If Democrats seem to have really lost anywhere in the off-year elections on Tuesday, it's mostly in public opinion. Major media outlets and blogs alike have been citing what they suppose to be a "shift" in opinion ahead of a potential watershed year in 2010. A closer look at the factors behind each of the individual contests shows why that isn't necessariy the case.
First, if either party won somewhere it shouldn't have, it's Democrats. The New York 23rd has been in Republican hands for more than a century, and voted twice for George W. Bush. That Democrats were able to even be competitive in the race is remarkable in an of itself. In each of the last five cycles, the Republican candidate has won by no less than 25 points.
Consider that Democrats still dominate the generic ballot test that polls respondents as to which party they'd be more likely to support in 2010. The most recent study- taken by Ipsos/McClatchy earlier this week, shows Republicans trailing by 7 points, which is an enormous margin to overcome. Now add to all of this the fact that Democrats also won in New York-20 (a district with a Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of R+2) back on March 31, and what you have is a Republican Party with a serious national branding problem. Plus, perhaps the most valuable weapon the Democrats could have had wasn't even available to them: Barack Obama wasn't headlining the ticket. And they still managed to win in NY-23.
What's really interesting is that these numbers clearly demonstrate that dissatisfaction with Congress in general is not necessarily a harbinger of doom for the majority party. That same Ipsos/McClatchy poll found that just 29% of Americans approve of the job the Democrat-led Congress is doing, while a whopping 68% give the legislature a thumbs-down (and keep in mind, that's an improvement over the last few months). Nonetheless, most Americans would rather stick with a Congress they don't like than to give the reins over to Republicans. That says a lot. In fact, it suggests that the negative feelings many have toward Congress is not necessarily directed at Democrats, but rather at what they perceive as obstructionist Republicans who've thus far failed to produce any ideas of their own.
The losses in Virginia and New Jersey, in turn, can be essentially analyzed individually. In the Old Dominion, Creigh Deeds had just about everything going against him that he could have. He was preceded by two Democratic governors (and winning a third in a row would have been highly unusual). He was forced to spend millions in a nasty primary fight with former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe. He drew a Republican opponent who'd beaten him once before. The national climate is a tough one for incumbent parties of chief executives in general (as many will likely find out in 2010). And most importantly he didn't have any of the advantages that the other Democrats who won recent statewide contests did (Senator Jim Webb benefitted from a massive anti-GOP wave in 2006, as well as George Allen's disastrous "macaca" comment, and Mark Warner was both incredibly popular and well-known going into the race and had Obama on his ticket). The stars were aligned against Deeds from the start.
In New Jersey, Jon Corzine probably should have lost a long time ago, but always had his own fortune to fall back on. He's spent more than $100 million to keep himself in office over the years, and this time he it simply wasn't enough. Corzine was deeply unpopular even a year ago, and efforts to persuade him to drop out of the race were ultimately unsuccessful. Corzine closed the gap considerably, but in the end never could overcome it completely.
And of course, in the California 10th, Democrat John Garamendi won by a 10-point margin. No surprises there.
How all of this adds up to good news for Republicans is questionable. Unless Republicans can actually make voters associate their dissatisfaction with Washington on Democrats, they'll continue to suffer losses in Congress in 2010.
