Chapter 6
In April 2020, more than six months before the national elections, David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report projected sure winners in 347 of the 435 races for the House of Representatives; he was right on all of them. He felt that “likely” winners were apparent in an additional 36 seats and that 30 other seats “leaned” one way or the other; his early judgment was altered by campaigns or events in only 6 of those 66 seats. Months before the average citizen began to focus on upcoming elections, Wasserman correctly identified winners in 407 of the 435 House races. Only twenty-two districts featured races that Wasserman felt were too competitive to identify a favorite in—again, six months before the votes were cast. Wasserman’s projections were this accurate despite the fact that pollsters systematically under-predicted Republican strength. Simply put, congressional elections—and those held at the state level—are not very competitive in the United States.
Few Americans know how little electoral competition exists in their vaunted democracy. Elections to the House of Representatives stand as a stark example. By almost any measure—incumbents defeated, margins of victory, number of uncontested elections—the 2006 and 2008 congressional elections were among the least competitive in history. One had to go back more than a decade to find an election in which fewer than 98 percent of the House incumbents seeking re-election had done so successfully. Even in the Republican sweep in 2010, approximately 85 percent of the incumbents seeking re-election were successful in their campaigns. More than 90 percent of the races in the past twenty years have been won by margins of more than 10 percent. Though congressional elections in 2020 were more competitive than those immediately preceding them, only 3 US senators and 11 members of Congress who sought re-election lost; only 37 of the 435 House races were decided by margins of less than 5 percent, with the average margin of victory being 28.8 percent. In most election years, between 10 and 15 percent of the 435 “races” are uncontested. One might think that primary elections provided competition in districts with a strong partisan bias, but on average over 70 percent of the incumbents seeking re-election face no primary opposition.
How are candidates selected to run for office below the level of the presidency, and how do they run their general election campaigns? What are the implications of the system of single-member districts with plurality winners used in virtually all American elections, of the ways in which electoral districts are drawn, of the way in which elections are financed, and of the ways in which campaigns are contested?
Most examples will be drawn from elections to the US House of Representatives. As a general rule, nominations and elections for state governor and US senator are more competitive than those for the House; contests for state legislature and local office are less competitive. The general principles are that the more the nomination is worth (in terms of likelihood of subsequent election), the more it is likely to be contested or even hotly contested, and the more influence that an office has, and the less dominated by one party a district is, the more likely one is to find competition in the general election.
The nominating process
When Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman lost the Democratic nomination to seek re-election in August 2006, casual observers were surprised and confused. He was the incumbent, the choice of the party leaders. How could he have won the party’s convention vote but then lost a primary? As should surprise no reader of this book by this time, the variations within that norm provide for significant differences among the states.
The formal nominating process for the Democratic and Republican Parties is simple to understand. The norm is for there to be a primary election in which the party selects its nominee. But state nominating processes vary with regard to
•who may vote,
•who may run,
•what role the party organizations play in the process,
•how much competition is likely, and
•what it takes to win the nomination.
Who may vote
As with presidential nominations, the question revolves around the role of party membership and whether elections are open to all voters or closed, meaning that only party members may vote. The definitions of party members are crucial here. Nowhere in the United States does the term party member, as used for the purposes of determining who may vote, refer to formal, dues-paying members. The concept of choosing to be a member of a party is alien to most Americans. Rather, Americans typically “join” a party merely by saying, often on a form filed with a local election official, that they are a member of that party. Even within this looser conception of party, important variations remain.
Some states (e.g., Connecticut, Oklahoma, and Nevada) have formal processes for enrollment in a party, party lists maintained by public officials, public access to party membership, and restrictions prohibiting changing party affiliation after the filing date for candidates for office. Another group of states (e.g., Massachusetts, South Dakota, and Arizona) have formal enrollment processes but are more flexible regarding when a voter can change party registration, with some (such as Ohio) allowing switches on primary voting day. These states also vary in terms of whether and when they allow those not enrolled in a party to enroll in one of the parties for the purpose of voting in primary elections. Finally, another group of states (e.g., Tennessee, Illinois, and Missouri) require voters to declare party affiliation on primary day, but no public record is kept of these choices. In all, thirty-nine states have some form of closed primary, although these variations show how misleading this classification can be.
