The National Journal on November 5 also point out that Republicans will try to persuade the White House to sign off on the Keystone XL pipeline project to take tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast. The Obama administration has delayed the project due to environmental concerns, which has put it at odds with organized labor, but the Republicans may be able to convince enough Democrats to support the project and override a possible veto by the Obama administration. As far as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is concerned, President Obama says that he is willing to listen to Republican suggestions. Republicans may target the elimination of the medical devices tax, which is something moderate Democrats have signaled they may support, but the elimination of the ACA is very unlikely. Still, Politico on November 6 writes that Boehner and McConnell said they will pursue aggressive ACA legislation in the next congressional session. GOP leaders may recognize that such legislation will not pass, but they may need to make an effort to appease the more conservative parts of the Republican base.
The White House may enjoy working with Boehner and McConnell because neither leader has supported more radical Republican aims to have another government shutdown or debt ceiling showdown. Roll Call on November 6 notes that the new Republican House members will make Boehner less reliant on the Tea Party, which gives him more room to maneuver. The Atlantic adds on November 5 that McConnell wants to avoid fiscal brinksmanship because it did not play well with voters last year. McConnell is also aware that the Republicans will have to defend twenty-four Senate seats and to save vulnerable members in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the next cycle the Republicans must avoid the appearance of dysfunctional governing. However, as The Week explains on November 6, McConnell has spent the last six years thwarting much of the Obama administration’s agenda, so the Obama White House may be very reluctant to give Republicans any credit for work they do over the next two years.
Cooperation with Republicans may prove difficult, though, if President Obama chooses to work around Congress with executive orders. The Christian Science Monitor writes on November 6 that if President Obama takes drastic action on immigration reform without Congress that he will poison his relationship with Republicans. Chuck Todd of NBC’s “Meet the Press” says that the President should not pursue executive action on immigration since exit polls showed that voters did not find the idea attractive, but the problem is the Obama White House has promised Latino activists that it will do something in the near future. If President Obama pursued significant action on immigration, Congress could move to deny him funds for his plans, but since Republicans do not take control of the Senate until January it would be wise for President Obama to act on immigration in December. This would allow the lame duck session of Congress to react to the issue and put the GOP on the defensive.
The obstruction issue is something that extempers should prepare speeches for because they are guaranteed to get questions about the topic over the next two years. President Obama will argue that a Republican Congress is preventing some of his legislative ideas from being debated, while Republicans will complain if President Obama vetoes bills they send him. Leaders from both parties will try to use the media to portray the other side as the enemy. If Republicans stall on President Obama’s judicial picks, which could very well happen, or if they complicate Loretta Lynch’s confirmation as the next attorney general, they will play into the President’s hands as obstructionist instruments. However, if Republicans present a unified front and get a large amount of legislation to President Obama’s desk, thereby forcing him to veto it, they may be able to convince voters that the President is the biggest obstructionist on Capitol Hill.
Ultimately, trust will determine the course of the President’s relationship with Congress. Both sides have something at stake. President Obama will want to leave a productive legacy, while Republicans in Congress will want to lay the foundation for a successful 2016 campaign. Republicans have to be sure not to miscalculate the results of the election. The UK Telegraph on November 5 explains that 54% of voters disapproved of President Obama’s job performance. Since the GOP lacked a unified platform for this election, unlike 1994 when they had candidates running under the “Contract with America” banner, the 2014 midterms should be seen as a large expression of dissatisfaction with President Obama than a ringing endorsement of conservative ideology. The Huffington Post on November 6 reveals that no Democratic Senate candidate performed better than nine points above President Obama’s approval rating, which is an indication that he sunk many of his party’s Senate candidates. Additionally, The New York Times warns on November 5 that voters are tired of ineffective governance and they are hoping that this election sent a message to get things working again. If the GOP errs in pursuing policies that are highly partisan, they run the risk of losing the momentum that they gained from the midterms. The Week writes on November 4 that Republicans must find a way to convince voters that their party has solutions to the problems facing middle America. In the 1980s, Republicans found a way to articulate their stance on inflation, welfare, and taxes that won these voters to their side. Since the election of George W. Bush in 2000, though, they have lost the ability to relate to the common voter and that hurt Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. The midterms have given the GOP a big chance to show the American people that it can govern effectively. If it fails it may suffer sizable losses in 2016.
Impacts for the 2016 Presidential Election
With the midterm elections largely in the book, the focus of the media will shift to the 2016 presidential election. Extempers can expect that all of those “Who will win the midterm elections?” questions will be replaced by “Who will win the Democratic presidential primary?” or “Who will win the Republican presidential primary?” type questions. Most analysts expect Hillary Clinton to announce whether she will seek the presidency by the spring, so that will begin the positioning of other presidential contenders on both sides.
