Last year's elections may be receding in the rearview mirror, but let's take a brief look back at those halcyon days of November 2012. We know that the Democrats, as a whole, did well, in that they gained seats in both the Senate and House ... but how did they do individually? How did the candidates in the most competitive races fare, compared with the expectations that were set for them?
The unfortunate reality is that the majority of races are utterly predictable from the start. While there used to be a lot more Republicans elected in traditionally Democratic areas and Democrats in Republican areas, the decline in ticket-splitting (as the parties have gotten more nationalized and lost their regional quirks) and the parties' increased skill at gerrymandering has largely wiped that out. The majority of House districts, for instance, are so partisan in one direction or the other that it's a foregone conclusion which party will represent it. (Consider this graph from Daily Kos Elections diarist Xenocrypt, where all the House districts are arranged from worst to best Obama performance. Districts with Democratic reps are blue, those with GOP Reps. are red'and notice how there are almost no outliers at all.)
Plot of current House of Representatives Even for those races that are in that band of swing districts where a competitive race could exist, only a limited number of those manage not be foregone conclusions. Disparities in candidate recruitment and fundraising'where only a little-known opponent with no money rose to challenge an incumbent'took a lot of races off the table from the outset. In 2012, that left well under 100 House races, and maybe only a dozen Senate races, that were even vaguely up in the air.
So when we talk about "expectations," we're talking about how elections prognosticators expected those remaining races to come out. Even among that small sample of race handicappers'the Charlie Cooks, Larry Sabatos, and, yes, Daily Kos Electionses of the world'there always tends to be a great deal of consensus about each individual race. (There might be some disagreement on whether something is, say, Lean D or Likely D, but none on whether it's Lean D or Likely R.)
It's tempting to blame the Beltway herd mentality for that consensus, but the reality is, they (and we) all see the same indicators. Everybody sees the same polls, the same fundraising reports, the same ad buys, the same confident body language or flailing messaging. They certainly aren't guarantees of future performance, but they are adequate to form, well, "expectations." (For reference, you can see our last sets of ratings from right before Election Day, for the Senate, House and governor's races.)
This look back is partly in preparation for the next round of race ratings from Daily Kos Elections. As refreshing as it was to have a month or two off, the 2014 cycle is now well and truly upon us. And we have enough rudimentary information about retirements and potential challengers, at least at the Senate and gubernatorial levels, to start making some projections for next year. We'll be bringing you those ratings in the coming weeks, but part of the process of getting ready to do that means going back and considering how well we fared in 2012, and asking how we might improve on our performance next time.
And partly, this type of analysis helps with Democratic targeting next time. It helps us spot Republican incumbents who everyone assumed was safe or near-safe last time but who turned out to have something of a glass jaw and barely squeaked by. Also, it alerts us to Democratic incumbents who might be at risk of underperforming again, progressives who, because of a newly modified district or just complacency, had unexpectedly close races.
Follow over the fold for our Senate, House and gubernatorial charts, in that order ...
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