The 2006 Election Myth?

Sunday, November 12. 2006

Over at the Huffington Post, EJ Eskow writes,

An hour of vote tabulation reveals a stunning fact: Democrats won the popular vote for the Senate by an overwhelming 12.6% margin - 55%/42.4%.

What Eskow either forgets, or neglects to point out, is that 33 Senate seats are up for election every two years, and that among this year's seats were three in California, New York, and Massachusetts -- seats that Senators Feinstein, Clinton, and Kennedy won by about 4 million votes, most of the Dems' 6.6 million vote margin of victory in the aggregate US Senate vote.

I wonder if this newly minted mandate myth will have the same staying power of that never-realized, but often repeated, $5.8 trillion federal surplus we had at the end of the Clinton Administration?

Posted by Tom Elia in Politics at 13:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (117)

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I am confused. Is the statement untrue? I haven't don the math but it seems likely. Is the fact that Mass, NY, and CA held elections make it less true?

#1 dmh on 2006-11-12 13:45 (Reply)

Mr. Eskow seems to believe that the aggregate Senate vote for 33 out of 100 seats forms the basis for a national mandate.

I simply point out that about 60% of the victory margin comes from three almost untouchable seats -- seats that would roll up large victory margins in just about every election cycle.

#1.1 Tom Elia on 2006-11-12 14:00 (Reply)

I have added up the House totals if anyone's actually interested.

I made a quick perl script to look at the results currently posted at CNN.com and, for contested seats in the House, I found 33879801 votes for Republicans
and 37379451 for Democrats. So, a margin of 52.5% to 47.5%, (D to R), ignoring third parties and independents.

The number of uncontested seats, which whose votes were not counted in the above results, were 4 Republican-held seats and 30 Democratic-held seats.

I'm a little surprised that the percentages were that close. I thought gerrymandering was generally believed to be a bigger boost to Repulicans than to Democrats on the whole. But these aggregate vote totals are really not significantly different from the results in terms of how the seats turned out. But I guess the Democratic gerrymandering of California's 53 seats would tend balance out the gerrymanding of pretty many 'red' states, and states with only a few reps. really can't be gerrymandered anyway.

#1.1.1 Elux on 2006-11-13 06:13 (Reply)

How anyone can fail to understand how a statement can be simultaneously true and misleading is beyond me. Rather than being stupid, I suspect DMH is just being intentionally obtuse.

To give an example, no Senators from North Carolina, South Carolina, or Georgia were on the ballot. A lot of Republican voters had no senate election in which to vote.

A more reasonable number would be the national vote breakdown on U.S. House seats, because more voters had a chance to vote in those races. Even that number, however, is questionable, because some seats are not contested. A Democrat living in a house district where a Republican was running unopposed couldn't vote for his party in a meaningful way in that election. Sure, he could write a Democrat in, but that wouldn't be reflected in a national Republican-Democrat House election vote split.

#1.2 Jeremy T on 2006-11-12 14:38 (Reply)

I am confused.

Clearly. They got most of that margin from safe seats.

#2 Jordan on 2006-11-12 13:50 (Reply)

Of course the statement is true, but what the statement maker implies is false. Like Kerry telling us he was awarded 3 Purple Hearts. True, but misleading.

#3 Jim O'Sullivan on 2006-11-12 13:51 (Reply)

There are at least 2 conclusions to be drawn from every set of statistics, depending on context. Democrats use raw numbers to convince themselves of a mandate at their own peril.

But I hope they keep deluding themselves that the election was a vote for radical idiocy.

#4 Peg C. on 2006-11-12 13:59 (Reply)

It doesn't seem like much of a myth. It's probably roughly true.

I imagine that if you look closely at House votes the percentage is also very close--and in the case of the House, the makeup of the chamber matches pretty closely with the popular vote total for each party. It usually does.

Of course the Senate is meant to be the less democratic, more stable body.

#5 Dean Esmay (Homepage) on 2006-11-12 14:30 (Reply)

Dean,

I neglected to include the headline for Eskow's post, which was, "What a Mandate! Popular Vote For Senate Was 55%-43% Democratic."

#5.1 Tom Elia on 2006-11-12 15:37 (Reply)

But these are the only states that matter, aren't they? The other 47 are just for flying over.

