2006 Race: Science or Anomaly?

A commentary on why the 2006 race is not a mirror of 1994 and not unique in of itself.  It is both.

For those who have studied both subjects, political science and history are worlds apart from one another in how they look at human events.  For the most part, political scientists tend to look for a set of underlying and reoccurring variables that allow us to compare events.  Hard-line historians see events as unique in themselves, and are reluctant to compare different points in history because it might over-simplify the complexity of each event.

So when it comes to the 2006 election, which is it?  Is a Democratic landslide a few weeks from now predictable only because the current polling and overall mood of the country matches up with 1994 and other previous years when there was a major shift in Congress?  Or are comparisons to 1994 irrelevant because 2006 is unique in itself?  Sorry to be wishy-washy, but I would say the answer is both.

On one hand, you have the poll numbers that are almost exactly comparable with polls taken right before the '94 midterm election.  First, look at the NBC Poll just released late last night:

NBC News Poll

In general, do you approve or disapprove of the job that Congress is doing?

Approve - 16%
Disapprove - 75%
Unsure - 9%

Back in 1994, Congress' approval rating in the same NBC Poll was at 24%.  Corruption was a huge issue then as it is now.  So by comparing the two election cycles, 1994 and 2006, a political scientist would easily conclude that the Republicans will be ousted from Congress in a few weeks.

The historian side of me differs a little bit.  2006 is not 1994 by any stretch of the imagination.  We are in the middle of a war.  There is a major sex scandal.  The Bush Executive is much more powerful than the previous one.  It is likely that some voters will vote for the GOP based on fear alone.  In 1994, the Democrats didn't use fear to hold on to voters.  If only they had gone to war!

My whole point is that while it may be convenient for the traditional media to lump 2006 into the same box as previous minority party victory years, it would be a disservice to history to just leave it at that.  So much has happened since 1994.  We have the internet, which has spearheaded more citizen involvement.  We are fighting a war against terrorism.  Comparing 1994 and 2006 eliminates the proper specificity needed to analyze this race.  And on the flip-side, while specificity makes this race unique, there still are elements of 1994 and 2006 that are worth comparing. 

So to answer the question whether the 2006 election climate is best understood as a comparable science or as an anomaly in of itself, the answer is both.  Some of it is comparable, and some of it isn't.  It is important that we differentiate the two.

Chuck Todd of the National Journal takes this one step further in his latest column.  He lists five reasons why this race is like 1994, and five reasons why it is not like 1994.

Comments

[n00854180t]

All of what you said aside, I think the single biggest different between now and 1994 is the fact that many of the polling places now will be stocked with electronic voting machines manufactured by two of the large Bush administration backers ES&S, and Diebold, which have been demonstrated (by Princeton and 3-4 other independent security research groups) to be incredibly vulnerable to tampering. That and the fact that the GOP has twice demonstrated its willingness to employ illegal tactics to win elections.