The View From Massachusetts

Mark Graber

One of the more stunning outcomes of the midterm election is how noncompetitive the Republican Party was in New England Congressional elections. Assuming Connecticut-2 holds up, New England will send 21 Democrats and only 1 Republican (Christopher Shays) to Congress next year. The results in Massachusetts were particularly startling. Republicans competed in only three of the ten Congressional districts in Massachusetts. The best they did was 30% of the vote. And only 1 non-Republican incumbent in New England beat that total. Indeed, a quick down and dirty analysis suggests that Republicans would only be entitled to 4-5 seats in New England on a proportional voting scheme (maybe 6 because they would actually be on the ballot in uncontested districts).

The good news is that this suggests not only will New England congressional delegations be solidly blue for years to come, but they are likely to be a fairly liberal shade of blue. In non-competitive districts, the real election is in the primary and the primary electorate in the numerous non-competitive New England districts (and increasing number of non-competitive districts in the East) is likely to push candidates to the left.

The good news, however, may also be bad news. The increase in safe Democratic northern seats, some voting evidence suggests, corresponds to an increase in safe Republican southern seats. The same phenomenon that pushes Democrats to the left in New England is likely to keep Republicans fairly far right in the South. No doubt gerrymandering exacerbates this problem, but as the 2006 Massachusetts congressional election suggests, the real problem is that each party is increasingly establishing sectional hegemony, a hegemony which threatens to send more and more extreme representatives to Congress.

Sandy Levinson is quite fond of pointing to democratic weaknesses in the constitution, practices that thwart majorities. This may be a consociational weakness, a set of institutions that make compromise more difficult. A constitution in which every member of the national legislature is elected in a local election, when the polity is polarized sectionally, is likely to generate governing officials who tend to be more extreme on the left and the right than the average citizen. One of the arguments of Part II in the sacred Dred Scott text (now less than $16.00 at Amazon--if the present pricing trends continue, they will soon be paying you to take the book off their hands!), is that the Civil War happened in 1860 (rather than later), largely because of constitutional institutions that fostered sectional extremism. For all the talk of moderation by the talking heads last night, the New England election returns suggest that we may have less rather than more centrist candidates in the near future, particularly in the House of Representatives.
Posted 9:37 PM by Mark Graber [link]