#6 Rob on 2006-11-12 14:36 (Reply)

The point isn't that the claim isn't true, the point is that the claim is misleading. The margin of victory for the senate doesn't translate into a national mandate.

#7 Half Canaidan on 2006-11-12 14:40 (Reply)

It is indeed a meaningless statistic because of uncontested seats.

Similarly, the presidential popular vote is essentially meaningless since you have no way to know what the result would be if the candidates truly contested every state and every voter felt her vote would actually make a difference.

#8 j.a.m. on 2006-11-12 14:41 (Reply)

Well, wouldn't we get a better read if we took at least those house seat that were marginally contested? I think that even if we included Dem blowout seats like Dingell's here in Michigan, and left out only seats where pretty much NO opposition was available, you'd get a fair read on what actually happened.

I seem to remember that from the 60s right thru the 90s Dems rolled up pretty good margins in the House with only a 52-48 or so advantage in the popular vote for House seats. Is it different this time?

#9 JorgXMcKie on 2006-11-12 15:05 (Reply)

Eskow lumps every Senate race together to create a mythical monolithic "popular vote" for Senate.

This, of course, allows him to conveniently ignore the differences between the Senate races in California, New York, and Massachussetts and races like the one here in Virginia where the Democrat won by 0.5% of the vote.

#10 Mike on 2006-11-12 15:14 (Reply)

Bad math in more ways than one. How many Dem-held seats actually contested against how many GOP seats actually contested?

Look at it another way. The GOP lost the Senate by about 10,000 total votes in two states. As true a statement (and FAR less misleading) as "Dems won by 6.6 million votes."

Yet another angle--hypothetical--if 30 million Californians re-elect an uncontested Barbara Boxer, and 10 million Rhode Islanders, Delawarans, Wyomingites, Montanans, Utahns and Idahoans re-elected GOP senators in uncontested elections, would that be a major "mandate" victory for the Democrats?

#11 Tully (Homepage) on 2006-11-12 15:15 (Reply)

I don't know why Eskow would find that fact "stunning." Of the 33 seats up for election, Democrats won 26. In fact, if anything their vote total was suprisingly low given the outcome - they won 72% of the seats with only 55% of the vote.

#12 TWL on 2006-11-12 15:20 (Reply)

Sorry, that 26 should obviously have been a 24. The percentages are correct.

#12.1 TWL on 2006-11-12 15:23 (Reply)

um, the margin in the house was roughly (finals aren't in yet) 53/47. How do you explain that one?

#13 davidm on 2006-11-12 15:27 (Reply)

Well, again, 53% of House seats is 230. Democrats control at least 229 - their power in the House more-or-less matches that indicated by their votes.

#13.1 TWL on 2006-11-12 15:40 (Reply)

you want a myth? How about this 10,000 vote meme that would "swing the election the other way." Well, if you're going to posit that, you can also posit what would have happened in 10,000 more votes had gone the Democratic way (they had plenty of close races they lost, too). 10,000 votes that way, and the Dems have a 45 seat majority in the house instead of a 30 seat majority. Neither statistic is very meaningful, but it's dishonest to posit one possibility without also raising the other.

#14 davidm on 2006-11-12 15:31 (Reply)

I'd say House Results are somewhat more indicative, for the simple (and obvious) reason that House seats are actually apportioned by population, whereas Senate seats are not. But even there the cumulative "popular vote" is meaningless--technically, you could have the entire House won by 435 votes, completely locking out one party. Would that be a "mandate?"

For yet another view, 1000 or so votes in Florida in 2000 were completely relevant, whereas the national "popular vote" results were not--and for the very same reason that the aggregated popular Senate vote is not releveant.

#14.1 Tully (Homepage) on 2006-11-12 16:06 (Reply)

Look at it another way: the Democrates are claiming a national mandate based on elections in 66% of the country.

How can you look at results in two-thirds of the country and apply it to the remaining third?

#15 Bill Peschel (Homepage) on 2006-11-12 15:41 (Reply)

This is ridiculous. Yes, Clinton, Feinstein and Kennedy racked up the votes. But on the Rep. side so did Hutchinson and Lugar, who won their races by a combined 2 million votes.

