There's been a lot of talk lately about Tom Perriello, the former U.S. Representative for Virginia's 5th Congressional District and a potential US Senate Candidate in 2012.
The general question is- did Perriello, who lost by 5 points in a quite Republican district last year, overperform compared to how most Democrats did? And if he did, what could that be attributed to, given the fact that Perriello was quite liberal and didn't run away from the Democratic agenda?
This is a question that can relatively easily be answered.
A simple Linear Regression model with just three variables (two dummy variables concerning Incumbency and the Cook PVI of a given Congressional district) does a pretty good job in explaining the variance within the performance of Democratic Congressional Candidates in 2010, as you can see here:
Now, if we compare the output of this regression model- in other words, how a given Democrat *should* have done in 2010 to the real election results, which Democrats stand out as either particularly good or bad candidates? And why did they stand out- due to particularly good or bad opposition, due to their ideology or just because of weird quirks in their districts?
Let's look at the 20 Democrats who most substantially overperformed first.
The ideology scores are produced by StochasticDemocracy based on Roll Call Votes of the 111st Congress.
The Democrats who did very well can generally be clustered into three groups:
1) Very conservative Blue Dog Democrats in conservative districts, such as Dan Boren, Matheson, Taylor, Bright, Minnick, Peterson and Oliviero. Sure, some of these lost, but they didn't get the beat-down that a more liberal Democrat would have suffered in their districts. This is also true for moderate Democrats running in liberal districts, such as Dan Lipinski in Chicago.
2) Democrats who ran against tainted Republican incumbents, such as Joe Wilson, Michele Bachmann, Jean Schmidt, Virginia Foxx, Jason Chaffetz (conservative even by Utah standards!) and Roscoe Bartlett (who isn't ideologically controversial but at age 86 due for retirement).
3) Democrats running against California Republicans, who had a terrible year considering that their party was successful everywhere else.
Now what about the bad eggs, the Democrats who could have won but didn't? This is a somewhat more diverse group:
It includes, of course, the corruption-laden Kanjorski, a couple of very liberal candidates (Frank, Grayson, Mary Jo Kilroy and arguably David Cicciline who isn't out of the mainstream policy-wise, but openly gay), a couple of Democrats who just seemed to have underestimated the wave and neglected their campaigns (Kildee, Cleaver, Carnahan, Hare, Kosmas), some who had very charismatic or well-funded opponents (Halvorson vs. Kinzinger, Murphy vs. Fitzpatrick, Klein vs. West, Loebsack vs. Miller-Meeks) and, lastly, some who just had the bad luck of underperforming as Congressional challengers in conservative Districts even more than they should have (against King, Duncan, Luetkemeyer, LoBiondo, Huizenga, Miller).
What do we take from this? Running to the right seems to pay off for Democrats in conservative Districts- the list of overperforming Democrats reads like the who-is-who of Conservadems, while there are none to be found on the list of weak Democrats.
Second, running to the middle is paying off for Republicans- while several of their moderate (or at least mainstream conservative) members did very well- like LoBiondo or Candice Miller- their tea-party firebrands like Bachmann, Schmidt and Wilson tended to underperform. Virginia Foxx or Bachmann might well have lost in LoBiondo's Atlantic City-based district, while LoBiondo easily cruised to a better-than-2:1 victory.
The trade-off for both parties is obviously that middle-of-the-road Congressmen are less helpful for them in getting their agenda passed.
As we're looking forward to the 2012 Congressional Elections, it will be interesting how the Party's recruiters handle this delicate balance between legislative and political success.
Oh, and as for Perriello? Our analysis finds that- despite of the conventional wisdom- he didn't perform that much better than could have been expected from him. Ranking the Democrats from their best to worst performances, Perriello is 178th- slightly above-average, but not remarkably good.
The general question is- did Perriello, who lost by 5 points in a quite Republican district last year, overperform compared to how most Democrats did? And if he did, what could that be attributed to, given the fact that Perriello was quite liberal and didn't run away from the Democratic agenda?
This is a question that can relatively easily be answered.
A simple Linear Regression model with just three variables (two dummy variables concerning Incumbency and the Cook PVI of a given Congressional district) does a pretty good job in explaining the variance within the performance of Democratic Congressional Candidates in 2010, as you can see here:
Now, if we compare the output of this regression model- in other words, how a given Democrat *should* have done in 2010 to the real election results, which Democrats stand out as either particularly good or bad candidates? And why did they stand out- due to particularly good or bad opposition, due to their ideology or just because of weird quirks in their districts?
Let's look at the 20 Democrats who most substantially overperformed first.
The ideology scores are produced by StochasticDemocracy based on Roll Call Votes of the 111st Congress.
The Democrats who did very well can generally be clustered into three groups:
1) Very conservative Blue Dog Democrats in conservative districts, such as Dan Boren, Matheson, Taylor, Bright, Minnick, Peterson and Oliviero. Sure, some of these lost, but they didn't get the beat-down that a more liberal Democrat would have suffered in their districts. This is also true for moderate Democrats running in liberal districts, such as Dan Lipinski in Chicago.
2) Democrats who ran against tainted Republican incumbents, such as Joe Wilson, Michele Bachmann, Jean Schmidt, Virginia Foxx, Jason Chaffetz (conservative even by Utah standards!) and Roscoe Bartlett (who isn't ideologically controversial but at age 86 due for retirement).
3) Democrats running against California Republicans, who had a terrible year considering that their party was successful everywhere else.
Now what about the bad eggs, the Democrats who could have won but didn't? This is a somewhat more diverse group:
It includes, of course, the corruption-laden Kanjorski, a couple of very liberal candidates (Frank, Grayson, Mary Jo Kilroy and arguably David Cicciline who isn't out of the mainstream policy-wise, but openly gay), a couple of Democrats who just seemed to have underestimated the wave and neglected their campaigns (Kildee, Cleaver, Carnahan, Hare, Kosmas), some who had very charismatic or well-funded opponents (Halvorson vs. Kinzinger, Murphy vs. Fitzpatrick, Klein vs. West, Loebsack vs. Miller-Meeks) and, lastly, some who just had the bad luck of underperforming as Congressional challengers in conservative Districts even more than they should have (against King, Duncan, Luetkemeyer, LoBiondo, Huizenga, Miller).
What do we take from this? Running to the right seems to pay off for Democrats in conservative Districts- the list of overperforming Democrats reads like the who-is-who of Conservadems, while there are none to be found on the list of weak Democrats.
Second, running to the middle is paying off for Republicans- while several of their moderate (or at least mainstream conservative) members did very well- like LoBiondo or Candice Miller- their tea-party firebrands like Bachmann, Schmidt and Wilson tended to underperform. Virginia Foxx or Bachmann might well have lost in LoBiondo's Atlantic City-based district, while LoBiondo easily cruised to a better-than-2:1 victory.
The trade-off for both parties is obviously that middle-of-the-road Congressmen are less helpful for them in getting their agenda passed.
As we're looking forward to the 2012 Congressional Elections, it will be interesting how the Party's recruiters handle this delicate balance between legislative and political success.
Oh, and as for Perriello? Our analysis finds that- despite of the conventional wisdom- he didn't perform that much better than could have been expected from him. Ranking the Democrats from their best to worst performances, Perriello is 178th- slightly above-average, but not remarkably good.
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