Dysfunction

Morning Plum: Get ready for more gridlock and dysfunction

By Greg Sargent

One outcome from today’s elections has pretty much already been decided: Whether Democrats somehow hold the Senate or whether Republicans capture it, we are only headed for more polarization, not less.

Presuming Republicans win the Upper Chamber, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will claim a new era of constructive governance has arrived, while simultaneously claiming a mandate to chip away at President Obama’s already achieved policy gains. (Those who profess a love for bipartisan cooperation will politely ignore this absurdity.) But McConnell’s only way to re-litigate Obama’s policies will remain budgetary guerrilla warfare that will only work if Obama allows it to work, which he won’t. This election won’t resolve any of the larger arguments of the Obama era — whether backward looking or forward looking — and while compromises may be possible here and there, the big picture will mostly be more stalemate.

This is the structural reality underlying the battle for the Senate: Because voters increasingly vote for the same party in Congressional elections that they do in presidential ones, it’s becoming harder for either party to hold seats in states won by the opposing party’s presidential candidate. At best for Democrats, the result of this election will be a majority so narrow that it’s almost non-existent. The most likely outcome for Republicans is a majority of two or three seats — far from enough to do any serious damage to any of Obama’s major policy achievements.

“We’re seeing greater consistency across different types of elections,” political scientist Alan Abramowitz tells me. “Aside from the close ones, it’s very hard now for a Democrat to be elected in a Romney state, and very hard for Republicans to win in Obama states.”

Ron Brownstein has a must-read that explains how demographics in the core red state battlegrounds, where older blue collar whites continue to trend away from the Democratic Party, are fueling this trend. Also see Jonathan Cohn’s useful map which captures the situation nicely.

The rub, Abramowitz says, is that in this election, this trend will produce a more polarized Senate. That’s because, in the states where control will mostly be decided, moderate Democrats are likely to be replaced with very conservative Republicans. In Arkansas and Alaska, senators Mark Pryor and Mark Begich will likely be replaced by Tom Cotton and Dan Sullivan. In Iowa and Colorado, Joni Ernst and Cory Gardner, who may well prevail, are more conservative than the retiring Tom Harkin and Mark Udall are liberal.

“The net result will be that we’ll have a Republican caucus that is more conservative than it is now, and a Democratic caucus that is more liberal than it is now,” Abramowitz says. “You’re subtracting moderates from the Democratic caucus, and adding very conservative Republicans to the GOP caucus.”

“As a result, we’ll have a more polarized Senate, with more confrontation and gridlock,” Abramowitz continues. “I can’t see the new Republican-controlled Congress being more willing to work with the president.”

And as Jonathan Chait notes, beyond the Senate, the dominant fact of our politics is that the GOP-controlled House and the President can’t agree on anything, no matter what the Senate does. The notion that the Senate can somehow bridge this divide has long been a pipe dream. But for the aforementioned reasons, it may, if anything, be even more fanciful next year. Which probably means that, whatever happens today, we’re looking at more of the same dispiriting mess for at least the next two years and quite possibly longer.

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* THE FINAL FORECASTS: The HuffPollster model puts the odds of a GOP Senate takeover at 79 percent. FiveThirtyEight puts it at 76.2. And the New York Times’ Upshot hast it at around 70 percent.

* THE FINAL POLLING AVERAGES: In Colorado, Cory Gardner leads Senator Mark Udall by 1.9 points. In Georgia, David Perdue leads Michelle Nunn by four points, but he appears short of the 50 percent to avoid a runoff. In Iowa, Joni Ernst leads Bruce Braley by 2.4 points.

In New Hampshire, Senator Jeanne Shaheen leads Scott Brown by 1.4 points. In North Carolina, Senator Kay Hagan leads Thom Tillis by 0.7 points. In Kansas, Senator Pat Roberts leads independent Greg Orman by 1.7 points.

All these races could still go either way, but the big picture remains that Republicans lead by more than four points in enough states to take the majority.

* UNCERTAINTY REMAINS IN THE POLLS: Nate Silver explains how lingering uncertainty in the polls means the possibility of Democrats holding the Senate cannot be ruled out entirely. There are two scenarios, one in which they are close to right, and one in which they are wrong:

In the final set of simulations we ran, Democrats won just 14 percent of the time when the overall bias in the polls was less than one point in either direction. This represents what we’ve called the “squeaker” scenario — Democrats eke out victories in just enough of the competitive states to win, even though the polls do a reasonably good job overall. The Democrats’ alternative is the “shocker” scenario — the case where the polls do prove to be skewed against them. In the simulations where the polls had at least a 1-point Republican bias, Democrats won the Senate 61 percent of the time.

So if the polls are a bit off, Democrats can hold. Of course, they could be underestimating GOP strength, which would mean a bigger-than-expected GOP majority.

* HOW OLD WILL TODAY’S ELECTORATE BE? Gerald Seib notes that today’s outcome will be determined in part by which side shapes the electorate they want, and offers this polling:

When Journal/NBC News pollsters gauged which voters are likely to actually show up to cast votes, based on their interest in this year’s election and their voting history, they found that just 11% of those most likely to vote this year are under the age of 30. Meanwhile, a hefty 24% of those most likely to vote were those aged 65 and over…it will be a much older electorate overall than the one that showed up for the 2012 presidential election.

Our polling has found similar disparities, and indeed, this problem has shown up in polls as far back as the spring. Today will determine whether Dems are putting any kind of dent in it.

* OTHER STORIES TO WATCH TODAY: Danny Vinik has an important reminder: The Medicaid expansion and the minimum wage are also on the ballot today in multiple states. If Democrats or independents are elected governor in a number of states, it could result in an expansion of health coverage under Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Meanwhile, voters in four states will weigh in on whether to raise their states’ minimum wage.

So even if Democrats lose the Senate, there could be some bright spots for the Democratic agenda here and there.

* WE’RE PROBABLY HEADING FOR RUNOFFS, FOLKS: The Post has an overview of all the plans outside groups are already putting together in the event that Senate control could be decided by runoffs in either Louisiana or Georgia, or both.

If this comes to pass, either one or both states will be absolutely flooded with outside money, political operatives, party lawyers, and preening national media figures. My God, what a zoo that will be.

* AND BEHOLD McCONNELL’S CYNICAL CLOSING ARGUMENT: Mitch McConnell is on track to victory in Kentucky, while arguing that voters should give Republicans the Senate to end “gridlock” in Washington. Jill Lawrence gets McConnell’s profound cynicism exactly right:

The apocryphal tale of the boy who kills his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he’s an orphan is a cliché, but I’m going to use it anyway. There’s simply no other way to characterize a Republican Party that has set records for trying to block President Barack Obama’s nominations, voted against its own proposals after he embraced them and refused to stimulate the economy in ways that both parties used to support.

Also, Republicans like to say a GOP majority will pass more bills. Well, no kidding! If the same party controls both chambers, agreement is easier.