A very thin line separates the last group of closed primary states from the open primary states (e.g., Vermont, Wisconsin, and Hawaii), meaning those states that permit voters to choose among party ballots within the secrecy of the voting booth.
Washington State passed a ballot initiative instituting a “top-two” primary. In these contests, all candidates in a given race are on the ballot, and the first- and second-place candidates advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation. Thus, two members of the same party could end up competing in the general election.
In 2006, in the case of Washington State Republican Party v. Washington, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth District upheld a lower court decision, declaring the initiative unconstitutional. However, in 2008, the Supreme Court in Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, et al. reversed the lower courts’ decisions, arguing that the top-two primary did not, in fact, “impose a severe burden on the political parties’ associational rights.” In 2012, Washington implemented the top-two primary in all elections except presidential elections. A few years later, California followed suit. And in 2020, Alaska adopted a new system, allowing for the top four candidates on the primary ballot (on which all candidates are listed regardless of party and all voters may vote) to proceed to the general election ballot (where citizens make their choice using ranked choice voting).
The importance of who may vote is strategic. Party leaders feel that a closed system is more likely to lead to more loyal followers of the party platform as the nominee than is an open system. The Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian Parties in Washington came together to oppose the top-two primary, demonstrating how this ultimate step toward opening the system undermined efforts at party unity. But the choice of system also is philosophical. More open systems are thought to be more democratic in that more citizens can express their views. The top-two and top-four systems were explicitly designed to encourage moderate candidates and to reduce the effects of partisan polarization. The impact of these experiments in nominating politics remains to be seen.
Who may run
States vary on two questions with regard to who may run in a party’s primary. The more basic question involves party membership: states differ in how they define the allegiance a prospective candidate must have demonstrated to a party. The principle is clear—Republicans run for the Republican nomination, and Democrats run for the Democratic nomination.
The second issue concerns how one qualifies for the ballot. In a few states political party committees control or at least can grant access to the ballot. In most states, however, candidates get on the ballot through obtaining signatures on a nominating petition. The important questions relate to who may sign the petitions and how many signatures are required. More difficult requirements—large numbers of signatures, only from party members, dispersed geographically throughout the constituency—mean that only candidates with their own well-developed political organization or candidates backed by an existing organization, like the political party, can get on the ballot. Easier requirements—relatively few signatures, from anyone, living anywhere—make it easier for amateur candidates to run in a primary. More difficult petition requirements or an increased role for the party organization means that more traditional candidates are likely to run.
A quick reaction is that easier requirements are more democratic; after all, no one is kept off the ballot by bureaucratic restrictions. And many support that view. However, if anyone can run for office, many people often do just that. If many names appear on the ballot for the same office, the electorate can have a difficult time distinguishing among them—and separating those who have a serious chance from more frivolous candidates. Because elections are often determined by plurality vote, a crowded field often means a winner with relatively little support. Relatively unsuccessful candidates might draw votes disproportionately from a losing serious candidate, thus affecting the primary outcome. Is that indeed more democratic?
The role of party organization in the nominating process
As noted earlier, one of the basic roles of a political party is to guarantee that electoral contests exist. Political parties recruit candidates for office. But should they be able to determine which candidate runs under their label if more than one candidate chooses to do so? If party leaders recruit a candidate, should they have the power (or the authority) to “de-recruit” others seeking the nomination? If party leaders think one candidate has a much better chance of winning the general election than another, should they be able to campaign actively—either personally or as an organization—for their preferred candidate?
Those who favor strong political parties and see them as central to an effectively functioning democracy would answer those questions affirmatively. Those who think that political parties corrupt the democratic process would answer them in the negative. Party history in the various states has varied tremendously; that is why some states have closed party systems and some are more open. Similarly, the historical strength of party organizations in various states has determined the modern role that they play in the nominating process.
