Voting out congressional incumbents failed this year, making the anti-incumbency movement a clear failure. For some years, many groups and their websites have been advocating voting out congressional incumbents as an effective means to reform government and make it work better. Two of the better ones are Vote Out Incumbents Democracy, and Tenure Corrupts.
Congress’ average seat retention rate since 1855 is 95.4 percent. There was a 3.6 percent decrease in seat retention in Congress from 99.2 percent in 2004 to 95.6 percent in 2006. But this modest improvement was aimed mostly at Republican incumbents, when what is really needed is a bipartisan approach.
Considering the totally awful public approval of Congress you would think that 2008 would be an historic year for voting out congressional incumbents, especially because it is so easy to blame both Democrats and Republicans for all of the nation’s woes. Moreover, public interest in politics and this year’s general election, as well as voter turnout, have been higher than in a long time. And the Internet is awash with passionate statements against incumbents of both parties. So, how have Americans behaved? How did congressional incumbents do this year?
This year the retention rate was 95.6 percent overall; in other words, there was no improvement from 2006 or historical levels. Likewise, though most incumbent Republicans were reelected, out of just 20 incumbent seats lost, only one was for a Democrat. Proof of just how little political competition exists: there were 53 uncontested House seats that incumbents did not even have to defend. As usual, no third-party congressional candidate was elected, with the two most successful ones, Cindy Sheehan in California and Dean Barkley in Minnesota, not able to reach 20 percent against their two-party rivals.
In other words, we have once again witnessed the cycle effect, where voters may feel strong anti-incumbency sentiments but in only a few cases express them by voting in candidates of the other party. So power shifts, but the corrupt status quo two-party system remains.
While I have agreed with the motivations and arguments of those leading the anti-incumbency movement, I have concluded that there is something so rotten about our political system that there will never be a sufficiently large anti-incumbency vote to have any real impact. This year proves my point.
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Article comments
1 - Baronius
Joel, I didn't expect a third party movement, but I thought there'd be some anti-incumbent sentiment. Instead, it's like the entire House of Representitives was rewarded for a bailout that everyone hates.
2 - Dave Nalle
Most of the incumbents who really needed to be voted out were Democrats and the failure of the Republican leadership and success of the Obama campaign worked against that happening. Plus off-year elections are a lot more realistic times to get people out of office.
But I have no explanation for why Ted Stevens won reelection.
Dave
3 - Matthew T. Sussman
But my Congresswoman isn't at fault!
4 - Dave Nalle
My congressman actually isn't at fault. He voted against the bailout twice.
Dave
5 - pleasexcusetheinterruption
Two simple reasons:
1) problems of collective action.. if no one else is going to make a concerted effort to always take out the incumbent why should anyone waste their vote doing it?
2) our constitution is designed for a two party system. If voting out the incumbent means some guy who completely misrepresents me is elected I'm going to vote for the incumbent who at least represent me somewhat.
I have a friend from Indiana who recently faced the dilemma of voting for Obama or a more liberal 3rd party candidate. Even though the more liberal 3rd party candidate represented his views more, he voted for Obama in part because I convinced him it was the practical thing to do. A movement for a third party, or to vote out all incumbents, is bound to fail unless it can guarantee its participants some tangible possibility of that there man will be elected.
6 - Dave Nalle
PETI, your last point is why these third party movements which always start out by nominating someone for president and not doing much else never work.
For a third party to be successful it needs to come from the grassroots and elect people to local office and build from there into a national movement.
Dave
7 - Dr Dreadful
Matt as usual puts his finger right on the quandary.
As I've said before, there are two important things to remember about the public's perception of Congress:
1. Ask a random person to assess the performance of Congress, and they will likely give them a low approval rating. But dig deeper, and they will very probably not be able to tell you why.
2. Although Mr/Ms Average disapproves of the performance of Congress as a whole, (s)he is far more likely to tell you that their congressperson is a good guy/gal.
8 - Baronius
I read somewhere that Ted Stevens has been an Alaskan senator for all but 9 years that Alaska has been a state. I don't care what party you are; there's something wrong with that.