#16 CM on 2006-11-12 15:51 (Reply)

I disagree.

Hutchinson's margin of victory was roughly cancelled out by Nelson' victory in Florida over a pathetic candidate, and Kohl won Wisconsin by about 800,000.

Lugar's margin was indeed huge -- there wasn't a Dem on the ballot.

I think it's probably more accurate to look at the aggregate House vote for the purposes of forming an idea about the national vote and whether it means a mandate.

The Dems won that vote by about 5% - 6%.

The won the major-party vote by a little less than 5%.

Is that really a mandate?

#16.1 Tom Elia on 2006-11-12 16:09 (Reply)

Why not call it a mandate? The Republicans did after the 2004 elections....why didn't you respond to that fabrication?

#16.1.1 JeffB on 2006-11-12 18:31 (Reply)

Top ten states by population (2005 estimates, US Census Bureau) are CA, TX, NY, FL, IL, PA, OH, MI, GA, and NJ. NC was just behind NJ. Illinois and Georgia were the big states without senate races. Clinton, Feinstein, and Nelson cruised to re-election for the Democrats and Hutchinson for the Republicans. Stabenow, Casey, and Brown also rang up healthy margins in their races.

Another parlor game is to look at the electoral votes of the states where Democrats won the senate seat on Tuesday. My back of the envelope calculation puts that at 295 and then there's 10 in CT and VT. Not a pretty picture for the GOP, given that's a majority and several states didn't have a senate seat up. The only silver lining for the GOP is that MT, ND, and NE would go red in a presidential election no matter what and many of the states not in the count are red states.

Implications for 2008? Probably none. But it's another way to look at what a good election this was for the Democrats.

#17 Ryle on 2006-11-12 16:01 (Reply)

Your entire argument is incredibly misleading, and you intentionally neglect several important facts. Sure, New York, California, and Massachusetts had huge Democratic margins, but Texas and Indiana went largely for Republicans. Sure, there wasn't a Democrat on the ballot in Indiana, but there wasn't really a Republican on the ballot in Connecticut, was there? (I discount Schlesinger, who received no support from the national Republican Party.) You intentionally seek to mislead, sir.

#18 David on 2006-11-12 16:29 (Reply)

No, I 'm not being misleading.

As I replied above in a comment, victory margins for the Repub in Texas and the Dem in Florida cancel one another out.

Lamont had about 340,000 more votes than Schlesinger in CT, that's true, but we don't know how many Repubs voted for Lieberman either -- and any way CT is a Dem stronghold. It seems to me highly unlikely that a Repub would beat Lieberman in any cycle.

As I said before, a more accurate barometer of the nation would be found in the aggregate House vote, which favored the Dems by about 5%-6% in the total vote and about 5% in the two-party vote (I think 30 Dems ran unopposed in the House, as did 2 Repubs.)

It seems to me that arguing a mandate for the Dems exists using data from from 33 Senate races gives a misleading impression -- especially when we have more complete national info from House races.

Do you argue that a 5-6 point victory in the House constitutes a mandate?

I wouldn't.

#18.1 Tom Elia on 2006-11-12 16:48 (Reply)

Anyone who agrees with Eskow is clearly not analyzing the data and circumstances in an objective way.

CA had a senate election and so did NY. They are two very very large and very blue states and they alone skew any apples to apples analysis.

Eskow is simply making the statistics "lie" or lean to support his point of view (which he already had before the votes were even counted). I suspect he must be a liberal, wheenie, wuss, eh?

#19 AJ Lynch (Homepage) on 2006-11-12 17:04 (Reply)

I'm a country boy and have not had much learning but I know this: the GOP controlled both houses in Congress before the election. Now they control neither. All the blabber here doesn't change what happened.

#20 fred lapides (Homepage) on 2006-11-12 17:27 (Reply)

I can't argue with that -- well maybe the 'country boy without much learning' part...

#20.1 Tom Elia on 2006-11-12 17:38 (Reply)

It is important to note that in the 6th year of a presidency, the average pickup is 30 seats in the house, and 6 in the Senate.

So when the Dems got 29 seats, and 5 seats, that is very close to average.

Of course it is a mandate for change. That is the no brainer. The question is change in what policy, and in what direction.