At one extreme are the states in which parties play an important or even a determining role in nominations. In Utah, if a candidate receives 70 percent of the vote at a state party’s convention, that candidate is nominated; if no one receives the 70 percent, the primary is held between the top two finishers at the convention. In Connecticut, for many offices, the party choice in a convention is the nominee unless she or he is challenged by someone else, either a candidate receiving 20 percent of the convention or caucus vote or a candidate filing a petition with a significant number of signatures. That is how Ned Lamont, who beat Joe Lieberman in the 2006 senatorial election, got on the ballot; Lieberman won the convention endorsement but lost the primary election. Such successful challenges are rare. Indeed, since 1996, in Connecticut, fewer than 10 percent of the party-endorsed candidates for Congress have faced any primary at all. In other states, the candidate winning the party convention is guaranteed a spot on the primary ballot (and in some cases the top spot), while other candidates must file petitions.
An intermediate position in terms of the role of party is found in states in which party does not play a formal role in the process but rather plays an informal yet still influential role. The quintessential example of this would be the influence of the Cook County Democratic Party in Chicago, Illinois. The endorsement of the Daley organization, run by two generations of mayors of Chicago, was tantamount to nomination for nearly half a century, except for brief flurries of activity by reform elements. Recently the Arizona Democratic Party has experimented with a new type of influence, certifying candidates, at times more than one in the same race, whom they perceive to be credible in the general election—and by implication decertifying those who do not receive their approval.
At the other extreme in terms of party influence are those states that are prohibited from choosing among primary candidates. In some states, party rules prohibit the organization from choosing among candidates; in others, party officers as well as the organization must stay neutral. Party officials in these states can find themselves in a difficult position. If they recruit a candidate and that candidate then draws an opponent, they cannot assist the candidate they encouraged to run. However, if they do not recruit a candidate and no one chooses to run for a particular office, they have failed to do their job appropriately.
The amount of competition
Not surprisingly, competition for party nominations varies tremendously around the country. The variables that determine whether there will be primary competition are easily identified: partisanship of the district, importance of the office, presence or absence of a strong incumbent, and strength of the party organization.
In heavily Republican areas, the GOP nomination is more valued (because it is more likely to lead to victory in the general election) and more competition ensues. But the Democratic nominations in those areas are less frequently contested. The opposite, of course, is true in heavily Democratic areas. Nominations for local office and state legislature are more likely to be awarded without contest than those for governor or US senator. In fact, for the more local offices, the role of party is often to find someone who will run and serve if elected. If a powerful incumbent is seeking re-election, competition in his or her party is extremely unlikely, and competition in the other party is quite unlikely. Finally, strong party organizations normally fill the ballot and discourage challenges to their candidates; weaker party organizations are more likely to have ballot positions unfilled and competition for the more valued positions.
Seventy percent of all incumbents running for re-election to the House of Representatives have been renominated without opposition in recent years. Very few of the others have faced serious challenges. And, except in the years following redistricting (when two incumbents might be placed in the same district), very few lose nomination challenges—fewer than five in every cycle except those immediately after redistricting for the past three decades. Competition for nominations to oppose incumbents is more common; the most likely context in which primaries will be contested is for open seats, particularly in a party that dominates a district. In those cases winning the nomination is more likely to lead to success in the general election.
Who wins the nomination
In the vast majority of states, primary winners are determined by plurality rule: the candidate with the most votes wins. Clearly, this rule is nonproblematic in uncontested primaries or in those with only two candidates running. However, in states with low ballot-access thresholds, valuable nominations are often contested by more than two candidates. In those cases, nomination by plurality can result in the general election candidacy of a candidate who would not have been the choice of the majority.
Nine states require a majority of the vote for nomination, with runoffs between the top two finishers if no one achieves a majority on the first vote. Runoff primaries were instituted in the South during the period when only the Democratic candidates had any chance in the general election. Essentially, the primaries determined the winner. In the modern era, with Republicans dominant in many regions in the South, some African American politicians claim that runoff primaries work against their interest; the argument was put forth with great rhetorical flourish by Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, citing one notable example. However, the historical experience has shown that the runoff ensures a candidate with widespread support and has not had a deleterious effect on the candidacy of African Americans over time.
