The Establishment In Chaos

The Rochester and Strood by-election has thrown the British establishment into a state of panic. The by-election was triggered when Mark Reckless switched from the Tories to UKIP. In yesterday’s election UKIP won 42.1% of the vote whilst the three main parties all lost large percentages of their vote. The Tories lost 14%, Labour 12% and the Lib Dems 16%, for the Lib Dems it was their worst ever result as they lost their deposit, got less than 1% of the vote and finished in fifth, behind the Greens who got 4.2% of the vote.

Obviously this does not bode well for the main parties’ prospects in May. The next General Election could be the most important election in living memory as six parties vie for success. UKIP’s unique ability to attract voters from the three main parties really makes it difficult to understand what will happen at the next election. Although the result in Rochester certainly seems like an earthquake, it doesn't necessitate that similar events will happen in the General Election. Voters act differently in by-elections to Generals, Labour didn’t win any by-elections from the Conservatives from 1997 to 2012, but they still won Generals in 2001 and 2005. A combination of factors are the reason for by-elections looking different to General Elections. Firstly, opposition voters tend to be more motivated to go out and show support for their candidates. Since by-elections have no effect on who forms the government (apart from very rare circumstances), the incumbent party supporters simply are not motivated enough. Most importantly is that supporters of the incumbent party can use by-elections as a way to protest vote. This is certainly part of the reason for UKIP’s success in Rochester & Strood, many people are angry with the Tories and so voted for UKIP to scare them into taking tougher approaches to immigration and the European Union. However in the May election I believe that Rochester will switch back to the Tories.

As a political junkie I am excited by what the implications of May’s General Election will be for years to come. Take a look at the graph and table I created below. As you can see the combined vote of Labour and the Tories has declined over the past 70 years, albeit very slowly. If you include the various incarnations of the Lib Dems, most of the decline disappears. The combined vote of the three main parties has only dipped below 90% on two occasions (2005 and 2010). How this graph changes in 2015 will be fascinating as the Greens, UKIP and the SNP erode support from the main parties.

What the Election Results Mean

The ramifications of these elections are wide reaching, especially important will be the effect on the 2016 Presidential Election. Several of the Republicans elected this year will undoubtedly run for President in 2016. The most commonly talked about is Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who got 52% of the vote in Democratic leaning Wisconsin. However I believe that the dark horse of the 2016 Presidential election could be Ohio Governor John Kasich, he cruised to re-election with 64% of the vote. Kasich is undoubtedly conservative, but he can still get support from moderates, which is key to winning the Presidency. Ohio is a swing state, so if he can win big in Ohio, it is a good sign that he could win over the country.

Yet the effect on 2016 goes far beyond simply who the nominees will be. Republicans have expanded control of the House and taken control of the Senate, how they deal with their new found power is a huge question. If they go for impeachment of Obama (as many in their base want them to do) then I believe that it will be extremely damaging as Obama has not done anything that deserves it and the public do not support it. They will also be unable to convict him, as that requires the support of 67 Senators, so that would mean getting support from 11 Democrats, which they won’t get. Likewise if Republicans fail to do anything over the next few years, it could have a negative impact on their chances in 2016.

As I discussed in my previous post, state legislatures are very important. So why is this the case? Well they actually pass legislation, unlike the federal Congress. The current session of Congress (2013-2015) is on track to be the least productive Congress in the history of the United States, whereas in the same time period state legislatures passed 24,000 bills! Legislation like this can have huge impacts on people living in the states. Since Republicans swept to power in many state legislatures in 2010, they have passed many bills that are in line with their Tea Party base. The most common focuses have been on restricting abortion and voting rights. It also has another impact by reducing the Democratic bench for future elections, roughly half of the Democrats in Congress were previously state legislators. However, partisan control of the states can be rather important for determining who wins the Presidency. Each state gets to decide how elections are run in their states (even for federal elections) and how to award their votes in the Electoral College. Almost every state awards their Electoral College vote based on a winner takes all system. However two states, Nebraska and Maine, award them slightly differently, both have two votes for the candidate who wins overall in the state and then one for each congressional district.

There are proposals to change other states to this system by members of the Republican Party in states that they control, but have voted for Obama twice. The reason why they want to propose it is that congressional districts are gerrymandered to be more favourable to Republicans in many of these states. In fact if Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida had used this system in 2012 then Romney would have won the Presidency insteadof Obama. However Republicans are nervous about implementing this, as it has the potential to backfire on them; Ohio, Florida, Virginia are swing states, hence a Republican could easily win them. After all Bush won all three in both his elections. If they were to introduce this system, and then their candidate won the popular vote, they would accidentally have helped the Democrat. However Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are much more consistently Democratic in Presidential elections, the former two haven’t voted Republican since 1988 and Wisconsin hasn’t done so since 1984! Since their candidates are unlikely to win these states for the foreseeable future, splitting their Electoral College votes could help a Republican win the Presidency in a close election. Fortunately Pennsylvania has just elected a Democratic governor, which will make changes there unlikely.

