Posted by Jim Lindgren:
The Lightning Rod Effect.--
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_30-2009_09_05.shtml#1251924779
In the summer of 2006, when some legal scholars feared that President
Bush and the Republicans were so powerful that Bush had a king-like
status, Steve Calabresi and I published a [1]comment in the Yale Law
Journal that pointed out that the existing political science
literature had understated the degree to which there typically was a
backlash against the party of the President. We showed that the usual
erosion of support extended, not just to seats in the House and
Senate, but to the states. Indeed:
When one adds all gubernatorial races to the analysis, as we do in
Figures 1 and 2, backlash against the President�s party in state
races during a President�s term is actually stronger overall than
the coattail effect in the presidential election year. To be more
specific, we find that four years after a party wins a presidential
election, it holds on average three fewer statehouses than it had
before it won the presidential election. Perversely, winning the
presidency seems to lead very shortly to losing power in the
states. Since 1932 there have been eight changes of party control
of the White House (1933, 1953, 1961, 1969, 1977, 1981, 1993, and
2001). In every instance but one, the party that seized the White
House held more governorships in the year before it took office
than in the subsequent year it lost the presidential election. The
only exception is that in 1980, Republicans held four fewer
governorships than they held in 1992, immediately before the
Republicans were voted out of the White House. Similarly, of the
eleven Presidents since 1933, every one except two, Kennedy and
Reagan, left office with fewer governorships than his party had
before he took office, and Kennedy served less than three years.
Figure 1 shows this pattern.
click to enlarge
Note that the number of Democratic governorships tends to rise during
Republican administrations and fall during Republican administrations.
click to enlarge
Figure 2 shows that the coattail effect of winning the presidency is
only an increase of 1 governorship over the number in the presidential
election year. By the third year of the presidency, the president's
party has lost that seat and 3 more.
During the Clinton administration, Clinton was criticized for losing
so many seats in Congress and losing so many governorships. Yet that
was more or less par for the course. And Calabresi and I were not at
all surprised to see large Republican losses in the 2006 election (the
normal losses had been avoided in 2002 by 9/11, much as the normal
losses were avoided in 1962 by the Cuban missile crisis).
Now the process seems to be repeating today. President Obama's drop in
popularity may be slightly larger than for most Democratic presidents
early in their terms, but the process is a normal one. Further, while
the contests for [2]state governorships may be decided by [3]local
issues, the atmosphere is one in which the Democrats will be blamed
for the perceived faults of Obama, yet this process is entirely
normal.
Presidents make decisions and do or don't do things that make people
angry or disappointed and they take out their disappointment on the
party of the sitting president -- what we call the Lightning Rod
Effect. The effect is usually larger than the president's coattail
effect in his election year and can be shown even in the races for
state offices.
References
Visible links
1. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=930384
2. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024422.php
3. <p>http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/center-opinions</p>
Hidden links:
4. file://localhost/files/jim-ch_1.2.bmp
5. file://localhost/files/jim-ch_2.3.bmp
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