Our group was assigned to predict the House of Representatives elections from Nebraska to Pennsylvania. Overall, we were correct with our predictions with the exception of the 4th district in Nevada and the 1st, 21st, and 24th districts in New York. Republican Cresent Hardy won the fourth congressional district in Nevada and the incumbent, Democrat Steven Horsford, lost his seat. Republican Lee Zeldin beat Democrat Timothy Bishop in New York’s first district. Democrat Aaron Woolf lost his seat to Republican Elise Stefanik in New York’s 21st district. Lastly, Democrat Dan Maffei lost his seat to Republican John Katko.
Reasons that these incumbents lost vary but mostly due to, political mismanagement, monetary problems and low voter turnout. Steven Horsford of Nevada’s 4th district did not advocate a campaign policy or platform during his campaign. Voter turnout, of registered democrats, in his election was down 50% from the last election. (1) Aaron Woolf of New Yorks 21st district was in the lead for most of the election season. However, in September a story broke about how in 2008 he was subject to a tax warrant based on $130,000 in owed taxes. (2) Tim Bishop of New Yorks 1st district was subjected to an Investigation by the House Ethics Committee and when this was brought to light during the campaign he began to suffer in the polls. Dan Maffei initially had control over his district early in the campaign, and he ran aggressive attack ads against challenger John Katko. Towards the end of the campaign Katko released ads that targeted a valuable demographic, women. With this last minute attempt at victory Katko crushed Maffei by 20 points. (3) (4)
What all of this implies about the American electoral process is how important voter turnout is during midterm elections. In Nevada while there were a significant amount of eligible democratic voters, a small amount of them actually showed up to vote. Of the 303,000 eligible voters in the 4th congressional district of Nevada, 130,000 of them are democrats and 97,000 of them are republicans, leaving 70,000 people registered as independents(1). The same went for many other congressional districts across the country. What this proves is that with just enough people to create a majority, significant change can be made during elections.
The fact that we only made four mistakes shows how predictable and uncompetitive most of the races in electoral politics are. It’s also important to note that all four of these races won Republicans seats. This (along with the Republicans regaining the Senate) shows a trend of Republicans slowly acquiring more power in the government, using the disapproval of President Obama and Independent voters in order to get there.
Phillips, Amber. "Four Reasons Cresent Hardy Upset Rep. Steven Horsford." LasVegasSun.com. N.p., 7 Nov. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. (1)
"New York's 21st Congressional District Elections, 2014." - Ballotpedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. (2)
Weiner, Mark. "John Katko Declared Winner over Rep. Dan Maffei in Race for Congress." Syracuse.com. N.p., 4 Nov. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. (3)
Breidenbach, Michelle & Weiner, Matt. “How first-time candidate John Katko upset two-term Rep. Dan Maffei.” Syracuse.com N.p., 9 Nov. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. (4)
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