Since 2010, states have begun to experiment with new rules for determining who wins a nomination. In addition to the top-two or top-four systems, the state of Maine and an increasing number of localities have opted for ranked choice voting in primaries as well as general elections. This system avoids the problem of candidates winning in multicandidate fields with a small percentage of the vote and little general election support and does so without requiring a second election, the kind of runoff that is often expensive and has lower turnout than the first round.
A pragmatic view of the nominating process
While it is important to understand the nominating process and how variations in the process lead to different results, it is also important not to lose the forest for the trees. Except for nominations for open seats—for important offices in a party whose candidates have a legitimate chance of winning—very few primaries in the United States are hotly contested. In most cases only one candidate seeks a party’s nomination for an office. Some of those candidates are self-starters; others are recruited by party leaders.
In all too many cases, if one espouses basic democratic values, no one comes forth to run, and party leaders are generally unsuccessful at recruiting candidates. In those cases, if an incumbent is seeking re-election, he or she serves another term without the electorate making any evaluation of previous service. If no incumbent is running, the electorate is faced with no choice as to who will govern. While it is rare for a governor or a US senator to be elected or re-elected without any opposition, it happens with alarming regularity for other offices—about 15 percent of the time for US House races in recent years and an average of more than 30 percent of the time for state legislative races.
Nominations go begging for a variety of reasons. First is that potential candidates do not think that they can win because of such factors as the power of incumbency, partisan redistricting, and the cost of elections. We will address these factors in the following section on general elections. Beyond that, potential candidates do not emerge because parties are often too weak to provide enough encouragement. When party organizations identify strong potential candidates and encourage them to run, they often do so. Strong potential candidates who do not run have said that lack of an effective party support network is one deterrent. In addition, strong potential candidates do not run because they simply are not interested in campaigning or serving—because they prefer the position they currently hold, because they do not like the process of running, because they feel that the personal and professional costs of service would exceed the personal and professional gains, or a combination of these reasons.
General elections
The reason to study how elections function is to determine whether they contribute to effective democracy. Studies of voting behavior in the United States focus on presidential voting; although analysts differ in their interpretations, a consensus has emerged that party affiliation and an evaluation of the performance of the president are important factors in determining how citizens vote. One could argue that reliance on evaluations of factors such as these is consistent with democratic values. Does the same hold true for elections below the level of the presidency?
Gubernatorial and senatorial elections
Dividing subnational elections between those for more and less salient offices is useful. The news media—and thus the public—concentrate on a few highly visible elections. Campaigns in many of these races are fiercely fought and tightly contested. Most other races, however, feature little campaigning and much less electoral competition.
At the state level, gubernatorial elections, held in nonpresidential election years in forty-one states, gain the most attention. In 2022, thirty-six governorships will be on the ballot. In twenty-eight of those cases, incumbent governors are eligible to seek re-election. In each case, the party out of power will mount a challenge. Most of the challengers will be serious candidates, able to raise money and take their campaign message to the public. Many of the challengers will have impressive political credentials and campaign war chests that guarantee extensive media campaigns—US representatives, former governors who had given up office earlier because of term limits or defeat, or statewide elected officials.
More than a year before the 2022 election, we know that at least eight gubernatorial races will be in open seats because the incumbent is term limited; other seats may be open because an incumbent chooses not to run or, less likely, loses a primary. Most of these races will be competitive, with strong candidates running for each party. Throughout the fall, each campaign will work to get its message to the electorate, messages based on evaluations of the previous incumbent and promises for the years ahead. Open-seat races tend to be competitive, with the electorate presented with a meaningful choice. Eight of the thirty-six governorships contested in 2018 changed party hands, with two incumbents losing and six open seats changing party.
