Reflections on Polls and The November Election

A spate of recent national opinion polls and several political pundits are suggesting ever more confidently that the Democrats are about to acquire power once again in Washington. Some are talking about the restoration of our hallowed system of checks and balances and holding out hope that Congress will once again exercise it’s historic oversight function. I’m not so sanguine. In spite of good poll numbers this election’s outcome is not a done deal, and there is reason to be concerned in spite of the polls that consistently reflect a resurgence of the Democratic party.

Generally, I don't think most people realize how grossly skewed the US political system really is; the system distortions are real and explain why, of the 435 seats up for election, there are only 20 to 35 competitive races; that’s true even though virtually all polls show a clear and consistent preference for a change. On a generic ballot, Democrats currently lead by a comfortable margin.

The reality is that there are structural and political distortions in the system that militate against change. From one election cycle to the next the overwhelming majority of congressional seats are never really in play. The distortions that insulate members of congress from competitive races are related to the basic character of the electoral system itself, the proportional system of representation mandated by the Constitution for the House of Representatives, and the guarantee that each state regardless of size, shall have two senators. Because of constitutional limits upon the size of the House of Representatives, i.e., 435 members, it is necessary to reapportion the representation in that body as the population grows. With the progression of time, most of the members of the House represent an ever growing number of people. The representatives from the Western states represent an exception; their constituencies get ever smaller.

It is a little noticed fact in the nation as a whole the western states are losing people; they are emptying out. Yet, they are guaranteed at least one representative no matter how low their population numbers drop; this represents the cause of one of the system distortions mentioned earlier, a distortion that dilutes the democratic character of our government. The people in North Dakota with two US Senators and one member of the House, on a per capita basis, have far great representation, and therefore political influence, than do the people of virtually any other state in the nation. The western states have, over the last 50 to 75 years, been declining in numbers relative to what’s happening in the rest of the country. North Dakota’s population peaked way back in the early 1930's and has been in a steady decline every since.

Consider the disparity; the 37 million people living in California are represented by two US Senators as are the less than one million people living in North Dakota, Wyoming, or any of several of those Western empties. It is because of problems of this nature that a presidential candidate, Al Gore for example, can win the popular vote and not win the election. Though this has happened several times in US history, it is destined to happen more often in the future given the population trends in the West and the reality of the electoral system we are stuck with. Given the conservative nature of the Western red state voters, conservative politics has power and influence far beyond what the population numbers would justify.

Make no mistake about it; the political reality of this situation makes the one man one vote concept irrelevant or merely illusory. The important point is not the fact the there is an historic population shift going on, the emptying out of the Western states; there is, but rather the process of redistricting is a political process that is designed to protect incumbent from one party or the other. In essence, Congressional seats are not unlike Federal Judgeships, lifetime appointments, though technically through an election process and not by appointment as are judgeships. The long history of gerrymandering in American politics has left us with a legacy of Congressional representation that is fundamentally not representative of the people as a whole.

Paul Krugman wrote a piece recently that illustrates this point: “The key point is that African-Americans, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, are highly concentrated in a few districts. This means that in close elections many Democratic votes are, as political analysts say, wasted — they simply add to huge majorities in a small number of districts, while the more widely spread Republican vote allows the G.O.P. to win by narrower margins in a larger number of districts.”

Krugman correctly concluded: “No wonder, then, that until a few months ago many political analysts argued that the Republicans would control the House for the foreseeable future, because only a perfect political storm could overcome the G.O.P. structural advantage” (New York Times 13 October 2006).

Under normal circumstances reapportionment of the US House of Representative takes place at ten year intervals keeping in sync with the 10 year US census data collected. Political considerations, gerrymandering, have always influenced the redistricting process; Tom DeLay did not invent that bit of institutionalized, structural corruption, but he did use that process in an unprecedented., brazen power grab in the US House by encouraging the newly elected Republican legislature in Texas to ignore the 10 year redistricting cycle and to redraw the recently redrawn congressional districts for the avowed purpose of sending more Republican Congressmen to Washington and thereby increasing his power.

Without question the lines were gerrymandered in Texas to insure that Republicans would replace Democrats in the US Congress, and they did. To be sure, DeLay stands charged with numerous legal violations in connection with these actions, but the fact remains, when the Texas redistricting case was taken before the US Supreme Court, the Court upheld the idea that Congressional boundaries could be redrawn more frequently than allowed by the historic ten year census cycle.

The Supreme Court has in essence institutionalized a process that undermines the notion of one man, one vote. There is now clear legal precedent for politicians from whatever party to further corrupt the representative character of our government by redistricting every time political power shifts in a state legislature.


Historically, people with money, usually wealthy conservatives, have done everything imaginable, including means legal and extralegal, to keep the “hoi polloi” away from the ballot box, the recent election irregularities in Florida and later in Ohio come immediately to mind. Couple that effort with the fact that many, perhaps most, working people of whatever class are generally so caught up in the business of living, of surviving; they just don’t have time to deal with the myriad complexities that underlie most political issues. In modern America, the whole democratic notion of government by the people, for the people and of the people is largely a fiction passed along by naive high school civics teachers. The Swift Boat attach campaigns associated with the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove school of politics represent where politics is at in America. Given the complexity of the issues confronting voters and the many wedge issues introduced to divide and further confuse who knows where how this election will turn out. I’m not too hopeful.

Ever on the watch for ya,
Davy Crockett