If the media is to be believed, the 2010 US midterm elections where the Republican party took over the House and gained enough seats in the Senate to block any legislation, was a loud and clear repudiation of President Obama's policies. If the right-wing media (Fox News et.al) is to be believed, this means the rise of the Tea Party and a giant "Change Course!" message to the President.
Hardly. Or if you prefer, bullshit.
Immediately after the election, I was somewhat surprised by the attitudes of the power players. The President made the appropriate noises (his "shellacking" comment) but didn't really seem unbowed; the Republican leadership was not nearly as gloating as I would've expected; the Democratic leadership didn't seem to register this "earthquake" much at all.
Further analysis was clearly required, and what it reveals are either bad news for the GOP, or terrifying news for the GOP, depending on whether you believe exit polls reveal anything of much value.
The narrative was that "the nation turned against Mr. Obama and his policies", but the numbers do not bear this out. For my analysis, I used data from Politico.com and "The Unites States Election Project" (http://elections.gmu.edu/). I have to point out that this analysis relies on sampling; I'm still looking for a good source of raw data.
Methodology
As an example, let's take a look at my own district, Ohio District 15... I find this particularly interesting in that it was the same candidates, but the results flipped. This procedure was used to examine 30 randomly chosen data points around the country:
2008
Mary Jo Kilroy (D) 139,854
Steve Stivers (R) 137,272
2010
Mary Jo Kilroy (D) 86,410
Steve Stivers (R) 115,879
2008 Total National Turnout: 132,645,504 62.2% of voting eligible population
2010 Total National Turnout: 90,504,100 41.5%
Analysis and Thoughts
The data clearly show that where the Republican candidates won, they won by significantly smaller numbers than they *lost* in 2008. In a year when almost as much money poured in as in the 2004 Presidential election, this is not good news.
Add in the outright personal hatred (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/01/AR2010110105086.html) for the President fanned by the 24x7 right-wing media, and the news gets worse for the GOP.
If the narrative were true, one would expect that the turnout would have been comparable to the 2008 election, with as much money and noise and sounds of doom coming from the GOP. And I would certainly expect that, say, Mr. Stivers would've won with north of 150,000 votes, as this would've indicated that his base came out to support him and additionally, so-called-Independents who voted Democrat in 2008 switched allegiance.
The story gets even worse if you believe the exit poll data (here's a sample, http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/republican-revival-midterm-elections-poll/). Other exit polls show the same thing: more people blame Bush and Wall St. for the economy than they blame the President; people are about evenly split on healthcare reform; people don't trust the Republicans. Again, on a year where the Republican base was *highly* energized and came out to vote, Mr. Stivers and others could not muster even the number of votes they did in their losing 2008 bids!
As far as the Republicans won, they won by turning out their base and convincing everyone else to stay home. This is not a sustainable strategy; clearly, the demographics are against the GOP. When the country comes out to vote, we vote Democrat.
As far as the Democrats lost, I agree with Alan Grayson (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44715.html); they lost by not doing what we elected them to do, which was to go clean house. They lost by being wimps, not by over-reaching. Let's hope this lesson is not lost on them.
The real prize in this election were the States, where re-districting will take place. The only real hope for the GOP in 2012 is a repeat of 2010, so I expect that to facilitate that, we will see some very weirdly shaped districts. In Ohio expect to see Cleveland/Columbus/Athens and other Blue districts to run all the way south to the Ohio River in an attempt to dilute the minority/independent vote. I expect we'll see voter intimidation and disenfranchising at Civil Rights Era levels.
At some point, I expect we'll see another Timothy McVeigh and/or an attempt on the President, as all this fire that was lit-up by the right-wing is frustrated by the inevitable legislative grid-lock and tries to find an outlet. And that'll be the tragedy of this election... the New GOP is willing to say and do anything to "win", and doesn't care about the consequences. How much more American blood will be spilled, and misery and pain visited upon us before we wake up to this reality?
2012 will not be a repeat of 2010.
