Election 2008 An American Government Supplement John A. Clark Western Michigan University Brian F. Schaffner University of Massachusetts, Amherst CengageNot for Learning Reprint Australia • Brazil • Japan • Korea • Mexico • Singapore • Spain • United Kingdom • United States Election 2008: © 2009, 2007 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning An American Government Supplement ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the John A. Clark copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or Brian F. Schaffner used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, Executive Editor: Carolyn Merrill scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except Assistant Editor: Katherine Hayes as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United Senior Marketing Manager: Amy States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Whitaker Marketing Communications Manager: Heather Baxley For product information and technology assistance, contact us at Associate Content Project Cengage Learning Academic Resource Center, 1-800-423-0563 Manager: Sara Abbott For permission to use material from this text or product, submit all Art Director: Linda Helcher requests online at www.cengage.com/permissions Print Buyer: Paula Vang Further permissions questions can be emailed to Production Service/Compositor: [email protected] PrePress PMG Cover Designer: Cover Image: ISBN 13: 978-0-495-56748-6 ISBN 10: 0-495-56748-5 Wadsworth 25 Thomson Place Boston, MA 02210 USA Cengage Learning products are represented in Canada by Nelson Education, Ltd. For your course and learning solutions, visit www.cengage.com Purchase any of our products at your local college store or at our preferred online store www.ichapters.com CengageNot for Learning Reprint Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 12 11 10 09 08 CONTENTS I. The Political and Economic Context in 2008 1 II. Narrowing the Field: The Presidential Primaries 4 The Invisible Primary 4 The Early Primaries 7 Super Tuesday 8 Post Super Tuesday Primaries 10 III. General Election Campaign 12 Understanding the Results 17 IV. The Battle for Congress 21 Senate Elections 22 House Elections 24 Diversity in Congress 25 V. Elections in the States 25 Governors and State Legislatures 25 Ballot Proposals 26 VI. Cengage Looking Ahead Learning 27 Not for Reprint Endnotes 28 ABOUT THE AUTHORS John A. Clark is professor of political science at Western Michigan University. He received his doctorate from the Ohio State University. Professor Clark specializes in American political parties, elections, and southern politics. Brian F. Schaffner is a professor in the political science department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He received his doctorate from Indiana University. He is coauthor (with John F. Bibby) of Politics, Parties and Elections in America (6th ed.). Professor Schaffner specializes in voting behavior, campaigns, and political communication. CengageNot for Learning Reprint ELECTION 2008 Well before the 2008 presidential election cycle heated up, it was clear that this would be one for the history books. For the first time since 1952, neither the sitting president nor vice president would be their party’s nominee for the presidency. The race attracted large and diverse fields of candidates in both parties, including an African American, a woman, a Hispanic American, a Southern Baptist preacher, and a Mormon among the serious candidates. Changes in the laws governing campaign finance, combined with the large candidate pool, led many observers to conclude that the 2008 campaign would be the most expensive in modern history. The election of Barack Obama, the first African American to win a major party nomination let alone the presidency, was but one of several possible history making story lines, and it was far from the most likely. I. The Political and Economic Context in 2008 Some political scientists have used patterns from past elections to make predictions about the outcomes of presidential contests. These models are usually notable for their simplicity, often relying on just a few basic indicators. They rest on the assumption that the electorate is retrospective in its approach to electoral choices—people look at how a particular party has performed in office and then determine whether that party should remain in office. These retrospective evaluations tend to be summed up nicely by measures of presidential approval and how the public views economic conditions. When the economy is strong and voters are happy with the direction of the country, they tend to reward the party who controls the presidency; when conditions are not as favorable, the president’s party tends to suffer at the polls. On every conceivable measure, 2008 promised to be a difficult year to run as a Republican. Two years earlier, Democrats had been swept into office based on a rising tide of discontent over wavering economic conditions, a prolonged war in Iraq, and well-publicized ethical scandals involvingCengage Republican members of Congress. Learning