The 2014 Midterm in the Longest Run: The Puzzle of a Modern Era
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Byron E. Shafer
Byron E. Shafer is Glenn B. & Cleone Orr Hawkins Chair of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin and author, most recently, ofThe American Political Landscape (Harvard, 2014) with Richard H. Spady.
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Regina L. Wagner
Regina L. Wagner is completing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin on “Representing Women: Substantive versus Descriptive Representation and the Conceptualization of ‘Women’s Interests.’”Pär Jason Engle is completing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin on “The Political Contours of Survey Response Patterns.”
Abstract
Comparisons across even the longest time-span cannot foretell the future. What they can do is generate the available analogies to what has just happened, isolate the patterned outcomes that have preceded it over time, and locate the current outcome in the most recent sequence of results. Accordingly, this article begins with the contests that received the most attention in 2014 – and were consensually regarded as the most consequential – namely those in the Senate. It moves to corresponding contests in the House, considering Senate and House together, as Congress. And it finishes with the composite picture for the elective institutions of American national government, namely Senate, House, and Presidency. Some automatic future does not thereby appear, but various analogies become untenable, various alleged patterns can be dismissed as irrelevant, and the new political world can be much more richly described. Still, what ultimately results is an insistent puzzle about a modern world beginning around 1980 and differing consequentially from everything that went before.
About the authors
Byron E. Shafer is Glenn B. & Cleone Orr Hawkins Chair of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin and author, most recently, of The American Political Landscape (Harvard, 2014) with Richard H. Spady.
Regina L. Wagner is completing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin on “Representing Women: Substantive versus Descriptive Representation and the Conceptualization of ‘Women’s Interests.’”
Pär Jason Engle is completing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin on “The Political Contours of Survey Response Patterns.”
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Peter Argersinger, Michael Holt, William Egar, and Jack Edelson for their very helpful corrections to earlier drafts. Collectively, they have guaranteed that the errors which remain are truly ours.
©2014 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- The 2014 Midterm in the Longest Run: The Puzzle of a Modern Era
- The Republican Wave of 2014: The Continuity of the 2012 and 2014 Elections
- Was it a Wave? What does it Mean?
- The 2014 House Elections: Political Analysis and The Enduring Importance of Demographics
- Constitutional Design and 2014 Senate Election Outcomes
- Political Advertising in 2014: The Year of the Outside Group
- Interest Group Issue Appeals: Evidence of Issue Convergence in Senate and Presidential Elections, 2008–2014
- Money in the 2014 Congressional Elections: Institutionalizing a Broken Regulatory System
- Preference Dynamics in the 2014 Congressional Midterm Elections
- Still Crazy after All These Years: The Polarized Politics of the Roberts Court Continue
- Book reviews
- Resilient America
- The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- The 2014 Midterm in the Longest Run: The Puzzle of a Modern Era
- The Republican Wave of 2014: The Continuity of the 2012 and 2014 Elections
- Was it a Wave? What does it Mean?
- The 2014 House Elections: Political Analysis and The Enduring Importance of Demographics
- Constitutional Design and 2014 Senate Election Outcomes
- Political Advertising in 2014: The Year of the Outside Group
- Interest Group Issue Appeals: Evidence of Issue Convergence in Senate and Presidential Elections, 2008–2014
- Money in the 2014 Congressional Elections: Institutionalizing a Broken Regulatory System
- Preference Dynamics in the 2014 Congressional Midterm Elections
- Still Crazy after All These Years: The Polarized Politics of the Roberts Court Continue
- Book reviews
- Resilient America
- The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
