Political science professors in a panel discussion Wednesday said they think the major Democratic losses in this year’s midterm election will cause a gridlocked government, preventing significant legislation from coming out of Congress in Barack Obama’s final two years as president.
Professors from the University of Missouri – Columbia, the University of Texas at Austin and UCLA sat on the panel, which was facilitated by the UCLA Center for American Politics and Public Policy. Professor Joel Aberbach, the center’s director, said it regularly hosts such panels when elections spur contrasting reactions.
The panel discussion focused partially on why the Democrats lost many seats in this year’s midterm election.
Daron Shaw, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the national decision team for Fox News, said he thinks the election this year was particularly bad for Democrats, with losses across the board in races for the Senate, House of Representatives, governor and state legislator positions.
“This was more than just a single bad loss for the Democrats,” he said. “The losses were just huge.”
Shaw said he blames Obama and his poor approval rating – hovering around 42 percent – for the lack of Democratic support. He said he thinks the still-shaky economy has led to his low approval rating.
Some other professors said they agreed with Shaw, such as Professor John Petrocik from the University of Missouri – Columbia, who argued that Obama’s low approval rating, not low voter turnout, was to blame for Democratic losses.
After presenting detailed charts showing the effect of low voter turnout on Democratic success, Petrocik said he could not see any relationship between the two factors. He said he thinks a higher voter turnout this election would not have helped the Democrats.
After analyzing why the Democrats lost numerous seats, the conversation shifted to the possible effects of the loss on the next few years of policy in Washington.
UCLA political science professor Barbara Sinclair said she does not expect much change in terms of policy output from Congress over the next couple years, and, if anything, she thinks there will be less legislative output than there has been in the last six years.
“In terms of the key players, there’s really not going to be a lot of change because the policy differences between Democrats and Republicans are just too big,” she said.
Though Republicans won a large number of seats on a national and state level this election, Sinclair said she doesn’t think the Republican victory says much about the party’s future success.
“The 2016 election is going to have a different electorate, one that is more Democrat-friendly,” she said. “It’s going to be almost a flip side of this year.”
She added that she thinks Republicans are facing internal struggles as they debate which strategies to take to get their policies enacted.
Within the GOP, Sinclair said she thinks there is a division between members who want to push for radical changes and members who want to lay low and protect the Republican image in preparation for the 2016 presidential run. She said she thinks the new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell falls into the latter group, partly because of his focus on preventing any national crises similar to last year’s federal government shutdown.
Professors on the panel said they think the split between political parties is more extreme now than it has been in many years, and legislative output from either party in Washington can be extremely difficult.
Joseph Doherty, director of the UCLA School of Law Empirical Research Group, called this year’s midterm election the “Seinfeld election,” saying he thinks there was a lot of debate and discussion that will ultimately lead to few changes in policy.
“The parties just don’t want to cooperate with each other, even if it means nothing gets done,” he said.