Part I: The Generic Congressional Ballot
This part of the series focuses on running Democrats in as many seats as possible. Here are the numbers of seats in the House of Representatives contested by each party in most recent congressional elections:
1994 1998 2000 2002 2004
Repulicans 419 396 404 399 406
Democrats 401 380 403 391 400
Dem Seats Won 204 211 212 205 202
Dem Vote % 45.5 47.7 47.9 45.9 47.5
Notice that in 1994, Republicans peaked both in terms of the number of seats they challenged, and the margin they held over Democrats in terms of the number of seats challenged. Note also that the best Democratic year in the House in recent memory, both in terms of seats won and percentage of total votes received, was 2000. That was also the year that Democrats peaked both in terms of seats challenged overall and number of seats challenged relative to Republicans. While that certainly is not enough to demonstrate a direct relationship between challenging more seats and winning more seats / votes, it does suggest a possible relationship. Also, one wonders what could have been in 1998, when Democrats actually won more votes per challenged seat than Republicans, 82,287 to 81,236. Would Democrats have won the House if they challenged 420 seats or more in 1998? It certainly seems possible.
Overall, in every cycle for which I have information, Republicans have challenged more seats than Democrats. Also, in every cycle, Republicans have won more votes than Democrats. What is particularly frustrating and perplexing about this is that Democrats have far more "super safe" seats. According to Charlie Cook, there are thirty-one Democratic seats that are safer than the safest Republican seat. Republicans face significantly more quixotic, sacrificial lamb type campaigns than Democrats, and yet Republicans still field more candidates than Democrats. If both parties were equally shying away from difficult campaigns, than Democrats would be running far more candidates than Republicans. Instead, Republicans are regularly fielding more, sometimes far more, candidates than Democrats. Even though Republicans have controlled Congress for over a decade now, Republicans are still fielding more candidates and challenging for more difficult seats than are Democrats. This state of affairs smacks of a disturbingly high level Democratic timidity on a national scope.
Uncontested seats are a real problem for Democrats. As I have written before, they hurt Democrats both up-ticket and down-ticket. They thin out our candidate benches, and weaken our activist base. They limit the distribution and dissemination of our message, allowing Republican frames, memes and narratives to thrive unchallenged. Perhaps worst of all, uncontested and lightly contested Republican incumbents in 90 seats across the country has resulted in $63 million being funneled to seriously challenged Republican incumbents in other districts over the past three cycles. In other words, uncontested seats fail to stretch Republican defenses, making it all the easier for them to maintain their majority.
Uncontested seats also serve as a drag upon Democratic performance in generic congressional ballots. Over the past decade, Democrats have generally done slightly better in final generic ballots than they have performed in actual vote totals. It isn't hard to realize that one major reason for this is because Democrats do not give as many of their potential voters a chance to actually vote for them as do Republicans. Demcorats are challenging fewer seats and, given the high number of "super safe" Democratic districts, the districts they are failing to challenge have, on average, significantly more potential Democratic voters than the districts Republicans are failing to challenge have potential Republican voters. Although I do not have definitive statistics to prove this, in all likelihood Democrats are leaving twice as many of their potential voters without a Democratic choice as Republicans are leaving their potential voters without a Republican choice. In any given election, Republicans are probably providing 96-97% of their potential voters with a Republican option, while Democrats are probably only providing 93-94% of their potential voters with a Democratic option. In 1994, the gap was probably at its widest, something like 98%-93%. No wonder Republicans are regularly scooping up 50-65% of the undediceds in generic congressional ballots.
Given all of this, any Democratic landslide will be coupled with a significant improvement in the number of seats Democrats challenge in the House of Representatives. At the very minimum, if Democrats are to achieve a real landslide, they need to equal the 419 seats Republicans challenged in 1994. Realistically, Democrats need to greatly surpass what Republicans achieved in 1994, because nearly all the districts Republicans failed to challenge had fewer potential Republican votes than every single district in the country has Democratic votes. To put an actual number target on the number of seats Democrats need to challenge for a landslide to occur is not an exact science, but a good guess would place the number at 427 or higher. With 427 seats challenged, Democrats will probably at least equal the national coverage achieved by Republicans in 1994. Of course, because Republicans generally only fail to challenge super-safe Democratic districts, if Democrats wish to create a national coverage margin greater than the 4-5% achieved by Republicans in 1994, 434 is probably the only option.
So which seats sand in our way to 427-434? Amazingly, very few the seats we failed to challenge in 2004. In fact, of the 35 seats we failed to challenge in 2004, 24 of them already have a Democratic candidate:
The 24 2004 uncontested already filled in 2006
AZ-03, CA-41, FL-04, FL-07, FL-21, FL-09, FL-24, FL-25, GA-01, GA-06, GA-07, KS-01, KY-05, NY-25, PA-05, PA-10, PA-19, SC-01, SC-03, TX-03, TX-10, TX-13, TX-14, VA-01.
That is a dramatic and remarkably wonderful improvement. It is only early February, and yet we have already filled two-thirds of the seats we failed to challenge in 2004. Wow. A pace like that makes me believe that we will definitely reach the 427 benchmark minimum. Congratulations all around.
However, there are other factors to worry about. First, the one seat where we are guaranteed not to have a challenger in 2006 is the TX-11. In 2004, we actually had a candidate in that seat, a candidate who bought in 52,000 votes (that was only 22%, but that's still 52,000 Democrats we are leaving out to dry). Thus, assuming that we will challenge every seat in 2006 that we challenged in 2004 is clearly not a good thing to do.
Although here are disputes as to exactly how many Republicans remain unchallenged in 2006, (see Barry Welsh, MyDD diarist BENAWU, and David NYC), we can get a sense of which districts we have the most to worry about by comparing districts everyone agrees are currently unchallenged to districts that went unchallenged in 2004 and / or 2002. Here are the districts where we are least likely to field a candidate:
These eighteen districts we must really focus on. The remaining 30-40 districts without a Democratic challenger all fielded a candidate in both 2002 and 2004, and thus should be prioritized by order of filing deadline since they have no history of being uncontested. The Alabama 6th, Georgia 10th, Oklahoma 3rd, and Virginia 6th are particularly worrisome, since no Democrat has every challenged those seats since their inception after the 2000 election. Shame on the Democratic parties in those four districts. Particular shame should also fall upon the Democratic parties of Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Virginia, all states who boast multiple seats with a history of being left uncontested and yet still have not made amends in 2006.
Of course, just running candidates everywhere and having a lead in generic congressional ballots is not good enough on its own to create a landslide. It certainly helps a lot, but it is not enough. That is next part of this series will focus on mounting serious challenges to Republican incumbents.
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