These factors had given Democrats their firstNot majority in thefor House of ReprintRepresentatives since 1994 along with a narrow majority in the Senate. But this was only the beginning of the Republican Party’s problems. Economic conditions worsened in 2007 and George Bush became increasingly unpopular as he completed the last two years of his term in the White House. Economic conditions, which had been tenuous in 2006, quickly deteriorated in 2007. Some of the economic warning signs were difficult for 1 average Americans to understand right away. But Americans were very much aware of the fact that inflation was driving up their weekly shopping bills, the decline in housing prices was undermining the value of their homes, and increasing gas prices made their daily commutes much more expensive. By the beginning of 2008, 40% of Americans said that they were worse off economically than they had been a year earlier while only 35% said that they were better off. It was the first time that more Americans felt “worse off” than “better off” economically since the early 1990s. Figure 1: Public’s Perceptions of Economic Conditions Source: Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers. With a Republican president in the White House since 2000, most of the public’s unhappiness with the economy was directed at President Bush and the Republican Party. Approval of President Bush was already on the decline far before economic conditions began to worsen. Initially, his unpopularity stemmed from the public’s dissatisfaction with America’s continued presence in Iraq. By early 2008, about 60% of Americans said thatCengage invading Iraq hadNot been a mistake for andLearning only Reprint about one-third of the public thought that the war had been worth fighting. Of course, a flailing economy did not help Bush’s approval ratings and by 2008, fewer than one-in-three Americans approved of the job he was doing as president. Only Richard Nixon had consistently reached such low levels of presidential approval, and that was in the final months of the Watergate scandal before he resigned his office. 2 The prolonged conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the worsening economic conditions, and a very unpopular Republican president created an extremely unfavorable climate for Republicans in 2008. Signs of an impending Democratic tidal wave could be seen everywhere. Democrats won special elections for Congress in places like rural Mississippi where just a few years earlier Bush had won over 60% of the vote. The public dissatisfaction with the Republican Party also meant that fewer Americans were willing to affiliate themselves with the party. According to the Pew Center for the People and the Press, the percentage of Americans identifying as Republicans declined to about 25% of registered voters by the middle of 2008. Democratic affiliation stayed relatively stable during this time, which meant that in 2008, Democrats had the largest advantage in party identification that they had enjoyed in decades. Given all of this, it is probably easy to imagine what political scientists were predicting. Overwhelmingly, political scientists forecast that the Democratic nominee would win the presidential election, with the only real disagreement being in the Democrat’s margin of victory. Most political scientists and pundits also expected Republicans to suffer major losses in Congress for the second election in a row. Thus, 2008 was not a good year to be a Republican and the fact was not lost on most Republican politicians. Twenty-six Republican members of the House of Representatives chose to retire in 2008 rather than face a difficult reelection bid. In fact, the Republican Party was so resigned to suffering further losses in the House and Senate that the party had a very difficult time raising money to defend their incumbents. The discrepancy could also be seen in the candidates each party fielded for the presidency. On the Republican side, John McCain was the only U.S. Senator to enter the race. He faced off against two former governors (Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee), a former mayor (Rudolph Giuliani), and several members of the House of Representatives. On the Democratic side, there was an embarrassment of riches. Barack Obama, the rising star of the Democratic Party, had to defeat not just Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton, but also Senators Joe BidenCengage and Chris Dodd, former Vice PresidentialLearning candidate John Edwards, and New Mexico GovernorNot Bill Richardson. for EachReprint of these strategic politicians entered the race because they knew that the Democratic nominee would have the best shot at winning the presidency since Bill Clinton was reelected in 1996. What they probably did not realize was that 2008 would witness the most prolonged and memorable nomination contests in at least forty years. 3 II. Narrowing the Field: The Presidential Primaries As early as 2004, it was clear that Hillary Clinton would compete for the presidential nomination in 2008.