Parsing Mixed Signals What the Exit Polls and Election Results Signal About the Prospects for Deal-Making on the Other Side of the Fiscal Cliff ISTOCKPHOTO
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OutlookTHE AGENDA AHEAD Parsing Mixed Signals What the exit polls and election results signal about the prospects for deal-making on the other side of the fiscal cliff ISTOCKPHOTO www.cq.com | DECEMBER 10, 2012 | CQ WEEKLY 2459 46outlook-agenda-cover layout.indd 2459 12/7/2012 5:30:52 PM Outlook Obama’s Position Of Advantage Despite some mixed messages from voters, he starts his second term with the policy playing field tilted his way By DaviD Hawkings odern American history is replete with misunderstood or mismanaged re-election mandates. MRichard Nixon carried 49 states in 1972, but he was forced to resign less than two years afterward. Bill Clinton, by contrast, won his second term with less than half the popular vote, but rebounded from his own impeachment scandal to win 55 percent of the congressional roll calls he cared about during his final year in office. And after George W. Bush got 12 million more votes the sec- ond time than the first, he declared, “I have political capital, and I intend to spend it.” Yet he never got so much as a committee vote for the Social Security private accounts proposal that he labeled as his prin- cipal second-term domestic priority. Myriad tangible and not so measurable factors REACHING OUT: Boehner, at the White House to open budget talks after the election, says the results were as much a mandate for the House GOP as for the president. Obama doesn’t plan to see it that way. played into what each of those presidents focused on after they were returned to office, and how much of their second of this month — almost all the political coin the voters gave him in administration agendas ended up in the law books. What’s straightfor- pursuit of a singular goal. That goal, articulated during the campaign, ward, though, is that there is no reliable correlation between the out- is to increase taxes on the richest 4 million Americans next year as a come of an election and a president’s subsequent legislative leverage. down payment on a plan to slow the growth of the federal debt, while Thus, it’s maybe not surprising that Barack Obama — who arranged retaining historically low tax rates for everyone else. Obama’s presumed a series of dinners with presidential historians after he first moved into strategic calculation is that, if he can persuade Republicans to get far the White House, so he might better apply lessons from his predeces- enough outside their ideological comfort zone to accept that sort of sors to his own strategy for success — hasn’t been inclined to claim tax increase now, he will have proved his ability to dominate whatever any sort of sweeping permission from the electorate to remake federal policy debates develop in the next year. policy for the next four years, or even the next two. For their part, GOP congressional leaders have settled on a tone Obama is, after all, the first president elected to a second term with of defiance about the meaning of the election — asserting that there a smaller share of both the popular and Electoral College votes than should be power parity in Washington between a re-elected president he won the first time out. And, for at least the 113th Congress, he will and a retained House majority. “The American people re-elected him, still have to sell his ideas to a 54 percent-Republican House and a Sen- and they re-elected us,” Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, told a cau- ate where the GOP has more than the 40 votes needed to block him cus of his fellow Republican House members last week. “That’s not a at most every turn. mandate to raise tax rates. It’s a mandate to work together.” When asked about a mandate at his postelection news conference, he defined it quite vaguely: “To help middle-class families and families Mixed Messages that are working hard to try to get into the middle class.” Obama has Boehner’s claim of equivalence may prove to be overstated, either also signaled that he views his newfound political capital as highly during the final wrangling over the proper way to walk the govern- perishable. It’s why he signaled a readiness to lay out — before the end ment back from the fiscal cliff at the end of 2012, or sometime early OLIVIER DOULIERY/GETTY IMAGES DOULIERY/GETTY OLIVIER 2460 CQ WEEKLY | DECEMBER 10, 2012 | www.cq.com 46outlook-agenda layout.indd 2460 12/7/2012 5:34:06 PM OUTLOOK in the new year. EXIT POLL $100,000 last year, Obama won by 10 points; By then, there will have been as