December 2007
AEI's Election Watch series, which began in 1982, is the longest-running election program in Washington. This year's first session, which took place on December 13, 2007, examined the early primary and caucus states as well as the implications of the condensed primary season. Panelists also offered the latest political analysis and polls about the campaigns and the debates to date.
Karlyn Bowman
AEI
Recent opinion polls have not been good for either the president or Congress. Interpreting the polls to decide what voters may do at the ballot box, however, is difficult. The president's approval rating has not risen above 40 percent in the past fifteen months and hit a low point in July 2007. Congress as an institution is not doing much better with a 22 percent approval rating, which is only up four points from its historic low in August 2007. Still, even with the negative polls, Democrats seem to be faring better when respondents are asked who they plan to vote for in 2008. At the beginning of the last campaign, the parties were at near parity when it came to voter self-identification. Now the Democrats have a sixteen-point advantage. This is a huge change and cannot be discounted.
The hot topic issues also appear to be changing. While 70 percent of Americans expect a recession in 2008, they are not yet worried about subprime loan problems, and a majority of individuals rate their personal finances as good. Iraq is becoming less of an issue on the presidential campaign. People are feeling a little better about the outcome, and seven out of ten expect Iraqis to be better off in the long run. Only small extremes want to remove all troops immediately or expand the forces already on the ground. Most people--Democrats and Republicans--would like to see a gradual drawdown of troops. Immigration is the last hot-button issue, but Americans' views about immigration are complex and can at times be confusing. It is certainly a big issue in the Republican primary, but it is not registering as much for Democrats. The parties are absolutely different this year: philosophically and in terms of priority lists, political outlooks, and practical recommendations for policy.
Norman J. Ornstein
AEI
Usually in the month before the voting actually begins, there is an event that causes a coalescence of support around one candidate. The Iowa and New Hampshire voters can then truly start to make their decisions about their early nominating votes. Just look at 2004: John Kerry and John Edwards were running at the back of the pack nearing the Iowa caucus--behind Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt--but managed to take first and second place, respectively. A similar surge could be taking place on the Republican side in 2008. Recently, Mike Huckabee overtook Mitt Romney, who had been leading in the polls for a long time.
Still, the overall climate strongly favors Democrats. People might not approve of Congress in general, but they favor Democrats over Republicans on almost every issue. Of course, that can quickly change. If the war continues to recede from the debate, the panoply of domestic issues--health care and economic policy--will move to the forefront. But those issues still favor Democrats. However, if there is a terrorist attack, we could be faced with a whole different set of choices, and Republicans do better on security issues.
The Democratic primary calendar is a mess. There is almost no time to recover between Iowa and New Hampshire if one of the frontrunners stumbles. Furthermore, Michigan and Florida have been stripped of all of their delegates. That has changed the candidates' strategies, even though it is uncertain as to whether the Democratic National Committee will truly bar those delegates from the convention. Campaigning in the very early states is complicated by the calendar. If one or more candidates does not do well in the first two states, even though all have pledged not to campaign in the penalized states, some may determine that they have no choice. Another problem of the early calendar is that it is extremely difficult to reach voters during the holiday season, and negative campaigning could be unwise in that time of good feeling.
On the Democrats side, it will be interesting to see how Hillary Clinton copes with the Barack Obama phenomenon and attempts to regain her footing. In the Iowa caucus especially, Clinton is not doing well when it comes to second round balloting. If Obama wins Iowa by 5 percent or more, he can certainly win in New Hampshire. When a candidate builds a campaign on an aura of inevitability and then cannot win early primaries, there will be problems. However, the Democrats apportion convention delegates by proportional representation, so losing the early states still leaves Hillary with a chance to catch up on Super Tuesday, when she certainly has a good ground game and the lower-tier candidates cannot compete. The question will become: how valuable is Obama's free publicity after winning the early states? Because the lower-tier candidates will not have the money for the Super Tuesday ground games, it is most likely that it will be a two-horse race on the Democratic side come February 5.
If Hillary wins Iowa, the Democratic primary is basically done, and independents in New Hampshire will choose to vote in the Republican primary, potentially giving a boost to John McCain. However, if Obama wins, independents will be very interested in voting in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire--an outcome that could end McCain's chances. The major point here is that the Democratic and Republican nomination races are interconnected during the primaries.
Michael Barone
AEI
There is definitely a chance that come February 6, the Republican nomination process could be extremely muddled. While there may be an outside chance of a five-man race at that point, there is a much better possibility that at least three candidates will remain standing. However, even in that case, it is unlikely that Republicans will wait until the convention to broker a deal to nominate their candidate. The reason disputed conventions occurred in the past was because of poor communication between different political bosses. With communication as it is now, it is much more likely that a deal would be reached before the convention floor.
