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Census: Growth and Taxes

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The census numbers were released and it wasn’t as pretty as the democrats had anticipated. It was a blow in more than just a power loss. It was a silent protest against taxes that sent many packing to states that had no state taxes. Which are republican leaning states.

Census: Fast Growth in States With No Income Tax | by Michael Barone

For those of us who are demographic buffs, Christmas came four days early when Census Bureau Director Robert Groves announced yesterday the first results of the 2010 Census and the reapportionment of House seats (and therefore electoral votes) among the states.

The resident population of the United States, he told us in a webcast, was 308,745,538. That’s an increase of 9.7 percent from the 281,421,906 in the 2000 Census — the smallest proportional increase than in any decade other than the Depression 1930s but a pretty robust increase for an advanced nation. It’s hard to get a grasp on such large numbers. So let me share a few observations on what they mean. Continue reading . . .

GOP Freshmen Will Hold Boehner to His Big Promises

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by Michael Barone

For political junkies of a certain age, it was a given that the House of Representatives would always be controlled by Democrats. They won the chamber in 1954 and held on for 40 years — more than twice as long as any party in American history had before.
   
When Sam Rayburn died at 79, more than 20 years after first becoming speaker, he was succeeded by John McCormack, 70, who was followed by Carl Albert, 68, and Tip O’Neill, an energetic 64. Every House elected from 1958 to 1992 had at least 242 Democrats, well above the 218 votes needed for a majority.
   
Now things are different. The Republicans won a majority in the House in 1994 and held on until 2006, the third longest period of Republican control in history; Democrats won two thumping victories in 2006 and 2008, but lost all their gains and more in the election last week. Alternation in power seems to be the new norm.

Continue reading . . .

GOP Poised to Reap Redistricting Rewards

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by Michael Barone

Let’s try to put some metrics on last Tuesday’s historic election. Two years ago, the popular vote for the House of Representatives was 54 percent Democratic and 43 percent Republican. That may sound close, but in historic perspective it’s a landslide. Democrats didn’t win the House popular vote in the South, as they did from the 1870s up through 1992. But they won a larger percentage in the 36 non-Southern states than — well, as far as I can tell, than ever before.

This year we don’t yet know the House popular vote down to the last digit, partly because California takes five weeks these days to count all its votes (Brazil, which voted last Sunday, counted its votes in less than five hours). But the exit poll had it at 52 percent Republican and 46 percent Democratic, which is probably within a point or so of the final number.

That’s similar to 1994, and you have to go back to 1946 and 1928 to find years when Republicans did better. And the numbers those years aren’t commensurate since the then-segregated and Democratic South cast few popular votes. So you could argue that this is the best Republican showing ever.

Nationally, Republicans narrowly missed winning Senate seats in heavily Democratic Washington and in Nevada and California, where less problematic nominees might have won. As in all wave years, they missed winning half a dozen House seats by a whisker (or a suddenly discovered bunch of ballots).

Continue reading . . .

Obama’s Economists Missed What Voters Plainly Saw

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by Michael Barone

Heading into what appears to be a disastrous midterm election, the Obama Democrats profess to be puzzled. The president’s record, they insist, is moderate, accommodating — if anything, overcautious. So why do most American voters seem to be angrily rejecting it?

That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is to say that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have increased government’s share of gross domestic product from 21 percent, where it’s hovered for the last several decades, to about 25 percent and have put the national debt on a trajectory to increase from 40 to 90 percent of GDP.

Voters have noticed — and don’t like it.

But, say the Obama Democrats, shouldn’t ordinary people — in particular, shouldn’t the blue-collar working class — be grateful to a government that tries to “spread the wealth” (Obama’s words to Joe the Plumber) in difficult economic times?

They used to be, the argument would go. In post-World War II America, voters regularly moved toward the Democrats in recession years.

There’s a difference, however, that has escaped Obama Democrats but perhaps not ordinary voters.

Continue reading . . .