MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL

There’s been a lot of talk of late about how Democrats have to become “competitive” with voters in districts that have been electing Republicans, in order to win back the kind of decisive House majority that will allow them to do all the Big Things Democrats say they want to do for America.

As it turns out, if they win back the 18 “Biden Seats” currently held by Republicans who defeated Democrats in 2020, that might just be as far as it goes for the foreseeable future.

Jeffer Giang and Justin Scoggins of the Equity Research Institute analyzed summary results for 2000 through 2020 from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey in order to understand the social and economic characteristics of the House seats held by each party, and have recently released a report on that analysis.

The report reveals that on every key economic and demographic point, Republicans and Democrats are now sorted to the extreme in the districts they represent. Representative Steve Israel, who chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says the report demonstrates that “These people are coming to Washington not from different districts, but frankly different planets.”

Among the key points of the analysis:

More than 60 percent of House Democrats represent districts where the percentage of local nonwhite population is above the national level of 40 percent.

More than 80 percent of House Republicans represent districts in which the percentage of local nonwhite population is below the national level.

Approximately 75 percent of House Democrats represent districts where the percentage of white adult population with a college degree is above the national level of 36 percent.

More than 75 percent of Republicans represent districts where the share of white college graduates in the local population is below the national level.

A bit more than 60 percent of House Democrats represent districts where the percentage of the population identifying as immigrants is above the national level of 14 percent

More than 80 percent of House Republicans represent districts with an immigrant population lower than the national average.

Perhaps most strikingly, 60 percent of Democrats now represent districts where the median income exceeds the national level of nearly $65,000.

More than 66 percent of Republicans represent districts where the median income falls beneath the national level.

Congressional districts can be sorted by racial diversity and education, which produces what the authors call the “four quadrants of Congress”:

Districts with high levels of racial diversity and white education (“hi-hi” districts);

Districts with high levels of racial diversity and low levels of white education (“hi-lo districts”);

Districts with low levels of diversity and high levels of white education (“lo-hi districts”);

Districts with low levels of diversity and white education (“lo-lo districts”.

The authors state that their analysis focuses on the education level among whites, and not the entire population, because education is a more significant difference in the political behavior of white voters than of minority groups.

The GOP has become enormously dependent on one type of seat: the “lo-lo” districts composed of white voters without a college degree. Republicans hold 142 districts so sorted. - 66 percent of GOP House seats - compared with just 21 such districts for Democrats.

Because the majority of Republican voters are now white voters without a college degree, the intense reliance on this mostly white, blue-collar district explains why the party has shifted over recent years from Ronald Reagan’s small-government arguments to the unremitting culture-war focus of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania - the most militantly conservative House Republicans - all represent “lo-lo” districts.

Unlike the Republicans, House Democrats do not rely on any one set of seats, and they lead the GOP in “hi-hi,” “hi-lo,” and “lo-hi” districts.

Democrats hold a 37–30 lead over Republicans in districts with high levels of diversity and few white college graduates (“hi-lo”).

However, “hi-lo”districts have been a source of growth for Republicans: The current seven seat Democratic lead is only a quarter of the party’s 28-seat advantage in these districts in 2009, before the Tea Party wave.

Democrats hold a 57–35 majority in “lo-hi” districts with fewer minorities and a higher population of white adults with college degrees than average. These are the districts represented by leading suburban Democrats, many of them “moderates,” such as Angie Craig of Minnesota, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Sharice Davids of Kansas, and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey.

Most of the “Biden 18" House Republicans considered more “moderate” also represent “lo-hi” districts.

The core of House Democrats’ strength are the “hi-hi” districts that have elevated populations of both racial minorities and college-educated whites. Democrats hold 98 of the 113 seats in this category. Many of the party’s most visible members represent these districts: former Speaker Nancy Pelosi; current House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries; former House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

These are also the strongholds for Democrats representing places where “diversity is increasing the most”: inner suburbs in major metropolitan areas: Lucy McBath of Georgia, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, and Ro Khanna and Zoe Lofgren of California.

Since 2010, each party has moved into its demographic citadel as a result of a succession of wave elections that culled many of members from each side who had previously survived in districts demographically and economically trending toward the other party.