Though I would hope for enforcement of the border, to include employer sanctions, the presence of Feinstein and Boxer on the list of employers to be sanctioned makes that a non-starter.

Though I would hope for fighting a war as if we were at war, the presence of Ellison (Muslim, Minn) and Connyers (D, Amerabia) in the majority party makes that a non-starter.

And so it goes. Gun Control? We sure didn't have a lot of people advertising more gun control as a major part of their position, and had some (Webb, Dem, Virginia) who were out and out opposed to it.

I don't know, but that is the wonderful thing about our system. Future missteps will be corrected by future elections. I can only hope that the obstructive tactics demonstrated by the Democrats can be turned to serve patriotic Americans.

#20.2 Don Meaker (Homepage) on 2006-11-12 18:33 (Reply)

It may be true that the states involved in Senate elections were not typical, but many of the commenters are making a crude logical error: confusion the legal (broad sense) issue of how we decide who wins each election (a plurality, regardless of margin, with the indication about public sentiment shown by comparing the percentages of votes. To call the latter "irrelevant" etc. is the foolish mistake of missing the original context. In any case, most American voters rejected Republicans by significant margins, when it's all counted up.

#21 Neil' (Homepage) on 2006-11-12 18:18 (Reply)

I can't disagree entirely, but merely wish to point out the difference between a 5%-6% victory and a 12% victory.

I think it's big enough to comment on.

The bottom line is the Dems control the Senate 51-49, and the House 229 - 196 (or thereabouts), and the Repubs have the White House.

Talk of a mandate is not only silly, it's inaccurate.

#21.1 Tom Elia on 2006-11-12 18:32 (Reply)

Rather than trade anecdotes about California versus Texas, etc., perhaps it would clear up matters to look at all of the 16 states that did not have a Senate election in 2006. I pieced this list together from a couple of map graphics. Thirteen of these nonvoting states are “red” states (voted for Bush in 2004), with a total of 98 Electoral votes (and thus 72 Congressional Districts). Just three of these states are “blue” states (voted for Gore in 2004), with a total of 32 Electoral votes (and thus 26 Congressional Districts). For this reason, the “12.6% margin - 55%/42.4%” is just not a meaningful measure even of how much mandate the American people granted the Democrats in the Senate.

The 16 states are:

State EV 2004
AL 3 R
AR 6 R
CO 3 R
GA 15 R
IA 11 R
ID 4 R
KS 6 R
KY 8 R
LA 9 R
NC 15 R
OK 7 R
SC 8 R
SD 3 R

IL 21 D
NH 4 D
OR 7 D

#22 DWPittelli on 2006-11-12 18:58 (Reply)

The other way to think of 'the mandate' is this:

How many of the House Democrats ran on Nancy Pelosi's First 100 Hour agenda?

My cocktail napkin tally is < 100.

So much for the Democratic Vision Thing.

#23 BumperStickerist on 2006-11-12 19:27 (Reply)

talk of a mandate is silly? undoubtedly. but Bush has been doing it for years, with just as little justificiation. didn't see you scoffing at HIS claims.

and the fact that you feel the need to poo-poo the Dems claims shows nothing but how desperately, blindly you wish it not to be the case.

#24 AD on 2006-11-12 21:34 (Reply)

I don't recall George Bush himself ever saying that he won a mandate in 2004, but if he did so, he was inaccurate (though he had the House, the Senate and a majority of the vote in 2004, something only four Dem presidential candidates have done since the Civil War, by the way).

I do remember some people calling Bush' 2004 election a mandate, but I disagreed with them too.

Despite what you write, the fact that I am dismissing the claims of mandate using as evidence the Senate's popular vote total is because I do not think it makes sense to do so -- precisely because they do not paint an accurate picture of the electorate.

#24.1 Tom Elia on 2006-11-12 21:44 (Reply)

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=News&id=2344929

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/05/MNGOF9MKHV1.DTL

He doesn't have to use the word "mandate" to claim a mandate.

I'm just saying.

For those you do remember claiming a mandate for Bush, did you agree with them publicly? Here on your blog? Or just in your head? Not trying to be rude. I'm just saying if you want your words to be given any credibility (and I believe you do), these are fair questions.

