In 2008, Democratic campaign strategists might want to target traditionally Republican congressional districts with heavy casualties in Iraq, according to research by two Vanderbilt University political scientists.
While many political pundits have attributed the unpopularity of the Iraq war to a congressional landslide for the Democrats last year, a new study co-authored by professors Christian Grose and Bruce Oppenheimer finds that Republican incumbents were more likely to lose in districts with heavy “hometown” losses in Iraq. To a somewhat lesser extent, voters also tended to punish GOP lawmakers who voted to authorize the Iraq war. Conversely, voters did not do the same with the incumbent Democratic representatives.
The average number of war deaths in Republican districts was 2.4. GOP districts with a higher than average number of war deaths were frequently in the Midwest and West. Overall, the study found that in the Republican-controlled districts, for every two deaths from the Iraq war, there was a 1 percent increase in the Democratic partisan swing.
The Democratic partisan swing is the change in the percentage of the Democratic two-party vote between 2004 and 2006. In addition, the professors said that the findings on the effect of war deaths are independent of the effect of incumbency, scandal, candidate quality and campaign spending on voting.
Nationally, Democrats captured an estimated 54 percent of the two-party vote for the congressional candidates in 2006, an increase of 5.4 percent from 2004.
“If that 5.4 percent partisan swing had been universal across all districts, the Democrats would have struggled to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives,” said Oppenheimer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt. “We found that the partisan swing was larger in Republican districts where there were a higher number of deaths from the Iraq war.”
One example of the professors’ findings is Arizona, where the district of Rep. J. D. Hayworth, a Republican, suffered nine deaths from the Iraq war in 2006. His support fell from 60.9 percent in 2004 to only 47.9 percent last year.
“Leading up to the election, Hayworth was considered a potentially vulnerable candidate, but he was not considered the most likely incumbent to lose,” said Grose, an assistant professor of political science at Vanderbilt. “In contrast, New Mexico Rep. Heather Wilson, a Republican, was probably considered more likely to fare poorly than Hayworth since her district leans Democratic.”
However, there were no war deaths from Wilson’s district in 2006. She edged out her opponent by fewer than 1,000 votes that year. In 2004 she had captured 54 percent of the vote. This meant that her partisan swing was equal to 4 percent in favor of the Democratic candidate, similar to the national trend.
“Without considering the Iraq war deaths, one might wonder why Wilson’s support dropped only four percent in a Democratic-leaning district, and Hayworth was trounced in a Republican-leaning district,” Grose said. “Both were targeted by the Democratic Party in 2006, but Hayworth was the one that lost.”
Another example is the 8th District in North Carolina, where Republican incumbent Robin Hayes beat Democrat Larry Kissell by just over 300 votes. There were five war deaths in that district in 2006, well above the average number per district. “The closeness of the race was a huge surprise at the time,” Grose said. “No one really thought Hayes was in serious trouble until Election Day, and now he is a target for the Democrats in 2008.”
There are two examples of close GOP wins in Kentucky, where hometown war deaths affected the margins of victory. There were five Iraq war deaths in the second as well as fourth districts, where Republicans Ron Lewis and Geoff Davis each won, but by smaller margins than in 2004.
Oppenheimer noted that compared to previous U.S. conflicts, the number of war deaths per district is actually quite low. “Perhaps surprisingly, these results suggest that American voters have become extremely sensitive to a relatively small number of soldier deaths per district,” he said.
Oppenheimer continued that voters clearly are willing to punish the party in power and also punish individual lawmakers within the party in power based on the number of ‘hometown’ war deaths and the lawmakers’ past voting record related to the war.
The study, titled “The Iraq War, Partisanship and Candidate Attributes: Explaining Variation in Partisan Swing in the 2006 U.S. House Elections,” will be published in the next issue of Legislative Studies Quarterly.
Media Contact: Ann Marie Deer Owens, 615-322-NEWS
annmarie.owens@vanderbilt.edu