Death of the Swing Seat

• By Charlie Cook
• February 15, 2013
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Democrats face twin struggles as they seek to retake the House majority they lost in 2010. First, the chamber has largely sorted itself out. With 96 percent of Democratic House members representing districts carried by President Obama and 94 percent of Republican House lawmakers representing districts won by Mitt Romney, each party pretty much has the seats God intended. The House simply doesn’t have much elasticity right now. Substantial gains would either require Democrats winning a bunch of Romney districts or Republicans capturing a lot of Obama districts. Given this sorting out and the almost parliamentary-style voting we’re seeing these days, either party would require one heck of a head of steam to pick up a lot of seats from the other side.

But there is a second reason why there is less elasticity in the House. As House Editor David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report points out, notwithstanding all the Democrats in Obama districts and Republicans in Romney districts, the chamber has fewer swing districts altogether. UsingThe Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voting Index, which ascertains how the presidential voting patterns in each congressional district differ from the national average, we took a look at ...

Huge Hispanic Support for Obama Was No Sure Thing

• By Charlie Cook
• February 11, 2013
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At this point, the narrative is pretty familiar to all: President Obama beat GOP nominee Mitt Romney by 44 percentage points among Latinos, 71 percent to 27 percent, exceeding the 67 percent of the Latino vote he won in 2008 over John McCain. Obama’s popularity among Hispanics since Election Day remains impressive; Gallup’s compilation of about 15,000 total interviews each month shows the president with job-approval ratings among Latinos of 74 percent in November, 75 percent in December, and 70 percent in January.

But as recently as a year ago, one might not have guessed this would happen. In January 2012, Obama’s approval rating among Latinos stood at only 55 percent, 12 points below his share of the 2008 Latino vote. During 2011, his rating among this group dropped as low as 48 percent, with a 41 percent disapproval rating. In other words, Obama’s big electoral win among Latino voters, who made up 14 percent of his total vote according to national exit polls, was not a foregone conclusion.

For much of the president’s first term, grumbling among Latino voters was considerable. The jobless rate was significantly higher among Hispanics than the population as ...

Pay No Attention To That Anemic Economy

• By Charlie Cook
• February 5, 2013
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Immigration and gun control have dominated the issue agenda for the past few weeks, pushing away, for a time, the previously dominant worries about fiscal issues and their impact on the overall health of the U.S. economy. But last week’s news that the economy, as measured by real gross domestic product, had declined in the fourth quarter of 2012 by one-tenth of a percentage point -- surprising economists who had expected the economy to grow by 1 percent -- brings these issues back to the forefront. In the third quarter of 2012, real GDP grew by 3.1 percent.

The release of numbers showing the economy contracting slightly in the last quarter hardly constitutes a hair-on-fire event, and they could be revised upward next month when the second estimate is released. But last week’s report follows two surveys indicating that consumers have unexpectedly turned pessimistic. Also last week, the Conference Board released its preliminary consumer-confidence numbers for January. It pegged confidence at 58.6, far below the consensus estimate by Briefing.com of 65.1. The confidence level in December was 66.7; the recovery’s peak level of 73.1 came in October.

The Conference Board numbers follow ...

Wimping Out on Tough Votes

• By Charlie Cook
• January 29, 2013
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Liberals enthused by President Obama’s soaring inauguration rhetoric and conservatives fearful of an impending socialist takeover should all take a deep breath. Much of what liberals passionately want and conservatives deeply fear is unlikely to ever make it to a vote on the House or Senate floors.

For the past two decades, one of the least understood but most important unwritten job requirements for congressional leaders has been to protect their members from difficult and potentially politically costly votes, either in committee or on the floor. Some of the most pressing policy issues of the day are never voted on or are so diluted that one would be hard-pressed to use voting records to nail down how any member feels about anything of real consequence.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner both understand that sparing their members from casting difficult votes is now part of their jobs—and, in their caucus members’ eyes, a very important part. Maybe it’s a vote that would force some members to choose between their party’s base and swing voters, or maybe it’s one that would alienate a key constituency: Avoidance is preferred to pain. Even if ...

For GOP, Just Doing the Math Is Frightening

• By Charlie Cook
• January 22, 2013
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Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is preparing a push for an immigration-reform proposal that promises to be the first real test of whether Republicans have learned a lesson from the Nov. 6 election results. GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans won the white vote by numbers normally seen in landslide victories, and they also won independents. But Romney lost the election nationally by almost 4 points, and the GOP lost the overall popular vote for the House of Representatives. Although winning big among white voters and carrying the independent vote is necessary for GOP victories nationally, it’s no longer sufficient to win.

The white share of the vote in presidential elections has dropped 15 points over the past six elections, from 87 percent in 1992 to 72 percent in 2012. This trend has little to do with Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American president. The declines from one presidential election to the next have been consistent: a 4-point drop from 1992 to 1996, 2 more points in 2000, 4 additional points in 2004, 3 points in 2008, and 2 points last year.

At the same time, the Republican share of the minority vote is getting grisly. Among ...