Tuesday night’s elections saw a nationwide victory for the Republican Party, which edged out Democratic candidates to pick up crucial Senate seats in competitive states such as North Carolina, Iowa, Arkansas, Colorado and West Virginia. The newly won Senate majority leaves the GOP controlling both houses of the legislature. Locally, Republican challenger John Katko defeated Democrat incumbent Dan Maffei to become the representative for the 24th Congressional District. The Daily Orange talked to political science professors Christopher Faricy, Grant Reeher and Kristi Anderson about what these results mean both nationally and locally. 

 

The D.O.: Should the Republican takeover be seen as a national statement against the Democrats and President Barack Obama?

Christopher Faricy: This is one thing that really needs to be corrected. There are a lot of structural reasons that we’re getting the results that we are, and because these results are structural, they can’t be assigned to a national mandate. Presidents’ parties always lose seats in the sixth year of a presidential term regardless of the president’s popularity. Then you have the geographic locations where these elections are taking place. The seats that are up this year are mainly in Republican-leaning states and some of them were won in 2008 with the Democratic landslide, but if you look at the seats that will be up in 2016, it will be the flip of what’s going on tonight.

Kristi Andersen: In the midterm elections of a president’s second term, they always lose seats. Since World War II, I think the president’s party usually loses an average of four seats in that election. Add to that the huge anti-Obama feeling and the important fact that the Democrats that are defending seats in this election were elected in 2008 when the Obama phenomenon was at its height. Many of them are in Republican states and had a hard task to begin with.

 

The D.O.: How do you see the Republican takeover affecting the national policy agenda? What issues do you see the Republican-held Congress bringing to the table?

Grant Reeher: It’s unclear. Republicans are short of a 60-vote majority, so the majority in the Senate won’t be able to move on things without some Democratic support. The new Senate majority leader won’t want the House to send over things that will cause strife within the party. The change could stimulate some greater cooperation between the Congress, as a whole, and the president. We’ll see.

 

The D.O.: How do you think partisanship is affected? Do you think Republicans will be more likely to compromise and work with Democrats to pass laws or will partisanship increase?

C.F.: There might be more incentive to work on legislation. One thing that political science can help folks understand about these elections and what the results mean is that there are things that work in cycles in politics. If anything happens it’s going to be in the next year after the new Congress takes shape in January because the myopic media attention on the presidential race will drown out everything happening as we get into 2015 and 2016. So there’s a year where the parties have incentive to get things done. There will definitely be new incentive for the Republican Party to not be in the traditional minority role of blocking but, since they control the legislature, to actually provide evidence about what a conservative agenda would look like.

 

The D.O.: What impact will John Katko’s victory have in central New York and what returns do you anticipate Katko bringing to central New York?

G.R.: It depends on how he does in the position. He is a freshman, but he is in the majority party. He also may be a privileged freshman, as he is in a seat taken back by Republicans, and they may be keen to keep it. He may benefit from that. More generally, he seems to have a good skill set to be effective.

Published on November 6, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Thomas: tjbeckle@syr.edu