The GOP’s election advantage: How Republicans captured Congress—and how Democrats can win it back

[swag]

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/05/the_gops_stunning_election_advantage_how_it_captured_congress_and_how_democrats_can_win_it_back/

by Sean McElwee

After important defeats in the last midterm elections and then again in off-cycle elections in Houston and Kentucky last month, many progressives are wondering what’s gone wrong — and how the Democratic Party can get back on track.

A new working paper by Brian Schaffner and Stephen Ansolabehere, discussed for the first time here, suggests that higher turnout could be essential to securing more favorable electoral outcomes down the road. Their analysis involves the most comprehensive datasets that have ever been used to analyze the opinions of voters, nonvoters and presidential-only voters. They find that shifting the composition of the electorate could reshape American politics.

Most previous studies of voters and nonvoters use rich but small-sample datasets, such as the American National Election Studies surveys performed each election. While these sources are useful, they have two limitations: small samples of non-voters and over-reporting of turnout. To solve the problem, Schaffner and Ansolabehere use research from two sources: Catalist and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study Panel (CCES), a firm that purchases voter files and combines them with other relevant factors to aid political campaigns. Schaffner and Ansolabehere use a sample of nearly 3 million voter files from Catalist that cover the 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012 elections. CCES us a 19,000-respondent survey performed in both 2010 and 2012. By using Catalist, Schaffner and Ansolabehere were able to validate turnout in CCES, meaning that they check a respondent’s voter file to ensure they voted. (They find that a whopping 63 percent of those who did not actually vote in 2010 reported that they did vote on CCES, which shows why the validation is so important.)

Registration is a key barrier

The first thing that the authors do is examine the distribution of the American population, by grouping them into core voters (who vote regularly in both presidential and midterm elections), presidential-only voters, midterm-only voters and nonvoters.

. . . more

[longship]

1. Well, we all kind of knew these things.

But it is nice to see the numbers that confirm it. This is why voting reform, registration drives and GOTV are so important to Democrats.

R&

[Volaris]

2. Right? My response was going to be

No shit, Sherlock.

[Midnight Writer]

3. A few thousand bucks in a Congressional election can work miracles

Republican PACs know this and act accordingly. By throwing a modest amount of money and staff into a district (where, frankly, most citizens cannot even name their elected Representative) they can influence the outcome of these elections, especially in off years.

Something as simple and cheap as yard signs, name recognition and selective get out the votes efforts (buses to nursing homes and assisted living centers, anyone?) can control a low turnout election.

The obvious question is; why aren't Democrats concentrating on smaller Congressional and local elections?

The Party must be built from the ground up.