Gubernatorial races tend to be decided on state issues; citizens evaluate their governors as executives and judge how well they have run the state since the last election. Elections to the US Senate tend to focus on national issues. It is difficult to compare one year’s Senate election with another; because each state elects two senators to six-year terms—and the terms are staggered so that, except in the case of vacancies, only one senator is elected in any year (and no senators at all in roughly one-third of the states), each year’s election is different from every other—and those differences are compounded by whether the presidency is on the ballot. But some generalizations are clear. As in presidential elections, many states are safe for one party or the other. In states in which partisan competition is foreseen, both parties will field strong candidates, often with proven electoral records (or celebrity status), capable of raising huge sums of money. Incumbents have an advantage, but not so great an advantage as in House elections. Seats that come open, typically because of retirements, are especially hotly contested. Finally, one party or the other often has a decided advantage going into the election because of the particular mix of states holding contests.
Thus, in 2022, fourteen Democratic seats and twenty Republican seats will be up for election—and we can know parallel numbers well in advance of any election. A year before the 2022 election, five Republicans and no Democrats had announced their retirements, and at least three of those Republican-held seats are in states in which either party has a chance of victory. Three Democratic incumbents and three Republican incumbents also face difficult re-election challenges because of the partisan makeup of their states, but the other seats seem safe for one party or the other. There will be true competition, therefore, in fewer than one-third of the Senate seats, but that competition will be intense, with partisan control of the Senate in the balance.
What can one conclude about these elections for important public office? First, in many cases, strong candidates are nominated in both parties, they receive substantial financial backing, and they run aggressive campaigns. Citizens casting votes in those races have the opportunity to be informed and to choose who should represent them on a rational basis. This kind of effective campaigning was evident in the 2018 elections in about thirty states, in races either for governor or for US senator or both.
However, in the other states, including some that have contests for both offices, candidates are elected without serious competition. One might think that this lack of competition is caused by a strong partisan bias in the state; that was the case in heavily Democratic California, where Governor Gavin Newson and Senator Dianne Feinstein won with relative ease in 2018, and in heavily Republican Wyoming, where Governor Mark Gordon and Senator John Barrasso were each elected without difficulty in the same year. But it was not the case in other states, as in Maryland, with Republican governor Larry Hogan and Democratic senator Ben Cardin also winning easily in the same year. In these cases the power of incumbency and personal organization, not partisanship, deterred potentially strong candidates. And in these cases, citizens dissatisfied with performance had little opportunity for effective opposition.
Congressional and state legislative elections
FairVote—The Center for Voting and Democracy is a reform-minded nongovernmental organization with the goal of improving voter turnout and fair elections. Active since 1992, the group has focused a good deal of attention on races for the House of Representatives, the branch of American government designed by the founding generation to be closest to the people. FairVote’s report on House elections is aptly named “Dubious Democracy.”
Little competition exists for House seats. In election after election over the past three decades, with the sole exception of that in 2010, over 90 percent of the incumbents seeking re-election have done so successfully. Few of them faced serious opposition; many faced no opponent at all—in the primary or in the general election. Potentially strong candidates who might be interested in running for the House typically wait for a seat to become open before they enter a race. As a result, incumbents face weaker candidates who do not have the ability to raise money and thus cannot carry their message to the electorate.
Why are incumbents seemingly invulnerable? Many factors contribute to incumbent safety: their ability to ingratiate themselves to their constituents, largely through perquisites available to all House members; their ability to raise money, particularly from interest groups whose positions they favor; the skill of those who draw district lines to favor one party or the other; and personal organizations and campaign skills, honed in the first successful race for the House and refined in each subsequent election. Though a few more incumbents lost re-election during the Trump era, especially those in either party who took strong stands against President Trump, the inherent advantages that incumbent members of Congress hold still exist.
Are high incumbent re-election rates a problem—recognizing that state legislators are re-elected at rates as high as congressmen, with many fewer facing any opposition at all? Some argue that if citizens cared enough about replacing an incumbent, they would do so. After all, in 1994 the Republicans gained control of the House after decades of Democratic rule, beating thirty-four Democratic incumbents and picking up a total of fifty-four seats. In 2006, enough seats switched hands for control to go back to the Democrats; in 2010, the Republicans regained the majority, and in 2018, the Democrats won forty-one Republican-controlled seats and reclaimed majority status.
