Billy Rafferty
Colin Gavigan
The midterms elections of 2014
could not have been more clear: a landslide victory for Republicans, in the
U.S. senate, in the House of Representatives, governor races, and even in the
state legislatures saw their biggest gains in decades (possibly the history of
the party, but that data is not available yet). However, our predictions focused
solely on the House of Representative races from Alabama through Illinois, and
while in some cases our results were parallel to the elections as a whole
–Republican victories in many of the races we considered tossups—yet in others
the opposite is true, including an election where a Republican incumbent lost
his seat, a rarity in this election. Thus, we will examine why we chose the
races that we did that proved correct, the races that in the end deviated from
the results that we chose, and the implications of these results.
In most
cases, the races that we saw as tossups went in favor of the Republicans, and
in hindsight for the most part that was a solid choice. The Republicans roared
back from their embarrassing defeats of 2012, and established control of both
Houses of Congress. In the instance of our races, we declared ten races to be
tossups and of those, we believed eight of the ten tossups would be going Republican
and as a result six of those races did. On top of that one of the two tossups
we picked to go Democrat the Illinois 10th between Brad Schneider
(D) and Robert Dold (R) actually went for the Republican Dold. When we were
analyzing the tossup races a common theme was it all depends on who could get
the most support on Election Day, or in other words who can rally the vote.
Ethan Strimling, a senior political analyst, said in an interview with the
Portland Press Herald, that Republicans were able to get Republican voters to
the polls for similar reasons to how Democrats got people to vote for Obama in
2012, they feared the alternative[1].
Republicans had gained a lot of the momentum on the heels of this election
because they were able to successfully blame Democrats for the gridlock in
Congress, better than the Democrats doing the same. Seeing these trends
provided us with the confidence to in most cases pick the Republicans to win in
this upcoming election.
However,
there were some cases, though few, where our predictions did not come to
fruition. Of the 153 races that we were tasked to analyze, we picked a total of
five wrong. In four of these cases we picked Republicans when Democrats won and
in one instance as previously stated, we did vice versa. In examining these
races that we picked wrong individually, it is pretty clear we were overzealous
in our belief in Republican victories. In many instances, the Democrats had a
three or four point lead in the polls, yet we believed that Republicans last
ditch efforts would turn around the polls, as stated in our evaluation of races
such as the California 26th and the Florida 2nd. In
actuality the truth was as The Guardian stated that the Republican wave is not
quite accurate, yes, they won by a lot, but this was not something unexpected,
the opposing party usually wins big in the last two years of the opposite
parties presidency—the Democrats against the Republican Bush in 2006 is a
perfect example[2].
Thus, while it was clear Republicans had victories, by even more impressive
margins, no one was shocked by this result, it could be seen coming from a mile
away. However, in some instances like shown in our predictions, the enormity of
their victory did not display itself as clear as even we thought it would be.
Throughout
the country, Republicans gained twelve seats in the House of Representatives,
five alone in the states that we were tasked with choosing. However, and I
believe most interestingly, is the fact that three people who have a slightly
above average interest in the American political system were able to pick 148
out of 153 elections correctly, having no previous experience in doing such a
task in such an in depth way as assigned here. The implications of this
experience is how accessible polling information and election information has become
to the average citizen. In previous elections, the only people who had the
information that we had the access to this information were political analysts,
but now as demonstrated by the three of us, anyone who cares enough about an
election and the political process can find everything they need to know in
order to make an informed voting decision in mere minutes. This fountain of
information allows average citizens to make their own decisions about who to
vote for and examine that person’s chance of winning. Finally, as the elections
end and the governing begins, this allows political analysts, voters, and even
the three of us who worked on this project to examine the effects of how those
we predicted to win work to change this country for the better.
[1] Strimling,
Ethan. "Why Did Republicans Win? A Look at the Voting Trends."
Portland Press Herald. November 6, 2014. Accessed November 9, 2014.
http://contributors.pressherald.com/politics/agree-to-disagree/republicans-win-look-voting-trends/.
[2] Young,
Gary. "Republicans Didn't Win as Big as You Think They Did. And Obama
Didn't Lose." Theguardian. November 4, 2014. Accessed November 9, 2014.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/04/republicans-win-big-election-midterms.
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