Affordable Care and the Election

Yesterday I reported a statistical analysis which found that voting for ACES (the climate bill) had no ill effect on Democratic election outcomes.

Today, Brad Delong asks Blue Dogs: "How Is That Voting Against Health Care Reform Working for You?," noting (via TPM)

Of the 39 Dems who voted against Health Care Reform, 12 are going to be returning in the next Congress.

Which is a heavy toll, but the real question is, would even fewer Democrats in swing districts be returning to DC if they had voted for Affordable Care, or would we have more Democrats returning if fewer had supported the bill? The Democrats who opposed Affordable Care presumably did so on the theory that voting against the bill would make them more likely to be re-elected (as with the climate bill).

The analysis yesterday found that, after accounting for incumbency and the underlying partisan dynamic in each district, a vote for Affordable Care would cost a Democrat roughly 5 percentage points (with a 95% confidence interval of roughly 2 points) on election day. Adding the climate bill on top of that, a Democrat who voted against the climate bill would gain about half a percentage point, a shift that is statistically indistinguishable from 0.

Here, then, is the graphic that tells the tale, plotting the Democrats' percent of the vote against the underlying partisan dynamic:

A few things jump out at me here. First, the linear trend is strong. Second, the linear trend gets muddy for conservative Democrats: many did better than the partisanship of their district would predict. Democrats in danger were almost all in areas with PVI < 0, and almost no Republicans exist in seats that far into Democratic territory. The seats Democrats lost were often astonishingly conservative, and it isn't surprising that Democrats in those seats would oppose Affordable Care or the climate bill. Their constituents didn't back the President, and there's little advantage for those Democrats to do so either. (The Democrats in safe territory who opposed Affordable Care or the climate bill generally did so from the left).

The other thing to note is the high correlation between Democrats opposing both Affordable Care and the climate bill. There are 23 Democrats who opposed both bills, 20 who voted for Affordable Care and against the climate bill, and 12 who supported the climate bill but not Affordable Care.

Let's think about the cluster of Democrats whose vote share lies well above the general trend line at around PVI of -10 (R+10, strictly). While quite a few of them lost (unsurprisingly, they are in very conservative districts), a number managed to get re-elected by slim margins, and many of those who did survive under those trying conditions voted against both the climate bill and Affordable Care. By looking at the orange circles (votes against Affordable Care), you can see also that those who opposed healthcare reform did marginally better in this election than their colleagues in similarly challenging races who nonetheless voted for Affordable Care. That's what the statistical model is detecting as a highly significant, 5 point (+/- 2 points) bump for members who voted against Affordable Care.

How is that working for them? Pretty well, actually.

Indeed, by my count there are 25 Democratic seats that we lost on Tuesday whose Representative voted for Affordable Care and got at least 45% of the vote share, and could surely have used a 5 point bump: John Salazar (CO-3), Ron Klein (FL-22), Bill Foster (IL-14), Melissa Bean (IL-8), Mark Schauer (MI--7), James Oberstar (MN-8), Bob Etheridge (NC-2), Earl Pomeroy (ND-AL), Paul Hodes (NH-2), Dina Titus (NV-3), John Hall (NY-19), Scott Murphey (NY-20), Steve Driehaus (OH-1), Charlie Wilson (OH-6), Chris Carney (PA-10), Paul Kanjorski (PA-11), Patrick Murphy (PA-8), John Spratt (SC-5), Solomon Ortiz (TX-27), Tom Perriello (VA-5), Rick Larsen (WA-2), Brian Baird (WA-3), Steve Kagen (WI-8), and Alan Mollohan (WV-1). (Note that some of these Representatives were not running for re-election or lost their primaries, but the seat still changed parties).

I mention this not to say that they should have voted differently. I think Affordable Care was a big enough and good enough cause that it was worth passing at the cost of ~20 seats (assuming that not all of those candidates would have gained enough ground to survive if they voted differently). I mention it also to note that predictions as far back as a year ago predicted Democrats would lose 45-50 seats, just because of economic factors and the well-documented backlash faced by the party in power under such circumstances. Democrats lost 60 seats, and Affordable Care may explain why the loss was 10-15 seats greater than predicted. Again, a price that's probably worth it, a price I'd hope those endangered Democrats paid gladly.

If I were in Congress, would I have given up 5 points at the polls in order to insure 30 million Americans (including every child), to end the scourge of "pre-existing conditions," to abolish the absurd practice of recission, to bring gender equity to health insurance, and to institute a host of other reforms? Yes. Would I be willing to give up my seat in Congress to bring those reforms? I would like to think so. Because the job of members of Congress is not, ultimately, to get re-elected. Their job is to legislate, and in passing Affordable Care, that's what they did. If a few dozen of the 60 seats Democrats lost can be attributed to passage of healthcare reform, then they made the ultimate political sacrifice for the good of the nation, and statues should be built in their honor.