Those counterexamples are important but must be examined with perspective. American democracy is based on the premise that citizens should have the ability to express their support for or opposition to the policies of the government at frequent intervals. Although the appearance of democracy remains intact, exercising that right is difficult. That conclusion holds whether one looks at the district level or at the national level.
In 2006, Republicans in Congress were reeling from a series of scandals; majority leader Tom DeLay resigned his post while under indictment in his home state of Texas, and he and many of his GOP colleagues were caught in the web of superlobbyist Jack Abramoff’s illegal schemes and payoffs.
After the slim passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Democratic president Barack Obama’s popularity sank; House Republicans capitalized on the opportunity in order to please the public, voting over fifty times to repeal the act between 2010 and 2014, though this move was simply symbolic because such a measure would not pass the Democratic Senate. Still, Republicans had to scramble to find enough districts that were competitive.
In 2018, the voters expressed distaste for the politics of Donald Trump. Democrats ran for Congress by running against the division in the country fomented by President Trump’s style as much as his policies. Many people who voted for President Trump over Secretary of State Clinton in 2016 used the 2018 midterm to temper the result of the presidential election.
The key question in analyzing an election in which one party has a distinct advantage nationally is whether that party has enough strong candidates to convert some seats (seemingly safe for their opponents) to competitive status. In 2012, Republicans did this handily, maintaining their overwhelming advantage in the House, which had come about in the 2010 midterm elections. In 2014, they did this again, winning an additional twelve seats in the House and nine in the Senate, giving them control over both chambers. In 2018, it was the Democrats who were most successful in recruiting candidates who appealed to their voters.
The quality of campaigns
Democratic theorists agree on basic tenets of fair and effective elections—that opposition parties can challenge those in power, that candidates have the right freely to express their views, that a free press can report on the electoral process, that citizens have access to polling places and the right to vote in secret and without fear, and that voters have access to information needed to cast their votes in an informed manner.
After the 2020 election, a partisan battle broke out over access to the ballot. Republicans claimed that Democratic reforms aimed at making voting easier led to a corrupted election. They argued that ballots were not secure, that people ineligible to vote had voted, and, at President Trump’s urging, even months after the election results were certified, that the presidential election had been stolen. Democrats countered that laws introduced in seventeen states, all controlled by Republicans, to roll back Democratic reforms and, in the Republicans’ views, to secure the ballot were in fact attempts to suppress votes of young voters, urban voters, and minorities, all constituencies favoring Democrats.
Less partisan but more theoretical is the disagreement that exists on how much information is necessary for the electoral process to serve a democracy adequately. Must the electorate be truly informed and know the details of policy alternatives and the candidates’ views on those alternatives in order to vote rationally? Or is it adequate for voters simply to know if they feel comfortable with those in power, in the terms of the question posed so cogently by then-candidate Ronald Reagan in his debate with President Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Citizens come by the second kind of knowledge intuitively; they do not need to gather new information in order to vote. Further, given the spread of the internet, no one doubts that enterprising, concerned citizens can find the kind of information required to meet the first test. But few citizens are that enterprising or that concerned.
The question then becomes whether, in the few elections that are competitive in the early twenty-first century, an adequate amount of pertinent information reaches the average citizen through political campaigns and media outlets. Critics claim that it does not. Candidates avoid substance at any cost, because every stand that one takes on a controversial issue makes as many enemies as it does friends. The most effective techniques developed by political consultants involve negative campaigning: control of the agenda by focusing on issues or personal matters that are difficult for your opponent.
Most citizens receive their political information on state and local campaigns from television; television journalists rarely focus on substantive policies in the small amount of coverage that they give any nonpresidential campaign. The coverage of local campaigns, even the most competitive ones, is often so slight as to be meaningless. Newspapers do a somewhat better job, but they too rarely concentrate on state and local campaigning. When the media do cover campaigns, they tend to focus on who is ahead and what strategy is being followed, not on policy differences between the candidates or differences in candidate qualifications.
