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29 October 2013

If The Shutdown Didn't Hurt Republicans Now, What About The 2014 Midterms?



Cory Booker leaves the polling booth after voting in the special election to represent New Jersey in the Senate.


Some predicted electoral disaster for the GOP after the shutdown fiasco, but in two test cases, so far at least, it's not happening.


By Harry Enten of The Guardian

There has been a lot of talk about the possible electoral consequences of the government shutdown. And while the 2014 midterm elections are still a year away, we have two elections in 2013 that can serve as test cases of sorts. In both the New Jersey special Senate and Virginia gubernatorial races, the Democrat was against the shutdown, while the Republican was not. The Democrats have tried to make hay with this, but has it worked? The evidence available suggests that it has not.

Democratic Senator-elect Cory Booker defeated Republican Steve Lonegan by 11pt in New Jersey. That may suggest that the Republican brand was hurt by the shutdown, except for the fact that New Jersey is quite Democratic. No Republican candidate has gotten 50% or more of the vote in a major statewide election in the Garden State since George HW Bush in the 1988 presidential election.

The average margin for the Democratic candidate in the last four senatorial elections before 2013 was 13pt. Booker actually fell short of that margin, though it is well within the historical norm. You'd probably expect a slight decline from an off-year election on a Wednesday, when young and minority voters are less likely to turn out.
Moreover, the polling didn't change after the shutdown. Monmouth and Quinnipiac, two pollsters who call cellphones and have a reliable record in the state, had Booker up by 13pt and 12pt respectively before the shutdown. In their final surveys after the shutdown took place, they had Booker up 10pt and 14pt respectively. That's one up and one down, with no statistically significant difference between the pre- and post-shutdown polls.

You might say that you wouldn't expect to see the shutdown in the New Jersey Senate election. It was a special election, and New Jersey isn't next to the nation's capital.

Virginia, however, is the first place where you'd expect to see an effect. Many jobs were furloughed because of the shutdown. Some Republicans representing Virginia in Congress were against the shutdown. Plus, there isn't much difference between the demographic makeup in an off-year like 2013 and the midterms, like the 2014 statewide electorate.

Again, we see a Democrat out to a big lead. Democrat Terry McAuliffe is ahead by 7pt over Republican Ken Cuccinelli per the latest Quinnipiac survey. This victory would break an over 30-year streak of the White House party losing the Virginia gubernatorial election. So, it had to be the shutdown? That's what Politico suggested, a few weeks ago

The problem is that the polling just doesn't backup the shutdown argument. Ken Cuccinelli was a sitting duck before any shutdown hit. His favorable ratings had been dropping since way back in July, and smart analysts like Sean Trende were predicting his defeat from May onwards. One could argue that the ideology that brought Republicans into a showdown with President Obama harmed them significantly in Virginia; the shutdown itself, however, shows no real effect.

An average of the final live interview surveys in the two weeks leading up to the shutdown had McAuliffe ahead by 6.3pt. An average of the live interview polls over the last two weeks has him up by 7.3pt. That's not much movement at all. In fact, Quinnipiac went with the headline "Shutdown Hurt Virginia, But Not Republican In Gov Race" on their latest survey.

What's more surprising, in fact, is that McAuliffe's inability to pull away conclusively comes as he mobilises a big advertisement advantage in the weeks since the shutdown. McAuliffe and his allies have been outspending Cuccinelli and his supporters by ratios of 3:2, 5:2, and 13:2 in the last three weeks, as Domenico Montanaro first reported. These are the types of numbers you'd think would move the dial; yet they really haven't.

Overall, the 2013 major statewide elections don't show any proof that the federal shutdown harmed Republicans electorally. In both the New Jersey Senate and Virginia gubernatorial election, the Democratic and Republican positions mirrored those of their national parties. Since the time of the shutdown, there was not a marked deterioration of Republican numbers in either contest.

Whether or not this holds for 2014 is another question.




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