Volume 4, Issue 2

The extension of the temporary provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act sailed through Congress and was signed into law by President George Bush on July 27, 2006 without any major turbulence. The absence of major politics over its renewal in 2006 is striking when compared to the partisan battles in its 1982 extension. President Bush and the Republicans had an opportunity to water down the VRA, given that Blacks appear less politically radical or extremely liberal than in the 1980s. But GOP leaders did not pursue a southern strategy by contesting the VRA. Their reluctance confirms that Black power is solid. Black members of Congress framed the issue in a way that the administration recognized that blacks and minorities would mobilize if VRA renewal was challenged in a significant way.

Drawing on several theories of congressional election change, this article presents a forecasting equation for seat change in U.S. House elections. The equation addresses the problem of the over time comparability of seat change when levels of competition at the congressional district level have declined dramatically, a decline that has substantially reduced the magnitude of net partisan seat change in recent decades. The equation is estimated using both on-year and midterm elections since 1944. It indicates that the 2006 midterm will likely be a good year for the Democrats. However, because of reduced levels of competition restricting the number of seats that are effectively "in play," Democratic Party gains are likely to be in the teens. Though Republicans may narrowly retain their control of the House, there is a very real possibility that Democrats will end the six election string of Republican House majorities.

This article describes a model for forecasting the outcomes of congressional elections based on national political conditions and candidate behavior. Pre-election Gallup Poll data on the generic vote and presidential approval are used to measure national political conditions and data on open seats and challenger quality are used to measure the behavior of congressional candidates. The model is tested with data on U.S. House elections between 1946 and 2004. A simpler model based only on national political conditions is tested with data on U.S. Senate elections from the same period. The results indicate that Democrats have a good chance to regain control of the House of Representatives in November. Democratic gains are also likely in the Senate but it will be difficult for Democrats to pick up the six seats that they need to take control of the upper chamber because only 15 of the 33 seats up for election in 2006 are currently held by Republicans.

Despite that the popular vote margin in the 2004 presidential election was only 2.4%, George W. Bush claimed to have "earned political capital" and Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman characterized the outcome as "a mandate." While it seems from the size of the electoral margin that such claims are overstated, we look "under the hood" of the election to see whether any particular policy issue – such as the war in Iraq, gay marriage, social security privatization, or any of the others – was sufficiently dominant to justify the characterization of the election as a mandate. We find that the election result sources overwhelmingly to predispositions in the voters' minds before the campaign, with pre-existing party identification the most important factor in both aggregate and individual analyses. Retrospective evaluations favored Kerry, and Bush gained little from his conduct of the war on terror. In its net effect, the campaign was largely a wash, although Bush was more favored on individual traits. Among the policy issues of the campaign, only taxation had a measurable effect, providing a small boost to Bush; the vaunted social issues of abortion and gay marriage were statistically insignificant. The election results suggest that the United States has developed a new national party system of stable and very close competition, but without presidential policy mandates.

Although the response "moral values" to a 2004 exit poll question did not point to the decisive factor in George W. Bush's victory that some commentators at first claimed, it may nevertheless have identified an important element in the election and quite possibly for the future. Various criticisms of the question are considered, and found to be wanting.

During the 2000 election, 30 "red" states cast their Electoral College votes for Republican George W. Bush. Many of these red states are also the largest net recipients of federal benefits. Is this a product of the fact that many red states are simply poorer than blue states, or the result of political machinations? We find that even after controlling for Republican congressional power and key socio-economic and demographic factors, red states received more federal benefits per tax dollar in 2004. In a twist of irony, we conclude that "big government" entitlement and discretionary programs have actually become important club goods for Republicans to reward support in core states. As a result, red states have increased the amount of goods they received per tax dollar under Bush.

The dispute over presidential signing statements surfaced first under President Ronald Reagan and most recently under President George W. Bush. Legitimate concerns accompany the use of these signing statements, but proposals put forth by the American Bar Association, other groups, and bills introduced in Congress are unimpressive in their analysis and practicality. Signing statements can be abused, and abusive, but efforts to eliminate or constrict them have little application to underlying problems.

Presidents have issued signing statements when signing bills into law since the first half of the Nineteenth Century but recently this practice has come under attack. In this short essay, we argue that presidential signing statements ought to be given legal weight for three reasons. First, they are part of a federal statute's legislative history because the president's concurrence is ordinarily necessary, along with the House and Senate's, for a bill to become law. Second, presidential signing statements are deserving of Chevron deference because of the President's constitutionally specified expertise as the chief executor of federal law. And, finally, presidential signing statements are a vital mechanism by which the President as the nation's unitary head of the executive branch can control exercises of the executive power by his millions of subordinates. For all three of these reasons, presidential signing statements are legally binding on subordinate executive branch personnel and they also ought to be given legal weight by federal and state courts.