The candidate campaigns and the media do not deserve all of the blame for this circumstance. Nor do the citizens, although clearly citizen involvement could be much higher. Citizens are asked to focus on a large number of campaigns at one time (see Table 1). They are busy with their everyday lives; politics, in general, is not central to their existence. And perhaps most important, they do not often see how their lives will be impacted by the election of one person or another, certainly not a congressman or a state legislator. So they pay scant attention to campaigns, focus on them only at the last minute, and vote for his or her party, for a candidate with whom they are familiar, or for those who seem to have or seem not to have improved their sense of well-being.
The media are asked to cover the same number of campaigns. How can they adequately do so? And who will watch? Their resources are limited, and viewer interest is low. Certainly campaign coverage as a public service is part of the responsibility of mass-media outlets, but few go beyond the minimum that is required, especially at calculable economic costs.
And candidates seek to win. Candidates and their consultants do not run negative campaigns because they are inherently bad people. They do so because experience has proven such campaigns to be successful. Clever commercials capture public attention more than do talking heads. A fine line separates comparative advertisements that contrast a candidate’s record or policy preference with that of his or her opponent from negative advertisements that attack an opponent unfairly. Often the location of that line is in the eye of the beholder. What one campaign sees as a humorous comparative ad, critical to be sure but within bounds, the other sees as over the line. In the final analysis, citizens judge—and campaign consultants are clear that the citizen test, not that of campaign critics, is the only one they monitor.
If none of the participants is to blame for the lack of substance in American campaigns, where does the blame lie? In part, it is inherent in the system. The American system, with single-member districts, weak parties, separated governmental institutions, and a strong federal system, leads almost inevitably to campaigns based on image and not substance. Citizens can know their representatives, but they cannot hold them accountable, because power is dispersed. Parties can take stands on issues, but individual candidates can ignore those positions at their will, because it is their constituents, not national or even state party leaders, who control their destinies.
Two factors are at work in determining the results of elections below the level of the presidency. On the one hand, analysts look at national trends. How is the party in power viewed by the electorate? Which party does the electorate feel is better able to handle the most salient issues? Is the president popular? Do citizens feel that the country is headed in the right direction? If the electorate is satisfied with the country’s direction, supportive of the president, and comfortable with the party in power, little will change as the result of an election. The status quo will be maintained, and that will be an accurate reflection of popular will. If voters are not satisfied with the direction the country is heading, unhappy with presidential performance, and restless about the party in power, democratic theory holds that they should be able to replace those in power with others, who presumably will respond to their desires. That essentially is what happened in the election of 1994, when the Republicans replaced the Democrats as the majority party in the Congress; in 2006, when the Democrats regained control; in 2010, when the Republicans won again; and again in the rejection of the politics of division that led to the Democratic sweep of the House in 2018.
However, analysts are aware of an old adage, often attributed to former Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill from Massachusetts: “All politics is local.” Those in office serve the day-to-day needs of their constituents, often in ways quite detached from national politics. As a result, incumbent officeholders are most often viewed favorably by those they represent. Those favorable impressions, combined with the considerable electoral assets that an incumbent can amass, make it very difficult to unseat incumbents, even incumbents of an unpopular party. Potential challengers recognize that they start at a distinct disadvantage. Thus, political parties struggle to find quality challengers. This view of the role of elections explains why Republican incumbent senators did better than expected in 2020, despite Donald Trump’s defeat. Vulnerable Republicans like Maine’s Susan Collins, targeted by the Democrats with a nationally focused campaign, were able to survive by stressing their local ties.
Any evaluation of the American electoral process must deal with the paradox that local representatives of the party in power are viewed favorably by the same voters who view that party unfavorably at the national (or state) level. Popular will at the macro level cannot be expressed if citizens’ votes in local elections do not reflect their views on national or state issues at the polls. In American democracy, the role of political parties is to ensure that they recruit challengers to incumbents and candidates in open seats who can run campaigns that allow strong national trends to be expressed in local elections. Most state and local elections in the United States are not competitive. For American democracy to function effectively, the parties’ task is to ensure that enough elections are competitive so that the national or state result can reflect popular will.