The first to go were the “blue-dog Democrats,” who represented “lo-lo” districts long after the district had flipped to backing Republican presidential candidates. These were rural and small-town districts, many in the South. As late as 2009, during the first Congress of Obama’s presidency, Republicans held only 20 more seats than did Democrats in the “lo-lo” quadrant. Democrats from those districts nearly equaled the members from “hi-hi” districts.

Blue Dogs were gone with the 2010 Tea Party landslide, in which the GOP edge in “lo-lo” districts exploded to 90 seats, then reached 125 seats after the 2010 redistricting that led to further GOP gains in the 2014 election.

Today, “lo-lo” districts account for only 10 percent of all House Democratic seats, while “hi-hi” seats make up nearly 50 percent. Seats that are “lo-hi” constitute 25 percent while the “hi-lo” seats constitute approximately 16 percent.

For Republicans, their losses in the 2018 midterms wave included the House Republicans who continued to represent well-educated suburban districts that had been trending away from the GOP at the presidential level since the Clinton era. Today, “hi-hi” and “lo-hi”districts are less than 25 percent of all GOP seats, down from 33 percent in 2009. The “lo-lo” districts have grown from just over 50 percent of GOP seats in 2009 to their current level of 66 percent. The share of GOP seats with more minorities and fewer white college graduates than average has remained constant since 2009, at about 14 percent.

Each party now pushes an economic agenda that collides with the immediate economic interests of a the majority of its voters.

Democrats now hold 128 of the 198 House districts where the median income exceeds the national level. But they advocate for a redistributionist economic agenda that seeks higher taxes on upper-income adults to fund expanded social programs for working-class families; the one concession to the new coalition reality is that Democrats now seek to exempt families earning up to $400,000 from higher taxes.

Republicans hold 152 of the 237 districts where the median income trails the national level. However, the GOP continues to champion big cuts in domestic social programs that benefit low-income families while pushing tax cuts that mostly go to the wealthy and corporations.

Both of these seeming contradictions demonstrate how cultural affinity has displaced economic interest as the most powerful force binding each side’s coalition. Republicans lament their party can no longer win culturally liberal suburban voters by warning Democrats will raise their taxes, while Democrats express frustration that they can’t win culturally conservative rural voters by warning that Republicans plan to cut Social Security and Medicare.

The advantage for Republicans is that there are still more seats where the white population exceeds the national population than seats with a higher minority population than average. There are more seats with fewer white college graduates than the national percentage than there are seats where the education level exceeds the national number.

The Cook Political Report currently rates 22 House seats as toss-ups or leaning toward the other party in 2024 - 14 have fewer minorities than average and 12 have fewer white college graduates.

This gives the GOP a potentially narrow advantage for the next three House elctions.

But Republicans are more dependent on the “lo-lo” districts at the same time as society overall is growing more diverse and better educated - “hi-hi” - especially in younger generations.

Republicans see it is hard to grow their coalition into the more diverse, more “liberal” younger generations - which poll decidedly Democratic in outlook, with militant culture-war messages. The one area they have growth potential among younger voters are with more culturally conservative voters of color, especially Latino men.

In 2020, Biden carried more than 80 percent of House districts that are either “hi-hi” or “lo-hi.” But despite Biden’s emphasis on delivering tangible economic benefits to working families, Democrats still lost “lo-lo” districts in the midterms. In 2024, most of the most vulnerable Democrats are defending working-class terrain and could lose even more of those seats.

The authors conclude that with these offsetting dynamics, neither party appears likely to break into a clear lead in the House, but will rather remain in a grinding form of electoral trench warfare in which they control “mirror” districts that are almost equal in number, with those 18 “Biden seats” the only place where the majority needed by both are found.

As I read this, it seems to me that the area where Democrats need to concentrate their GOTV efforts in all districts is in increasing the voting percentage of younger voters under 30-35. Their numbers have grown in the past three elections, but they are still far below the participation rates of voters over 45. This is the one “under-performing” demographic where growth is possible. (In truth, all American voting demographics other than those of us over 65 “underperform” in comparison with other countries.)

For that youth demographic overall, approving the Willows oil field drilling in Alaska is not the way for Democrats to reach them. And denying reproductive choice is not the way for Republicans to make gains there.

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