The Democrats' Decline in the House during the Clinton Presidency: An Analysis of Partisan Swings

The three elections for the House of Representatives held thus far during the Clinton presidency have all proved to be disappointing for President Clinton. In 1994, his party lost control of the House for the first time in forty years. The great animosity of Republican elites toward Clinton helped the GOP recruit a much better-than-expected crop of House candidates, and the president's unpopularity with the swing voters who supported Ross Perot led to a substantial shift against the Democrats (see Wattenberg 1998, chap. 11). Stunned by this historic turn of events, President Clinton adopted a reelection strategy based on triangulating his policies between that of congressional Democrats and Republicans. Although successful for him personally in 1996, this strategy failed to carry his party back into the majority in the House--an undesirable historic first for a Democratic president. Under the cloud of scandal two years later, Clinton avoided campaigning during the final midterm election of his presidency. Yet, contrary to all predictions that his legal predicament would hurt the Democrats, the party actually picked up House seats. This marked only the second time since the Civil War that the party of the president had gained seats in a midterm election. Most analysts thought this stunning result would discourage Republicans in the House from moving forward with impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Republicans were not dissuaded, however, and the month after the election, the lame-duck House cast a nearly party-line vote making Clinton the first elected president ever to be impeached. This article examines the changes in the congressional district vote during these three sets of House elections held during the Clinton presidency. One of the great constraints on any president is the short political memory of members of the House of Representatives. Facing election every two years, their time perspective is necessarily different from the president's. To them, each election result must be compared to that of just two years before. The swing in their district's voting behavior from the previous House election gives them a sense of the winds of political change and influences how they will act over the next two years. By examining the percentage vote swing in each election by incumbency type (i.e., Republican running for reelection, open Republican seat, etc.), it is possible to derive a fuller picture of how House members interpreted these elections than from the simple number of House seats won. In particular, such a perspective sheds light on why Republican House members were not discouraged from pursuing impeachment by the 1998 election results. Examining the Vote Swing in the 1994, 1996, and 1998 House Races The great swing in the vote for the House between 1992 and 1994 not only led to the first Republican-controlled House in four decades but also to a sense of Republican hubris. Despite the narrow margin of seats by which they won control of the House, GOP leaders pursued an aggressive strategy of trying to ram an ambitious legislative agenda down the president's throat. President Clinton even felt compelled to remark that the presidency remained relevant, and eventually he proved the point by blocking the GOP budget plan even in the face of a protracted shutdown of parts of the federal government. Many commentators argued that the Republicans overstretched their mandate out of reaction to the sheer frustration of having been in the minority too long. While this no doubt played a role, an examination of the vote swing by type of district shows how House Republicans may have overestimated their electoral strength by focusing on the results from their own districts. As can be seen in Table 1, the average Republican incumbent saw his or her percentage of the two-party vote increase by 8.1 percent between 1992 and 1994.(1) Such a strong increase in their own support could well have given veteran GOP House members a sense of overconfidence. …