The Biden administration notched up an early victory with the passage of the USD 1.9 tr COVID relief bill (aka American Rescue Plan). In spite of the new administration’s professed desire for bipartisanship, Congress passed the stimulus package along party lines. Bipartisanship is not going to break out anytime soon, and certainly not before the 2022 mid-term elections. The Biden administration will therefore find it difficult, if not impossible, to pass the American Jobs Plan (AJP), let alone the American Family Plan (AFP), combined worth more than USD 4 tr, with bipartisan support. Despite continued negotiations, Democrats and Republicans disagree on virtually all aspects of the plans, including its size, its content and, especially, its financing. Other major Democratic reform proposals, including voting rights, immigration, gun ownership and, have even less prospect of garnering bipartisan support, -and they cannot be passed without Republican support given the Democrats’ lack of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. By contrast, large parts of AJP and AFP can, in principle, be passed with the help of simple majorities.
Deep-seated partisan differences continue to characterize both public opinion and congressional politics. Republicans, poised to win the House and the Senate in 2022, see little political benefit in finding an agreement with the Democrats if it compromises their long-held political positions. Meanwhile, the Democrats, mindful of the prospect of electoral defeat, are understandably eager to “go big” reform-wise. They also believe that a large spending program will prove politically popular (at the very least among their electoral base) and help them do well in the elections. After all, domestic political and economic reform will come to an immediate and complete halt, should the Republicans win the majority in the House and/ or the Senate next year. Taken together, this sharply limits the scope for bipartisan compromise.
Public opinion remains deeply polarized, even though it has overall turned more optimistic (Morning Consult). The split between those believing the country is headed in the right/ wrong direction was 40%/ 60% in 2020, and only 20%/ 80% in early 2021 (at the height of the pandemic). Today it is closer to 50%/ 50%. The partisan Democratic/ Republic split is 75%/ 25%, effectively a flip compared to last year, when the majority of Republicans were optimistic and Democrats pessimistic. Last but not least, Biden’s approval/ disapproval rating at 55%/ 41% is higher than Trump’s at this stage of the presidential term. (Interestingly, Biden’s floor is at roughly the same level as Trump’s ceiling, pointing to “hardened partisan fronts”.) But Biden’s approval ratings are quite low, historically speaking. All post-war president had significantly higher approval ratings, except for Trump. All this of suggests just how polarized American remains.
Continued polarization also helps explains (largely) absent bipartisanship in Congress. Republicans, rightly, believe that they have little to gain from bipartisanship. Meanwhile, Democrats are reluctant to make significant concession in pursuit of bipartisan compromise, particularly where the possibility of passing legislation without Republican support exists (e.g. American Rescue Plan, AJP, AFP). Neither side believes there is much to gain by reaching a compromise with only a few, exclusively foreign policy areas excepted (e.g. China, Russia). While Democrats are unwilling to pass up a unique opportunity to pass their partisan agenda given unified control of congress and the presidency, for Republicans there is little to gain electorally. Given how far to the right the median Republican lawmakers and how much narrower this has made the Republican electoral base, it is somewhat surprising that the GOP remains to competitive. Here is why.
First of all, history favors the Republicans in the mid-term elections, as the presidential party tends to lose congressional seats. The GOP is poised to win the House and/ or the Senate in 2022 – if history is anything to go by. Democrats have wafer thin majorities in both the House and the Senate, affording them to lose only three seats in the former and none in the latter. In 17 out of the past 19 mid-term elections, the presidential party lost seats. The loss averaged around 26 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate. Furthermore, presidents with an approval of rating of below 50% lose an average of 37 House seats, compared to 14 seats if the rating is above 50% (Gallup 2018). Biden’s approval ratings are ever so slightly above 50%. Nonetheless, the Republicans stand a better than even chance of retaking both the House and the Senate – and that is not taking into account changes to the electoral regimes pursued by Republicans at the state level.
Second, Republican electoral prospects are further enhanced by the reapportionment of House seats. The 2020 Census will lead to reapportioning and redistricting (Census 2020). Democratic-leaning mid-western states as well as California and New York will lose seats, while solidly Republican or Republican-leaning states like Texas and Florida will gain seats (in addition to North Carolina, Colorado, Oregon and Montana). While reapportionment does not mean that the seats will necessarily change from Democratic to Republican given that demographic change in the expanding states tends to be driven by liberal-learning urban and suburban counties, redistricting very likely will. In Texas (gaining 2 seats) and Florida (gaining 1) as well as North Carolina (gaining 1) and Montana (gaining 1), Republicans are in charge of redistricting. In Oregon (1), the Democrats are in charge, while, while in Colorado non-partisan commissions redraw electoral districts. Therefore, redistricting alone could help Republicans gain five seats, enough to wipe out the Democratic majority in the House, where Democrats currently hold only a six-seat majority. More generally, gerrymandering has moved the median house seat to the right in the past few decades, thereby favoring Republican electoral prospects in the House.
