Don’t call it a mandate

Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership have already started their campaign to frame this election as a mandate for Republican policies – but the picture is, as always, more complicated than they’d like us to believe.

Don’t call it a mandate

Despite Republicans electoral gains on Tuesday, the Pew Research group’s analysis of exit polls shows that the same ambivalence toward the Republican party (and the Democrats, too) that has existed since before President Obama’s election still exists. Here’s what they say:

“By 52% to 42%, more voters expressed an unfavorable opinion than a favorable opinion of the GOP. Indeed, views of Republican Party are no more positive than those of the Democratic Party (53% unfavorable vs. 43% favorable), which was roundly defeated.”

As the analysis points out, the results on Tuesday were part of a larger trend, especially among independent voters (more on them later), to change the status quo, and to – as we’re all probably tired of hearing – “throw the bums out.” For a key swathe of voters, displeased with both parties, the key issue is not whether the office holder was Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, but whether he or she was an incumbent.

That’s a tantrum, not a mandate.

Public remains divided about how to solve our big problems

Furthermore, despite the fact that the electorate on Tuesday was, according to exit polling, “an older and much more conservative electorate than in 2006,” they do not show much more support for the Republican agenda than the Democratic one, but rather continue to display the divided priorities that we’ve seen emerging over the past year.

Here’s a summary of the findings:

• 39 percent think reducing deficits should be our highest priority.
• 37 percent think spending to create jobs should be our highest priority.
• 19 percent think cutting taxes should be our highest priority.

Even among a more conservative electorate than we saw in the last midterm, where the electorate has historically tended to be more conservative in the first place, the Republican agenda enjoys no clear mandate.

Those pesky independents

Although it’s historically typical for the president to lose seats in midterm elections, the large number of seat changes we’ve seen in successive elections (going back to 2006) is indicative of the growing influence and fickleness of independent voters. Here’s what the Pew Research analysis says:

“By 55% to 39%, more independents voted for the Republican candidate this year; four years ago, independents favored the Democrat by nearly an identical margin (57% to 39%). And just two years ago, Barack Obama won the votes of independents (by 52% to 44%) on his way to the White House.”

Many independents seem to merely be voting against the party in power. Although the firebrand in me appreciates the sentiment, I worry about the effect this sort of volatility will have on our country’s ability to make progress (more on that later).

So what can we learn from this election?

Turnout matters. According to the exit polling, this was the most conservative electorate we’ve seen in the past two decades. As an indication of this, nearly 40 percent of those who voted on Tuesday self-identified as TEA Party supporters, whereas national polling finds that only about 21 percent of Americans support the TEA Party. In other words, the people who voted weren’t representative of most Americans, or their values.

Furthermore, we know that the election gains made by Republicans are both a historical regularity and are more indicative of anti-incumbent sentiment than approval for the GOP agenda. That said, there is no mandate for the Democratic agenda, either. Also, President Obama’s approval rating has suffered because of his policies, or at least what has been said about them. Both parties will have to work harder, and I hope together, to prevent the reactionary lurching right and left that has typified our recent elections.

What I hope happens next

Regular readers of my blog will not be surprised that I hope that Republicans and Democrats will now resume working together to address our problems. The American electorate seems to prefer when both political parties share responsibility for how the country works.

I hope the Republicans ignore the hardliners in their party and engage in productive negotiations with the president and the Democrats. For those of you who missed it, here’s Jon Stewart’s closing plea that we stop demonizing one another and start working together.

In his November 3rd press conference, President Obama offered to work together with Republicans to find the best ideas for accelerating our country’s economic growth, as a means for increasing prosperity for all Americans. Now that we’ve moved past the heated claims of campaign season, I hope that all of us – both nationally and locally – will take this invitation seriously. If our elected officials refuse to work for the larger good, not only will they suffer at the ballot box, but so will the country.

Nick Voges is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s Zeitgeist. E-mail him at nick@nmpolitics.net. A prior version of this posting quoted a Politico.com article, which incorrectly stated that the recent election was only the third election since World War II where twenty or more seats in the house changed parties. That error has been removed from this posting.