The Other Election No One is Talking About

Or why the most powerful body in US politics gets the short shrift

I once answered a question on Quora regarding the relative power of the Senate or the House (the person posting the question believed the Senate was the more important body) with this question:

Which would you rather be: the CFO of a company or the VP of human resources?

While that quip might understate the power of the Senate, the comparison is spot-on.

The House acts first on all tax and spending bills, the Senate has advice and consent for treaties, judges, and for top cabinet positions. To get something done in the House, you need a simple majority of 218 out of 435 to move forward. In the Senate, you need “unanimous consent” for nearly everything (e.g. consent for Committees to conduct business while the Senate is in session). Yeah, it's that trivial and slow.

Need some examples of the Senate’s sloth taking on its legislative provinces.

Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court Justice today because a moderate Democrat withdrew his objection to unanimous consent to moving the confirmation vote forward a week.

Huh? Yep. Before the Senate Judiciary Committee could hold a set of hearings on the allegation of Anita Hill, Minority Leader Robert Dole (R-KS), sensing the sensational nature of the charges¹ was going to doom the nomination, wanted to push the vote out a week so that the Judiciary Committee could get Hill’s testimony and Thomas’ response. The problem with moving the date of the vote was it required unanimous consent and Senator Alan Dixon (D-IL), a moderate, objected and wanted to vote on the nomination as scheduled. After a bit of cajoling, Dixon relented.

Had the vote occurred as scheduled, the nomination may very well have failed (Thomas was confirmed in a tight 52-48 vote). Hill’s charges were serious, confirmed by other women at the EEOC, and tales of Thomas’s years at Yale Law gave credence to the charge.² And those hearings might not have occurred had Dixon said “better luck vetting the next nominee” and refused to go along.

Want something newer? Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) held up hundreds of military promotions for months and months endangering national security. For what? He disagreed with the U.S. military’s abortion policy. That policy, which is basically the military will ship any service member or their immediate family anywhere to get medical care they cannot receive where they are stationed, has been in place for decades and fits in well with the U.S. military’s promise of “the best medical care in the world” to recruits.

Didn’t matter to Tuberville who held up hundreds of nominations for months and months and months. He earned the ire of the top brass in the military, the Biden Administration, and his own party.³

The House is easy. It takes a simple majority of 218 Members to approve anything. And when the political leadership ignores the will of the majority of the House, it is the House Leadership that bears the brunt of political flak and media blowback not the rank and file.

Currently the House has 219 Republicans and 213 Democrats (there are 3 vacancies). While it may look like a 6 vote edge, it’s really just 1. Normally, you’d divide by 2 and say that a swing of 3 votes against something the GOP controlled House wants to do would be a victory for the Democrats. Except that in the House a majority is 218 votes, so losing 2 votes means you no longer have a majority. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) cannot only afford to lose a single vote.

Don’t worry, if you’re a conservative or a non-MAGA Republican and appreciate the tenuousness of this; the 118th Congress is not merely a “do-nothing Congress”, it’s also a “avoid voting on issues” Congress.

So how might the above problem play out in 2024? More importantly, how easy is it to swing control of the House?

Take a look.

First, a few notes about the about data:

From 2004 to 2014, the average Republican House vote (aggregate) was 47.81%. The Democratic average over the same period was 48.53%. That is a razor thin edge of 0.72%.

From 2016 to 2022, the GOP percentage was 48.37%. The Democratic percentage was 49.87%. The Democratic Party edge, since Donald Trump entered the U.S. political stage, is 1.5%.

The average U.S. House vote differential between the two parties in presidential election years is 3.7% — that differential more than doubles in midterm election years (6.42%). In presidential elections where the incumbent is running for reelection, the U.S. House vote differential falls to 2.26%.

Why has the House become so closely divided as of late?

The most obvious answer is a combination of Trumpism, changing demographics, and gerrymandering hitting the limits of its effectiveness in the House elections (it has not done so on the state level).

However, the above answer is not terribly complete. Since 1994, the U.S. House had a majority party holding more than 240 seats (a 22 plus vote edge about the 218 mark) only 4 times.

In 2008, 2010, 2014, and 2016.

And in 3 of those 4 elections; racism, both tacit and whispered, was in play. And even though Barack Obama was not on the ballot in 2016; Donald Trump, who was one of the fathers of birtherism, made his initial entrance into the political scene by attacking President Obama on very personal terms.

If the Obama era (2008 through 2016) is excluded from what it takes to flip the House from one party to another, we see rather doable numbers: 14 seats in 2004, 15 seats in 2006, 17 seats in 2018, and a mere 4 seats for both 2020 and 2022.

Additionally, if you exclude Barn Red districts (mostly rural) and Neon Blue districts (mostly urban), there are about 75-100 districts where the political success of either President Biden or a President Trump in 2005 and 2026 will be determined. In other words, it’s not 435 races, it’s about 20% of that number — give or take a few races.

So why are House elections in presidential years so roundly ignored?

The Senate seems more important. It must be the oddity of a 6 year term.

The Senate, often, is in play as an opposer to House legislation, a rubber stamp for it, or a bunch of nit-pickers who want to re-hash matters already resolved on the south side of the Capitol. Additionally, outside of the initial flurry of Cabinet appoints and a Supreme Court vacancy, the advice and consent role of the Senate is rarely in play.

For this realist, it is a combination of a serious misunderstanding of the power of the House, political blinders for any office held less than 4 years, and an institutional reputation that has been in decline since since the Tea Party movement in started electing far-Right Fringe-ists to Congress in 2010.

What do you think?

1. Anita Hill alleged that as an employee at the EEOC (Equal Employment Opprtunity Commission), she was sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas, the Chairman of the EEOC.

2. Sorry going to tease this. The story will be revealed in a future post.

3. https://www.rawstory.com/tommy-tuberville-2661669332/