In terms of how the midterm elections will impact the 2016 presidential race, extempers should follow the line of reasoning used by The New York Times on November 6 when it notes that midterms do not necessarily mean that the party in power is somehow going to win or lose. For example, Bill Clinton witnessed a GOP wave election in 1994 but then went on to beat Bob Dole handily in 1996. Similarly, George H.W. Bush won the presidency over Michael Dukakis in 1988 despite the Democrats winning the 1986 midterms. President Obama will not be seeking re-election in 2016, so Hillary Clinton will be able to present herself as either an extension of his accomplishments or someone completely different. The New York Times explains that President Obama’s approval rating and the performance of the economy will play a much larger role in the next presidential election than the outcome of the recent midterms.
For Hillary Clinton, the midterms did not improve her brand, although that would be very difficult to do at this point of her political career. Candidates that she campaigned for tended to go down in defeat, such as Grimes in Kentucky, Hagan in North Carolina, and Nunn in Georgia, but The Washington Post notes on November 4 that Clinton made herself useful for the Democratic Party’s efforts and did forty-five campaign events in fifty-four days. There are signs that the Democratic Party is reverting back to a Clinton-run operation, especially with some party members growing frustrated over the distance that the Obama administration has long had with other elements of the Democratic machine. Foreign Policy on November 5 argues that President Obama could leave office more isolated than any president since Richard Nixon since he has never been engaged with larger Democratic Party operations since he won in 2008. Clinton’s willingness to campaign for the party will show that she is an effective team player and the candidates she campaigned for that were successful, such as Shaheen in New Hampshire, she will be able to call upon for aid in a presidential campaign.
The midterms do matter for presidential politics to the extent that they impact a party’s bench of future presidential elections. The benefit of holding Senate seats and especially governor’s mansions is that it allows a party to cultivate candidates for higher office. The New York Times article previously cited from November 6 explains that midterm wave elections, such as 2014, destroy lower-level officeholders from the opposing party. In this election the Democrats failed to dislodge Scott Walker, who will likely explore the possibility of a presidential campaign in 2016. Similarly, they failed to defeat Rick Snyder in Michigan or mount an effective challenge to John Kasich in Ohio. The successes of these men may pave the foundation for a presidential bid, just as Chris Christie’s successful re-election in New Jersey last year set him up for a presidential run. One of the Democrats major problems for presidential elections beyond 2016 is that they do not have a very deep bench beyond Clinton. Joe Biden is popular among some working class voters, but he does not poll nearly as well as Clinton against GOP challengers. Elizabeth Warren is liked by progressives, but it is unclear whether she can actually win a national election. Many of the top Democratic candidates with requisite experience such as Clinton, Biden, and Governor Jerry Brown (California) are quite old, while the Republicans have Christie, Walker, Snyder, Kasich, Brownback, Rick Perry (outgoing governor of Texas), Suzanna Martinez (New Mexico), and Bobby Jindal (Louisiana) installed throughout the country and gaining executive experience. The downside for the GOP is that they could end up with a bloated, complicated, and divisive primary contest in 2016, but they have more choices available to them than Democrats do at the present time. If anything, that is how the midterms could affect presidential politics in the years ahead.
Finally, there are campaign lessons for both parties to learn from this election. For the Republicans, they did a much better job with candidate selection and turning out their voters in this election. For Democrats, Time writes on November 6 that they failed to give some of their voters, especially minorities, a reason to turn out. It notes that the “war on women” message did not give the Democrats as much traction in 2012, likely because GOP candidates did not have blusters about reproductive issues, and it may have turned men away from the Democratic Party in large numbers. For example, The Huffington Post article cited earlier explains that Democrats lost men by sixteen points nationally, 57-41%, whereas they only won women by four points (51-47%). In elections where the Republicans can restrict the Democrats margins among women, they tend to perform very well. Therefore, Democrats may want to reassess how they approach the “war on women” narrative, if they even do, in 2016 because it may be driving more men toward the GOP and hindering the party’s chances in swing states. Lastly, it appears that Democrats efforts against major GOP donors such as the Koch Brothers did not resonate among voters. The economy remained the top issue in the election and Time on November 6 wonders why Democrats did not do more to focus on that issue. The Democrats can take solace in the fact that minimum wage votes in red states such as Arkansas went in their favor, but that was still not enough to save Pryor’s Senate seat.
The midterm elections create an opportunity for Republicans to demonstrate that they can be constructive partners in the governing process. They also show Democrats that President Obama’s policies are not resonating with voters and that they need to create a compelling set of policies to turn out their supporters in two years. It is possible to read too much into a midterm election, especially one that saw less than 40% turnout nationwide, but both parties need to embrace a message of cooperation, which voters feel is the best way to govern the country.