Lessons from the 2012 election, I.

In the rear-view mirror, the 2012 election can be viewed as an unmitigated triumph for Barack Obama.  In what was widely predicted to be a nail-biter in an economic environment unfavorable to an incumbent, Obama was elected by an impressive 4% margin in the popular vote and the customary exaggerated margin in the electoral vote.  But while Obama's re-election marks only the second time since FDR that a non-Southern Democratic candidate has won with more than 50% of the popular vote, the message in such numbers becomes distinctly muddled when we take into account voting returns in Congressional districts across the country.  Of the 435 total districts, 219 (two more than half) had majorities favoring GOP candidate Mitt Romney.  There were only 15 districts in which voters split their ballots, preferring Obama for president and a Republican for the House.  And if we take the finding from the Cook Political Report that the median congressional district -- the 218th in a list of all of them -- was 52% Republican in its House voting in 2012, we are cautioned to conclude that Obama's re-election marks a meaningful nationwide movement in the political meter from the centrist-right status of the G. W. Bush years to a more pro-government or progressive mood in the Obama Era.

Many critics of the Electoral College's unit rule -- the practice whereby the winner of a state's popular vote earns all of its electoral votes -- have proposed a widespread adoption of what Maine and Nebraska do in translating popular votes into electoral votes in a manner that breaches the winner-take-all nature of the unit rule, and is therefore arguably more democratic and more fair since it minimizes the the prospects of a conflict between the popular and electoral votes as experienced most recently in the Bush-Gore contest in 2000.  In this election, however, the result would've been precisely what proposals of the Maine and Nebraska practice seek to avoid: a winner of the electoral vote of the candidate losing the popular vote.  Romney would have won with more than the 270 votes needed to be elected.  This will likely take the shine off the Maine and Nebraska examples as alternatives that states can adopt without a constitutional amendment that is likely to rid us of the most worrisome feature of the Electoral College--i.e., that its unit rule makes possible the prospect of a loser of the popular vote winning in the electoral vote.  But the more immediate effect of this outcome is the luster it removes from the size and significance of the Obama victory.

The vast majority of Republicans elected in the districts that voted for Romney won re-election by margins of more than 20%.  This provides these members with scarcely any political incentive to support the President's legislative program.  Indeed, it virtually guarantees that the House of Representatives will remain obstructionist in regards to Obama's initiatives for the foreseeable future.  The recent passage of legislation to avert the fiscal crisis provides an instructive example of what to expect in 2013: The package negotiated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden was passed in the Senate with only eight votes against the measure.  In the House, the measure was opposed by Republicans by a 2 to 1 margin; its passage therefore was due to the fact that all but 13 Democratic members voted to adopt the Senate package.  Because the measure postponed the so-called "Sequester" for two months, decisions on spending cuts are deferred for two months, approximately the same time that Congressional approval will be required to raise the debt ceiling.

So if one seeks lessons outlining key tea leaves from the 2012 election, an effort to interpret the aggregate results as an unambiguous affirmation of the Obama policy agenda would be well-advised to temper its enthusiasm with a frank recognition of the parallel political messages sent by the American electorate in 2012.