Politics Counts: Big Wins and Partisan Divides

Dante Chinni writes Politics Counts every week. Mr. Chinni is the director of the American Communities Project at American University, which examines different types of communities across the U.S.

The 113th Congress was never shaping up to especially prolific. Even before this week’s shutdown, a long list of measures, such as the amount of legislation passed, suggested the body was deeply divided.

A look at some numbers behind the U.S. Congress over the last two decades indicates the current crop of Democrats and Republicans isn’t actually all that dissimilar from those of previous years. The difference is in how those numbers are playing out and larger shifts going on behind them – moves in where those safe seats are and the constituents they serve. The country is more geographically segregated politically that it was 20 years ago.

Much has been made of the “safe seat” argument in the current shutdown debate – how congressmen and women increasingly come from districts where the vote is not close meaning they have little reason to come to the middle and compromise. And at first blush that idea seems to carry a lot of weight.

In the 2012 election, 87% of the House Republicans beat their nearest competitor by more than 10 percentage points. For Democrats, the number was roughly the same, 84% But as high as those numbers seem, they are not out of line with the margins in recent elections. The numbers are actually slightly lower than the recent peaks.

Congressmen with Big Wins by Party

Going by the table above, the partisan divide perhaps should have been worse in 2002 or 2004, when House Democrats and Republicans, on average, won by bigger margins than they did 2012. And while those are not thought of as years of immense cooperation in Washington, they didn’t produce a shutdown.

Even after Democrats regained control of the House in 2006, again with a lot of “big wins,” the government kept operating. That makes it hard to point specifically at comfortable wins as the driver of Washington’s current acrimony.

So Politics Counts looked at the votes within the Congress to see if they grown more polarized. To measure that we used ratings from a left-leaning group, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), and a right-leaning group, the American Conservative Union (ACU). Both groups pick out key pieces of legislation and measure whether members of each party support their position.

The ADA and ACU measures offer a little more evidence of a divide. In 2012, the ACU showed House Democrats at a 20-year low on their index, scoring 8.2 out of possible 100. The ADA, meanwhile, found House Republicans near a 20-year low on theirs, GOP members scored 5.6 out of a 100.

Again, those numbers are not terribly out of line with where they have been. The ACU has had the House Democrats at that low score for three years. And the ADA has had the House Republicans slightly lower in 2010 and 2003. But they are significant, particularly when you compare them to the “big win” numbers.

When you put these numbers together, they suggest there is little penalty for partisanship once members arrive in Congress. In fact, there seems to be no penalty. Polls may show that voters want members in Congress to work together, but voters don’t vote that way.

In other words, it’s not that “safe seats” are a new concept. Even back in 1992, 82% of House Democrats and 79% of House Republicans won their seats by more than 10 percentage points. But these safe seats, and their constituents, are different.

You can see the differences in the geography of the House. Republicans and Democrats used to be spread across the country in different states. But over time both parties have solidified into more regional casts.

As recently as 2001, Connecticut’s congressional delegation was made up of three Democrats and three Republicans, now it is entirely Democratic. Arkansas had three Democrats and one Republican, now it is entirely Republican. Maryland went from being evenly split between four Democrats and four Republicans to being seven Democrats to one Republican.

States and regions are more likely to be represented by one party or another. Moderate Yankee Republicans are extinct and southern Blue Dog Democrats are a small fraction of what they once were. And it’s not just redistricting that has pushed the Democrats out of Arkansas or the Republicans out of Connecticut. There are bigger demographic and cultural changes afoot.

That’s the real issue in Congress now. It’s not just safe seats, but rather where those seats are located and what the constituents they represent actually want. Voters in Connecticut and the northeast in general, don’t want what the GOP has to offer so they elect and reelected Democrats by large margins. Voters in Arkansas and the south and plains don’t want what the Democrats have to offer, so they elected and reelect Republicans by large margins.

Put it all together and you get situations like the 2013 shutdown. And you can see why the shutdown may not be easy to solve.