many com- How Segments among the richer remainder, Romney won by prehensive parsings of the Nov. 6 results as Of the Country Voted 10 points. there are think tanks, advocacy groups, lobby shops, political consultants, campaign orga- Obama Romney going obaMa’s Way nizations and elected officials. What they will Gender That see-saw view from inside the polling have gleaned — not only from the results of Male 45% 52% aside, in the end the incumbent won an elec- the closest and most policy-focused congres- Female 55 44 tion that both sides portrayed as offering a sional campaigns, but also from the presiden- very clear choice — and with a decisive 332 tial exit polls that provide a once-every-four- Age electoral votes and a popular vote margin ap- years touchstone for public opinion about the 18-29 60 37 proaching 5 million. As Obama was doing so, country’s problems and priorities — will more 30-44 52 45 his fellow Democrats expanded their numbers or less decide the 2013 legislative agenda. in Congress, adding two more seats to their 45-64 47 51 It is absolutely true this time, as it has been Senate majority and cutting eight seats out of in every election, that the voters sent mixed 65+ 44 56 the GOP majority muscle in the House. On messages with the candidates they chose and Race/Ethnicity balance, the country voted to tip the govern- the views they espoused. Nevada’s electoral White 39 59 ment Obama’s way. Not the same way it had votes went to Obama by a comfortable 7 per- four years ago, but enough so that for at least Black 93 6 centage points, but Republican Dean Heller the next two years he will begin every debate he survived to win a full term in the Senate. Hispanic 71 27 chooses to engage from a position of strength. Mitt Romney carried Indiana by 10 points, Asian 73 26 Obama should have no trouble getting but hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers split permission from the Senate to remake the Family income their ticket and chose by 6 points Democratic Cabinet to his liking next year — assuming he Rep. Joe Donnelly to serve in the Senate — Under $100,000 54 44 shies away from the fight he’s been tempted to where his presence in the majority caucus in $100,000 or more 44 54 have by nominating U.N. Ambassador Susan 2013 and his vote will be crucial to advancing Religious-service attendance E. Rice to be secretary of State. But even if he Obama’s agenda. does, her Republican critics might conclude Weekly 39 59 The seeming fickleness of voters extends they should back off, especially if the president to the most deeply help ideological beliefs. Occasionally 55 43 picks her in the afterglow of a budget deal that A 51 percent majority told the exit pollsters Never 62 34 is viewed by the public as a triumph for him. they agree that “government is doing too Location Legislation to codify such a deal — to detail many things better left to businesses and any new limitations on entitlements, revamp Cities over 50,000 62 36 individuals,” a near echo of a central applause the tax code, specify restraints on Pentagon line in the Romney stump speech, but a quar- Suburbs 48 50 spending and maybe even to stimulate the ter of those same people voted for Obama Small town/rural 39 59 economy and spur job creation — looks des- anyway. Three in five voters said abortion tined to dominate at least the first half of 2013. SOURCE: All exit polling in this package was conducted by Edison should be legal in all or most cases, a core Research and is based on questionnaires completed on Nov. 6, After that, the growing expectation is that of the president’s socially liberal view, but 2012 by 26,565 voters in 350 randomly chosen precincts. Obama will declare his top domestic priority almost one-third of those same people voted for the year is an overhaul of the immigration for Romney nonetheless. system. That expectation is founded on the At the same time, it’s true that the president and his challenger assumption that Obama’s disproportionate share of the Hispanic staked out bases of support in starkly different halves of the electorate, vote, and the GOP’s desire to improve its fortunes with the nation’s their victories lining up on opposite sides of such basic demographic fastest-growing ethnic group, will give him at least a decent chance to fault lines in a way suggesting no early end to so many of the county’s win the creation of a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million people almost-right-down-the-middle divides. now in the country illegally. Obama won among women by 9 points; Romney won among men And as those measures are being written, the president looks ready by 7 points.