There’s little reason to believe congressional candidates would survive a presidential wipeout.
As President Joe Biden’s embattled reelection campaign tries to regain its footing after a disastrous first debate with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, panic among Democrats in Congress is slowly spreading—mostly in private or off the record, but increasingly in front of a camera. On Monday night, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet told CNN that the White House “has done nothing to really demonstrate that they have a plan to win this election” and that Republicans could win the election in a “landslide.” Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday that Biden should “reexamine” his decision to run. A group of center-left House Democrats met Wednesday with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to convey their fears about Biden’s ability to campaign and win.
They aren’t just worried about Trump winning a second term. They fear that a sinking Biden candidacy might doom the party to minority status in both chambers of Congress, and in many cases, sink their individual campaigns. These are not idle fears. Current polling suggests that the Democrats’ position in the battle for Congress has deteriorated since Biden’s debate fiasco, and recent history does not provide much comfort down-ballot. Anything can happen, but if Biden goes down, a lot of House and Senate Democrats are highly likely to go down with him.
That winning presidential candidates have a positive effect on other races is hardly controversial. It is known as the “coattail effect,” and while it isn’t the most studied question in political science, the research that’s out there is fairly clear: Congressional candidates tend to rise or fall in conjunction with the top of the ticket. Political scientist Robert Erikson found in 2016 that for “every percentage point that a presidential candidate gains in the two-party vote, their party’s down-ballot candidates gain almost half a point themselves.” A 1990 study by James E. Campbell and Joe A. Sumners found that for every 10 points that a presidential candidate gains in a state, it boosts that party’s Senate contender by 2 points, and its House hopefuls by 4. This basic logic is a large part of why the past five presidents brought congressional majorities into office with them when they were elected to their first term.
Democrats can also ill afford a visibly aging void at the top of the ticket because the party’s quest for congressional majorities started off this cycle at a major disadvantage to begin with. Democrats are defending 23 Senate seats (counting independents who caucus with them) to the GOP’s 10. Many of these endangered seats are in states Trump has won twice, including Montana and Ohio, or once, as in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona. Because Sen. Joe Manchin’s retirement means that West Virginia is all but lost, Democrats would either have to run the table in the races they are defending or offset losses with flips elsewhere on the map. The problem is that no one seriously believes that any Republican-held Senate seats are in play this cycle. The House also likely maintains a modest Republican bias—especially after North Carolina Republicans aggressively gerrymandered their state’s map—meaning that Democrats would likely need to win 51 percent or more of the total House vote to emerge with a majority. At the moment, both the FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics polling averages show an extremely tight race in the “generic ballot” question: whether voters want Republicans or Democrats in Congress.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore
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