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How Would You React to a Coalition Majority in the House?
Now that Kevin McCarthy has dropped out of the running to be Speaker John Boehner’s replacement, and given the lack of any clear alternative (who actually wants the job?), some are floating the the idea of a coalition:
One crossover vote — from one member, in one election — does not a precedent make. But Representative Charlie Dent (R-PA) nonetheless told CNN minutes after McCarthy withdrew, to elect the next Speaker “we [may] have to assemble a bipartisan coalition, that’s the reality of this place.”
Moderate Republicans would join with Democrats to elect a speaker. It’s unprecedented in modern history in the House, but it’s happened at the state level before. (It happened in the New York State Senate a few years ago, and I’ve read that it happened in Texas, but I don’t know the details. I’m sure there are other examples).
There are currently 188 Democrats in the House. If they all voted together, it would only take 30 Republicans to get the 218 votes necessary to elect a speaker.
Improbable? Yes. But it’s been a very weird year.
Suppose that happened: If 30 or more moderate Republicans (possibly even members of the “establishment”) joined with the Democrats to form a coalition, what would your reaction be?
Published in Elections, General, Politics
They are not polling the primaries. Primaries are more difficult to predict because you are trying to poll a tiny subset of voters. That is a type of polling that is easy to get wrong.
National polling such as party approval is far easier to get right as you are hitting the entire electorate.
I explained this in #57
I think this is important. Gallup is not calling it quits. They did not fire the employees and turn of the lights. They still do polling and may do polling in the General Election. They just aren’t involved in a 17 candidate, Trump led primary election.
Polling is not perfect and sometimes is bad. It is the best thing we have to even remotely scientifically check the pulse of the people on issues or elections. Polling is not everything but it does have value.
Even if you call polls inaccurate because of the margins of error, when every poll moves in the same direction, you know that public opinion is moving in that direction, even when the precise amount is difficult to predict. When 70% of voters blame Republicans for a shut down, there is no margin to save save you. Every poll can be wrong by a lot, and you are still losing.
It seems like government is its own constituency. They like their power. And they will fight us at every turn to hold on to it – and to grow it. They’re not fighting Democrats, that’s for sure.
And, if they team up with the Democrats. they will likely win. And this country will morph into one more failed socialist nation. The only question will be how fast we will fail.
Can you even imagine the Democrats doing this? Neither can I.
For those genuinely interested in the current state of polling, Nate Silver broke it down last year quite thoroughly. The money quote for those who aren’t interested in reading the whole thing.
So you mean in 2014, a year after a shutdown, the polls were showing the GOP picking up some 5 seats in the Senate and I think it was ten in the House? Doesn’t this kind of contradict your polling statement?
So how does this explain 70% disapproval with GOP for the shutdown in 2013 and a pretty good win for them in 2014? Something is not matching up here.
Polling is subjective opinion. Subjective opinion that called 2012 for Romney. Show quantitative data to support your position.
You are correct, we’ve had this discussion and to date you’ve never offered objective quantitative evidence.
That doesn’t mean at some point it can’t or won’t appen and I respect your opinion on it very much, but it is only your opinion.
Of course it doesn’t match up and is conveniently discarded.
The problem with 70% disapproval is there are a bunch of hard core, right wing guys like me that disapprove of Republicans because they didn’t go far enough. That 70% is not 70% agains the shut down.
Then we had the 2014 election with many Republican leaders pledging to use all available means to stop the Obama agenda so the right wing came on board.
As soon as everyone was sworn in all the campaign promises were cut and pasted onto Hillary’s email server for later wiping.
Now we have this mess.
Frank, you are one of my favorite guys on Ricochet and I missed you during my sabbatical, but are you really going to reference Nate Silver on polling?
The year time gap that allowed the shutdown to move out of people’s memory. It made the midterms about other issues where we were stronger on.
Nonsense. There was a year gap between the shutdown and the elections. That allowed time for Republicans to rebound. It’s like you ignore half of what I write.
Yes. Are you going to argue that Nate Silver has been bad at analyzing polling data? Because that would be bizarre.
Personally, I don’t find his model any more useful than an average taken from RCP, but the idea that he skews his data because he’s a democrat doesn’t match up with reality.
No I meant 2010 as the polls were significantly wrong. 2014 there were many close races that could go either way. Polling models showed a good chance of us netting 9 in 2014.
To marry together a response to Brent about Nate Silver, and Robert about 2014 polling, Silver had the most likely outcome of the 2014 senate races as the Republicans ending up with 53 seats. They got 55. With as many close races as there were that’s a good result.
I do too but it’s the other half.
Fred, To your question about Texas it has happened the past several sessions.
Joe Strauss is a democrat in sheep’s clothing. Republicans are a majority (shocking, I know), but Strauss is usually elected Speaker with democrats and a handful of republicans. Then Speaker Strauss hands out plum committee assignments.
That is a great result. Just imagine we didn’t fund Obamacare at all, may have ended up with 60!
Why would it be bizarre? He is one of the biggest critics of contemporary polling models.
He has done some good work, but is wrong just as often as those he criticizes.
I don’t ignore, I just think it is incorrect and severely cherry picked.
Frank, here’s a polling question that I can’t get to fit the model.
According to your model, republicans were not affected by the 2013 gov’t vacation during the 2014 mid-term elections because ~1 year lapsed from the vacation to the election.
How did Obamacare play into the 2014 election? It had been ~4 years since it was enacted.
I don’t follow. By what mechanism does this happen? Seems just as likely it could cause backlash against Republicans as uncaring.
Given the usual Republican laziness, that could have happened. The issue has to be worked 24×7.
Actually, I think that both you and EJ Hill are right- in different ways. It is absolutely clear that Republicans acting stoopid and letting Obama shut down the government or impeach the president hurts us- primarily because Legacy Media supports the other side and protects them. The polls in 1998 and 2010 were fine, and make Frank’s point.
Polls in pre-nomination primary races this year are a problem because the organizations have not caught up in their models with the new methods or available responders. This was a headache before the models for landlines were smoothed out; at some point the pollsters will find ways to collect information that creates and validates new models, and accuracy will recover. Gallup has found that their historic model is a problem, so they will sit out till they fix them.
The polls taken before the polling models blew up clearly show that shutdowns are blamed on the Right. Ignoring that fact because we would rather support a brinksmanship Cruz model of legislating is not the path to success.
Maybe McConnell is wrong- but if he is, so are those who agree with EJ. Saying “no” to everything just to make a point costs us unless we are sure beforehand that the public agrees with us. The issue is not being “right” but how to get the public on our side.
The only people I hear saying no to each other are Republicans. There hasn’t been a lot of it towards the Democrats as pointed out by Peter in his reposting of his interview with McCarthy.
Frank Soto
Fred Cole: How Would You React To a Coalition Majority in the House?
Armed revolution.
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Frank, I have gently assumed that this is irony. Is it?
I had taken this to be sarcasm.
What, another false alarm? Frank, do I have to put everything back?