{"id":31926,"date":"2012-12-27T15:15:04","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T22:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/27\/less-swinging-less-splitting-more-stubbornness.html"},"modified":"2012-12-27T15:15:04","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T22:15:04","slug":"less-swinging-less-splitting-more-stubbornness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/27\/less-swinging-less-splitting-more-stubbornness.html","title":{"rendered":"Less Swinging, Less Splitting, More Stubbornness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nate Silver notes how swing districts have declined in recent decades, along with split tickets (a district going one way for Congress, another way for President). \u00a0Because of that, he notes that there's increasingly little incentive for more radical Representatives to compromise because their districts support them so strongly — and because straying from the hyperorthodox path will encourage a primary challenge from someone more partisan-than-they. \u00a0(Emphasis mine:)<\/p>\n

'One of the firmest conclusions of academic research into the behavior of Congress is that what motivates members first and foremost is winning elections<\/b>. If individual members of Congress have little chance of losing their seats if they fail to compromise, there should be little reason to expect them to do so. Republican leaders like House Speaker John A. Boehner may conclude that there are risks to their party if they fail to reach a compromise, as during the current fiscal negotiations. But as David Frum points out, the individual members of his caucus may bear few of those costs directly.<\/b>'<\/i><\/p>\n

It's long been noted that even with general satisfaction about Congress as a whole<\/i> in decline, satisfaction with one's own Representative<\/i> stays high.<\/p>\n

Silver blames in part the gerrymandering of districts by the GOP in 2010. He also notes that political polarization is such that it's influencing demographics — people are considering the political climate in a state or region in considering whether to move to\/from there, which causes further polarization.<\/p>\n

I'd add into the fact the relative decline in the influence of national parties in local elections, tied to the rise of private donations from conservative \/ industry super-PACs, makes individual Reps even more immune to centralizing, thus arguably moderating, influences. Who cares if the National Republican Committee doesn't pony up some bucks for your reelection campaign when the Koch Bros. or LibertyWorks are\u00a0willing to?<\/p>\n

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Embedded Link<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAs Swing Districts Dwindle, Can a Divided House Stand?<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMost members of the House of Representatives come from hyperpartisan districts where they face essentially no threat of losing their seat to the other party – and have little incentive to work across …\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Google+:<\/strong> Reshared 1<\/a> times
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Nate Silver notes how swing districts have declined in recent decades, along with split tickets (a district going one way for Congress, another way for President). \u00a0Because of that, he notes that there's increasingly little incentive for more radical Representatives to compromise because their districts support them so strongly — and because straying from the … Continue reading “Less Swinging, Less Splitting, More Stubbornness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9725,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/02\/the_exceptional.html","url_meta":{"origin":31926,"position":0},"title":"The Exceptional President","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 2-May-06 2:59pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I.e., the president who believes his job is to uphold the law, except when he thinks he doesn't need to because it's not (in his opinion) constitutionally sound. Now, some...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":19090,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/03\/that-truman-quote.html","url_meta":{"origin":31926,"position":1},"title":"That Truman quote","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 3-Nov-10 8:31am","format":false,"excerpt":"Margie's mentioned this quote to me a couple of times recently, so I went and looked it up. \"I\u2019ve seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the Fair Deal, and says\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2010"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2010","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2010"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/democratic-donkey.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":39498,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/01\/working-hard-or-hardly-working-congress-style.html","url_meta":{"origin":31926,"position":2},"title":"Working Hard or Hardly Working (Congress Style)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 1-Nov-13 11:03pm","format":false,"excerpt":"How much will the House of Representatives be working next year? \u00a0Not very much. \u00a0After all, it's an election year, not to mention wanting to keep a whole government shut down.(And, yes, I don't know how this matches previous congressional calendars. And, yes, I realize that Reps spend at least\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14773,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/05\/11\/we-were-against-federal-control-before-we-were-for-it.html","url_meta":{"origin":31926,"position":3},"title":"We were against Federal Control before we were for it!","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 11-May-09 11:43am","format":false,"excerpt":"As I noted in the Joe the Plumber article, the Right plays a deft ongoing game with federal vs. local control. Basically, if they feel they have the votes to dominate in the national arena, or if they see some other grand political agenda they can push forward, they have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LGBTQ &c"","block_context":{"text":"LGBTQ &c","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gay-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135234,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/31\/compromising-compromise-lessons-history.html","url_meta":{"origin":31926,"position":4},"title":"Compromising compromise and the lessons of history","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 31-Oct-17 4:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Which just goes to show that even the \"adult in the room\" can say some doltish things. Now, I like to think of myself as a reasonable, get-along sort of guy, and I'm often able to find room to compromise between what I want and what others want. Not always\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/John-Kelly.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":23953,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/22\/when-you-have-only-one-absolutist-position-its-hard-to-negotiate.html","url_meta":{"origin":31926,"position":5},"title":"When you have only one absolutist position, it's hard to negotiate","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 22-Nov-11 3:22am","format":false,"excerpt":"A nice timeline of the 2010-2011 budget follies, including the various Grand Suggestions from the Super-Committee.Bottom line (albeit from my PoV), the Dems were more than willing (overly so, in fact) to offer substantial spending cuts, in exchange for modest tax increases. The GOP members were only willing to discuss\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}