While Democratic loyalists remain laser-focused on beating President Trump in November — securing a 270-vote majority in the Electoral College — the early stages of the jumbled presidential primary season have blurred the fact that winning the White House may change very little in Washington over the next four years.
If the Democrats gain the presidency but fail to win a Senate majority, erasing Sen. Mitch McConnell’s role as a road block, the next president is in for a rough ride. Realistically, the Democrats need to capture 340 electoral votes to win the White House and the Senate, according to research by Third Way.
The reason? Bipartisanship and ticket-splitting among American voters has nearly become obsolete.
To gain a Senate majority, the Democrats need a mainstream presidential nominee who can help the party’s Senate candidates in states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Maine, Arizona, Iowa, and North Carolina. That’s an either/or target wish list, but none of those states will go Democratic if the nominee does not demonstrate some coattails.
In 2020, the top of the ticket is the ticket to winning not just a presidential election, but securing a working majority in the House and Senate.
Ticket-splitting, while not unusual in down-ballot elections for local and state offices, has become exceedingly rare in races for Congress, especially in the Senate. Due to the hellish hyper-partisanship we’re mired in as a national electorate, challengers running for Congress have little chance of victory in November unless their party’s presidential candidate carries their state. Incumbents don’t fare much better.
The idea, prevalent throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, that Americans quietly favor divided government, with one party controlling Congress and the other leveling the playing field within the White House, now seems rather antiquated. If Democrats win the presidency in 2020 but do not achieve a majority in the Republican-controlled Senate, all those grand plans espoused by the candidates on the campaign trail will go nowhere.
Democrats need a net gain of three seats to wrest the upper chamber of Congress from the GOP. While Republicans have 22 of their incumbents on the ballot in November, only two of those senators represent states that have leaned Democratic in the past two presidential elections.
Gary Peters of Michigan is the lone Democratic senator running for re-election (after serving a full six years) in a state where Trump may win. That makes him vulnerable in the eyes of political analysts, even as Michigan’s liberal Democratic senators of the recent past and present – Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow – enjoyed re-election successes by comfortable margins. A Peters loss would surely dampen the Dems chances to overtake the Senate.
Coattails are the key to a ‘blue wave’
The folks at Third Way analyzed the 2020 election dynamics and found that 340 electoral votes are probably needed for the Democrats to accomplish a “blue wave” that gives their party free reign on Capitol Hill, at least until the 2022 elections. Most important, an ineffectual presidential nominee would mean that Democratic Senate hopefuls cannot compete and win (or keep the margin incredibly close) in key states like Arizona, Iowa and North Carolina.
As for the declining impact among ticket-splitting voters, in 1980 and 1984 more than half the states with Democratic senators/nominees on the ballot split their vote between Reagan and those Democrats. By 2000, 71 percent of Senate races went to the same party that won the presidency in a Senate candidate’s state.
In the 2016 elections, a milestone was reached. For the first time, every Senate election was won by the candidate running in the same party as the presidential contender who carried his/her state.
The obvious implication is that Democrats need to attract independents and ticket-splitters to their Senate candidates and win those states at the presidential level – or at least keep the contest exceedingly tight.
And that’s where Bernie Sanders comes into the picture.
Nicholas Kristof, a fervently liberal columnist for the New York Times, wrote earlier this week that “(Sanders’) proposals have almost no chance of becoming law, particularly if the Senate stays in Republican hands. If there is to be some progress on health care, or college affordability, or income inequality, or the appointment of judges, it will come through the election of a new president with hefty ‘coattails’ — the capacity to help candidates lower on the party’s ticket. In particular, much will depend on the outcomes of Senate races in a handful of states.”
What has sparked such anxiety among Democratic Party officials is that coattails are far from Sander’s specialty. In fact, in 2016 he was often criticized for ignoring the plight of Democrats running in down-ballot races.
Some House Democrats have a burning Bernie anxiety
Candidates running in swing states or tightly contested House districts are not likely to latch onto a democratic socialist running for president. That’s certainly not a safe bet.
The most intense fears arise from the 30 House Democrats sitting in districts that Trump won in 2016. Those incumbents fret about running as moderates or centrists at the same time that Sanders, if he becomes the party’s nominee, spends months on the campaign trail touting Medicare for All and other big-ticket government programs.
Whether Sanders can defeat Trump is one ponderable in this election season. But the prospect of the Vermont senator capturing 340 electoral votes is beyond the imagination.
That would mean Sanders holding Trump to just 198 electoral votes. The last time a GOP nominee managed just 198 electoral votes or less was 24 years ago, when Bill Clinton trounced Bob Dole.
Photo: ABC News screenshot
Map: Third Way
its going to just be like McGovern all over again.