And "having the House, the Senate and a majority of the vote" in 2004 does not give a mandate to the President, as you have probably accurately defined it. The question is, as you have stated, whether the aggregate vote was a representative sample of the nation as a whole. I submit it certainly was not. Further, is it really fair to count votes for congressional offices as votes for the President, even if they ARE in the same party? I submit it most certainly isn't.

#24.1.1 AD on 2006-11-13 12:15 (Reply)

And when I said "agree", I meant disagree.

#24.1.1.1 AD on 2006-11-13 14:11 (Reply)

=
=
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Can someone point me to some info about that bogus surplus? As synchronicity would have it, I was in an argument about that just yesterday.

Regards all.

======
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#25 Tim on 2006-11-12 21:47 (Reply)

Check out the "Analytical Perspectives" section of the Federal Budget.

There were four annual surpluses during the Clinton Administration totaling about $560 billion.

Somehow after that showing between FY 1998 and FY 2001, a ten-year projection of $5.8 trillion was trumpeted.

Think about that: four years, $560 billion cumulative; then a ten-year projection says $5.8 trillion.

I suspect, but don't know for sure, that the assumption included the massive -- and anomalous -- cap gains revenue from 1997-2000 during the stock market bubble in the projections.

#25.1 Tom Elia on 2006-11-12 22:09 (Reply)

The book, "How to Lie With Statistics" was written about 1954 by Darrell Huff. It is still availabe and everyone ought to read it.

#26 Jan Pritchard on 2006-11-12 22:41 (Reply)

The facts speak clearly. The total vote represents a clear choice in favor of the democrats. Whether one sees it as a mandate or not is a matter of opinion and obviously EJ Eskow does and the cons don't. The people spoke and 55% of them voted for the democratic party candidates. 55% may or may not be a mandate. However 55% is inarguably a major political arse whipping - however one may want to parse the results.

#27 Heru on 2006-11-12 23:15 (Reply)

Heru,

I disagree, the aggregate Senate vote is an unrepresentative sample of the nation as a whole.

All the states weren't included in the Senate tally, as there are only 33 (or 34) Senate seats up each cycle.

The aggregate House (as all House seats are up each cycle) vote is the more accurate tally to concentrate on and it has the spread somewhere between 5%-6%.

That is a big difference, and that is the point I'm trying to make.

#27.1 Tom Elia on 2006-11-13 00:22 (Reply)

I'd argue that the notion that you can separate "non-competitive" races from the analysis is wrong. I've seen it said that 30 House seats were won by Democrats running uncontested and 4 were won by Republicans uncontested. To ignore the clear majority of Dem voters who have to exist in that 26 district Dem surplus of House districts is to discount nearly 6% of the population.

Presumably if no Republican challenger could be found, the chances of a Republican were slim to none in the first place. So you'd have to assume that the Dems would win with 70%+ of the vote in each of those districts. Including these districts in some way would undoubtedly enhance the usability of any argument made on whether one party or another has a "mandate".

That said, there is no constitutional provision for a "mandate" save for the 2/3rds veto proof majority, which the Democrats have not achieved. And even in the Senate, the Dems still face the cloture rule they defended so strongly when they were in the minority.

Additionally, since the Democrats didn't run on anything specifically other than, "We're not happy with the conduct of the war in Iraq that some of us supported, and we're pretty unified in wanting either a more effective approach to the war or immediate withdrawal, or both if we could manage that. And no, we won't say how other than to rely on Syria and Iran to stop being merchants of misery in Iraq."

So the whole mandate question is moot.

#27.1.1 Michael on 2006-11-13 12:46 (Reply)

It might be interesting to compare the Dem/Rep Senate vote totals with the Kerry/Bush vote totals in the same 33 states two years ago.

#28 Bill on 2006-11-13 12:31 (Reply)

How about we discard the math and make this easier to understand? To have a national mandate, the whole nation has to vote. Only 33 states voted in the senatorial election, and three of those were Mass., NY and Califa.

The Democrats have a mandate among the 33 states that voted in the senatorial election.

If you want to call the 6% margin in the House votes a national mandate, knock yourself out; but to put the two together and call it a national mandate seems like WWF puffery.

#29 Mack (Homepage) on 2006-11-13 14:26 (Reply)

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