For the Democrats, it is likely that Hillary or Obama will win. John Edwards has severe problems. He may do well in Iowa, but New Hampshire does not like southern candidates. It does not get better for Edwards even when he goes south, though. In South Carolina--where half of the electorate is minority voters--Edwards is registering no measurable support among black voters. The Democratic race, while not easy to predict, has far fewer potential outcomes than the Republican race does.
There are multiple possible primary scenarios on the Republican side. Rudy Giuliani started off the year polling in the thirties, and, though he has since lost some of that support, he still leads national polling. Romney has doubled his support to 14 percent over the course of the year. Fred Thompson has been at 12 percent recently, which is down from his post-announcement peak. McCain was seemingly tied with Giuliani to start off 2007, but he has recently been polling at 11 percent. The most interesting flavor-of-the-week story is that of Huckabee. In Iowa, he has clearly seen a huge bounce in the polls. He has found a Christian conservative constituency that appears ready to elect one of its own. The problem is that part of the electorate, which is so important in Iowa, is not much of a force in New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, Romney still holds a big lead. Giuliani and McCain are tied for second. Since New Hampshire does not like southerners, Huckabee cannot really hope for much support there, regardless of an Iowa win. Still, Thompson is doing worse, as he moves towards "asterisk territory."
The later contests are hard to predict. There has been little polling in Michigan, and the little that has been done has been conducted by polling firms with lesser credibility than the big national companies. Even less is known about Nevada and who will show up for the caucuses there. South Carolina is looking like a five-way race with the candidates getting between 10 and 24 percent of the vote. Four of them garner between 15 and 24 percent in the polls, and statistically that is not too far apart. In Florida, Giuliani is doing well, but that could change quickly if he does poorly in the early states.
For the general election, issues could be the economy, health care, taxes, immigration. However, these debates are likely to be framed differently than they have been in the past. The candidates and parties have ill-defined views on some of these issues and have been relatively unchallenged on specifics on the campaign trail.
John C. Fortier
AEI
In the Senate races, there are many more opportunities for Democrats than Republicans to pick up seats. Republicans must defend twenty-three seats and the Democrats only twelve. For the Republicans, the best pick-up opportunity is in Louisiana as Senator Mary Landrieu fights to win a third term. However, Democrats could pick up as many as six or seven seats in this cycle. The Republicans have six open seats to defend: Colorado, Idaho, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nebraska, Virginia. There is also a special election in Wyoming for Senator John Barrasso, who was appointed in 2007 following the death of Senator Craig Thomas. Democrats will likely win Virginia, with popular former governor Mark Warner running. And both Representative Mark Udall in Colorado and Representative Tom Udall in New Mexico hope for promotions. Some Republican senators--sitting in seats in states that John Kerry won in 2004--have attracted top-tier challengers: John Sununu (N.H.), Gordon Smith (Ore.), Norm Coleman (Minn.), and Susan Collins (Maine). These are the strongest chances for Democratic pick ups.
The House is more mixed. After the 2006 elections swept out most of the Republican moderates, there are only eight Republicans sitting in Democratic-leaning seats, compared to the sixty-two Democrats sitting in Republican-leaning seats. There are still vulnerable Republicans out there (John Doolittle especially) but not as many knock-off opportunities for Democrats as in 2006. There are currently seventeen Republican open seats and only five Democratic open seats, which would be a historic low for the Democrats if it remains unchanged. Maybe most tellingly, though, is that the five Democratic open seats were created for different reasons than the Republican ones. Three of the five Democratic open seats emerged because the sitting representative is running for the Senate. Only two of the seventeen Republican representatives are leaving for that reason. The two Republican representatives running for the Republican presidential nomination have also indicated that they will not pursue their House seats should they not win the presidential nomination. The other thirteen are leaving because being in the minority is less fun without committee chairmanships and control over the agenda. All of this indicates that there will likely be small gains for Democrats in 2008.
Nationwide, there are eleven governorships to be decided in November 2008. Washington state is the most vulnerable seat currently occupied by a Democrat, and Governor Christine Gregoire faces a 2004 rematch. On the Republican side, Missouri governor Matt Blunt faces the toughest reelection odds. Delaware and North Carolina are open seat races. Republicans could have problems in Indiana and Vermont. Still, with the small number of races nationwide, there is little chance of a big shift in the current breakdown of governors after the 2008 elections.
AEI research assistant Matthew Weil prepared this summary.
