GOP Must Modernize Its Campaigning Now

• By Charlie Cook
• December 18, 2012
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It’s often said that people aren’t as brilliant or talented as they seem when they win, or as dumb or inept as they seem when they lose. That should be kept in mind in any analysis of the 2012 general-election campaign. It’s easy to talk about how great and effective the Obama campaign was and to ridicule the Romney effort. But Republicans by all means should look at this year’s presidential campaign with a critical eye and try to figure out what went wrong. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has formed the Growth and Opportunity Project that, despite its awkward title, is a five-person group of party officials that will examine the 2012 campaign and recommend what the GOP should do differently.

In 2004, President Bush’s reelection campaign was pretty much state of the art and, at worst, evenly matched with John Kerry’s campaign. The margin in that GOP victory was 2.4 percentage points, compared with the 3.6-point deficit this time. However, by 2012, the party’s state-of-the-art apparatus had clearly atrophied. The up-and-down nature of John McCain’s 2008 campaign didn’t help.

The fact that Mitt Romney wasn’t ...

History Favors a 2014 GOP Comeback

• By Charlie Cook
• December 11, 2012
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It’s hard to pick up any publication or watch any television program oriented toward politics and not be reminded of the problems facing the Republican Party. Republicans have now lost the popular vote for president in five of the past six presidential elections. The last time the GOP won 300 electoral votes was in 1988; Democrats have won 300 or more in four of the past six contests. Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia have voted Democratic in each of the past six presidential elections; those places total 242 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.

In two consecutive elections, the closest Senate races have fallen domino-like toward Democrats. In 2010, they won five of the seven races rated as toss-ups by The Cook Political Report; this year, Democrats prevailed in eight out of 10. While Republicans held onto their House majority, they lost eight seats, about a third of their 25-seat margin. Democrats actually won the national popular vote for the House. Republicans were saved by the new district boundaries they drew. The long-term demographic trends in the country look very bad for the GOP as the party is presently configured. A party ...

The One Pollster Republicans Should Listen To

• By Charlie Cook
• December 4, 2012
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It’s interesting to see Republicans offer different interpretations of this year’s elections. As in most things, where you stand depends on where you sit. Chuck Todd and his terrific political team at NBC News pointed out in their Nov. 27 First Read newsletter that 117 House Republicans won with 60 percent of the vote or more, meaning that two-thirds of the GOP Conference is made up of people who won easily, with margins considerably higher than President Obama was able to achieve. Many of them were effectively reelected the day the ink dried on redistricting maps in their states. (Keep in mind that Democrats edged Republicans in the national popular vote for the House.) For these members, their main worry is not that a Democrat in a general election will unseat them but that they will lose to a conservative challenger in a GOP primary.

Most of the smart Republican political pros I talk to are spending a lot of time sifting through the election returns and exit polls for signs of what went wrong. Republican pollster Glen Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies pointed out some of this election’s paradoxes in a Nov. 26 post on his ...

What Americans Want From a Fiscal-Cliff Deal

• By Molly Ball
• November 27, 2012
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With lawmakers getting down to business on a fiscal-cliff deal, interest groups are working overtime to tell the politicians what voters want them to do.

This matters a lot, obviously; all else being equal, politicians are much more likely to take stands they believe to be political winners. But when it comes to concocting the perfect blend of tax hikes and spending cuts, what the people want is not perfectly clear.

This week, a fight has broken out between Democratic groups over whether there is a popular mandate for entitlement reform. Each has fresh, credible polling data to support its position. On the one hand, a group of labor unions says that a clear majority of Americans don't want any cuts to Social Security or Medicare; on the other hand, the centrist-Democratic think tank Third Way aserts that even a majority of President Obama's supporters support a bipartisan compromise to fix those programs.

In the Third Way poll of 800 Obama voters -- conducted post-election by the Benenson Strategy Group, which also polls for the president -- 79 percent said that the president and Congress should "make changes to fix Social Security and Medicare." But in the poll of 1 ...

Senate Democrats Earned Every Seat They Won

• By Charlie Cook
• November 20, 2012
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It’s hard to talk about the 2012 congressional elections without starting with the Senate and the remarkable election night for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Democrats scored a net gain of two seats, something that was inconceivable 90 days ago or, for that matter, on Nov. 5. They held five of their six most vulnerable seats, and no Democratic incumbent lost reelection. Of 10 toss-up races, Democrats won nine. For what was generally considered to be a non-wave election, those results are extraordinary.

The DSCC was dealt a weak hand at the start of the cycle, prompting some analysts to question the sanity of Chairwoman Patty Murray of Washington, talented Executive Director Guy Cecil, and their team for taking on the challenge. They had to defend 23 seats to 10 for Republicans. Democrats had more retirements and, for much of the cycle, more vulnerable seats.

But Murray and her team decided to play offense instead of defense, and they made their own success. First, they recruited competitive challengers to every Republican incumbent who might be vulnerable. They recruited an insurance policy or two, such as getting Rep. Joe Donnelly of Indiana to run for the Senate. They recruited solid ...