Third, these days Republicans benefits from an inbuilt, structural advantage in terms of representation in the Senate (Greenfield 2020). (This should give the Democrats pause before eliminating the filibuster.) No wonder the Republicans are not going to allow the Democrats to elevate Washington DC or Puerto Rica to statehood, thereby creating two, maybe as much as four additional Democratic or Democratic-leaning seats in the Senate. This bias is due to the fact many of the smaller, less populous states lean Republican. Regardless of population size, states send two senators to Washington. For example, Democratic California with a population 70 times larger than Wyoming’s sends the same number of senators to Washington. This feature favoring Republicans at the moment also provides them with an edge in terms of electoral college votes. It is no coincidence that in the past two decades Republicans won the presidency twice while losing the popular vote (2000, 2016).
Fourth, the US political system has a fairly large number of actual or potential veto players, namely the president, the two houses of congress and the supreme court. Thanks to the Trump administration’s success in stacking the supreme court with conservative judges, the Republicans or at least conservative ideas hold greater sway than electoral support suggests. Similarly, the minority party – whether Republican or Democratic – is well-positioned to punch above its weight given the need for a super-majority in the Senate (aka filibuster). In other words, not only are the Republicans well-positioned to retake the House and the Senate, and possibly the presidency (not least given the structural bias in their favor in terms of electoral college votes). Even if they lose at the ballot box, they tend to be well-positioned to obstruct the Democratic agenda, thereby denying the electoral majority their say. This is not meant to turn into a normative argument. Rather, it is meant to demonstrate that the Republicans can afford to move to right of median voter and nonetheless win majorities.
Moving to the right of the median voter and relying increasingly on white, blue-collar workers may look likely a self-defeating long-term electoral strategy. And it probably is given demographic trends. Two decades, a famous book called The Emerging Democratic Majority (Judis & Teixera 2002) argued that demographic trends would favor Democrats. This may come to pass. (Then again, Trump made significant inroads among conservative Hispanic voters.) But the institutional peculiarities of the US political system provide the emerging Republican minority (if it ever comes to pass) with a bit of a buffer (apologies for the somewhat incongruent metaphor!). Certainly, in the short run Republicans’ electoral prospects are pretty good at the federal level, and their electoral success in largely rural, conservative and sparsely population states provides them with disproportional political influence and power. They control 27 out of 50 governorships.
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| Presidential elections - vote distribution |
The Republicans can afford to move way to the right-of-center and maintain a reasonably good chance not just of blocking Democratic policies but even of regaining political power at the federal level. Add to this micro-level incentives for individual legislators and politicians to align themselves with Trumpism (aka right-wing populism) – largely due to the former president’s ability to mobilize an increasingly narrow and partisan electoral base while threatening to punish "anti-Trumpers" – and both Republicans and the Republican party act perfectly rationally by moving to the right. In other words, Republicans can afford to move to, or be pulled to, the right without suffering the equivalent of an electoral wipeout. Quite the contrary. At least, this is true in the short- and maybe medium-term. Given that the Republicans are betting on a narrow, if at present highly mobilized electoral base (white, blue-collar voters) that will become less demographically important over time, Republicans’ electoral strategy is self-defeating in the longer term.
Relatedly, some observers are deeply worried about the stability of the American political system (Levitsky & Ziblatt 2019). And the January 6 attacks on Congress have done little to alleviate such concerns Sometimes historical perspective can be helpful – even though historical analogies and precedents are to be consumed with requisite caution. Here Richard Hofstaedter (1963) is worth reading and re-reading. A millenarian and anti-government streak has characterized American politics since its very beginning, as has anti-intellectualism, various types of “populism”, antipathy towards urban and financial elites, anti-clericalism. Names like Jackson, Goldwater and McCarthy come to mind. Similarly, the political volatility brought about by civil rights movement, the opposition to “forever wars” (Vietnam) and a pervasive sense of economic malaise (Carter) are all things that are not really new. This is not to suggest that the past is surefooted guide to the future. But no analysis of present US politics can afford to disregard a close reading of American political history.
Long story …. short. US elections are won, or at least can be won, to the right of the median voter. It is precisely this feature of the political system that allows the Republican party to move to the right while relying on a demographically narrowing electoral base and yet win federal elections. Nonetheless, this is unlikely to prove a successful strategy in the long term. Only major and sustained defeats at the ballot box will the Republican party back to the center. In view of a possible, actually likely Republican victory in the 2022 mid-terms and at least a possible victory in the 2024 presidential election, it may take quite some time for the Grand Old Party to become a center-right party again. Until then, polarization and occasional volatility may well continue to characterize US politics.