Although I do believe that the Electoral College is unlikely to change, what may change is the ease of voting. There has been a concerted effort by Republicans across the country to make it harder to vote, particularly targeting Democratic groups. One of the most common ways they have tried to do this is by enacting laws that require you to show photo ID before being allowed to vote. The reason they give for introducing photo IDs is that it will help to prevent voter fraud. The problem is that the only kind of fraud that photo IDs would help to tackle is when a person pretends to be someone they’re not. This form of voter fraud is very rare and most elections have no cases of them at all. Photo IDs are blatantly unconstitutional, the 24^th Amendment to the Constitution states the following:

“Section 1. The rights of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay and poll tax or other tax.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Photo ID laws are effectively a type of poll tax as these IDs are not free, but can range from $8 to $20. The groups that tend not to have the IDs are young people, poor people and ethnic minorities; all groups who vote Democratic. The type of ID that you can use to vote should also indicate that the laws are simply a way to oppress the Democratic vote. Why are concealed handgun licenses acceptable to use, but not student IDs?

Dark red - Strict Photo ID laws
Light red - Less strict photo ID laws
Burnt Orange - Strict non-photo ID laws
Sand - Less strict non-photo ID laws
Grey - no ID laws
Source: Wikipedia, but it I created this map for Wikipedia

At the moment photo ID laws have been passed in several swing states; Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Wisconsin. You are required to show non-photo ID in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Ohio whilst Nevada and Iowa have no ID requirements when you go to vote. The states to watch for a change would probably be Nevada and Ohio as both have a Republican legislature and a Republican governor. Iowa, New Hampshire and Colorado will be unlikely to change as Democrats control part of the state government there.

Photo IDs are not the only way that Republicans are trying to restrict the vote. Early voting is used mostly by Democrats, by cutting early voting, Republicans can successfully reduce the number of Democrats voting in an election.

Expect a lot of fighting over the next few years in state legislatures across America – and pay attention, they could effectively decide the winner in 2016.

United States Mid-Term Results

So I have left it a week before posting about the US election results! I wanted to get a feel of what has happened.

The biggest deal was the Senate elections in which the Democrats were simply devastated by Republicans. At the moment the Republicans have gained eight seats, which will likely rise to nine when Mary Landrieu loses her run-off election in December. This means that the Republicans have taken control of the Senate. They won open seats in Montana, South Dakota, Iowa and West Virginia and ousted Democratic incumbents in Alaska, Colorado, Arkansas and North Carolina. Republicans also fended off challenges from Democrats in Kentucky and Georgia, whilst Pat Roberts successfully beat independent Greg Orman in Kansas. The surprise was not that the Democrats lost these seats, only Kay Hagan in North Carolina was leading the polls going into election day, it was how badly they lost. Going into Election Day the polls had Mark Pryor losing to Tom Cotton in Arkansas by 5%, he ended up losing by 17%! That is an incredible Democratic bias of 12%, this meant that Pryor only received 39% of the vote. Which is a rather large decline from 2008 when the Republicans didn’t run anyone against him and he got 80% of the vote! Overall the poll averages were biased towards the Democrats by 4%, the only close race which had a Republican bias was New Hampshire where there was a 1.2% bias.

The Senate was always going to be difficult for Democrats, however the gubernatorial elections looked favourable. There were Republican governors in Wisconsin, Maine, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania that looked particularly weak. Unfortunately for Democrats they only managed to take Pennsylvania, with the Republican governors holding on in the other four states. To make matters worse they lost open seats in the heavily Democratic states of Massachusetts and Maryland, and incumbent governor Pat Quinn lost in Illinois. In Alaska the Republican incumbent was beating by independent, Bill Walker; this is the first time that Alaska has elected an independent as governor.

One of the biggest deals of the midterms has barely got any coverage on the national and international news circuit, and that’s the elections to the State Houses. They get less coverage for obvious reasons, but that does not make them less important, especially when you take into account the aggregate effect of them all. As with elections to all other positions, there was a Republican tide that left Republicans with the most state legislators since 1928 and the Democrats with control of the fewest state legislatures in their party’s history! Democrats took control of zero state legislatures whilst losing both state Houses in Nevada, leaving Republicans with complete control of Nevada governance. They lost control of lower Houses in West Virginia, New Hampshire, Minnesota and New Mexico whilst they lost control of state Senates in New York, Maine, Colorado and Washington.

Obviously this has massive ramifications for the next few years, if you want to find out more then read my post; “What the Election Results Mean”.