When Losing the Election Is Almost Impossible

If the tea party does not have more than 50 representatives of a body that is made up of 435 total — the House of Representatives — why does it have so much power as to put the U.S. on the brink of a technical cease payment? Or, in other words, why do the other representatives, in particular Republican, not stop them?

The answer is simple: because in U.S. congressional elections, it is very, very difficult for incumbents to lose. The complicated part, for a sitting U.S. legislator, is not winning re-election, but losing it. The incentives to adopt risks are as large as they were in the Soviet Union’s Politburo, with the important difference that, here, no one will be sent to Siberia or executed.

In the United States, we frequently refer to Congress as “the largest deliberative organ in the world,” largest, in the sense of “best” or “magnificent.”

The numbers, however, do not support this idea.

Let us look at the House of Representatives, which is the chamber causing more trouble in the dispute about the debt ceiling and the federal government shutdown.

Since 1964, the possibility of re-electing a representative has oscillated between a historical low of 85 percent in 1970 and 2010, and a historical high of 98 percent, as seen in 1986, 1988, 1998, 2000 and 2004, according to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics: (http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php).

In the Senate, the rates of re-election are only slightly lower and remain within a fork that goes from 54 percent in 1980 to 96 percent in 1990 and 2004, according to the same study.

Primary elections barely lower this proportion. According to one study, between 1946 and 1998, an average of seven members (of a total of 435) had been defeated in the primaries.* It is true, however, that not all representatives run for re-election. Nonetheless, there are never fewer than 350 — sometimes even up to 400 — who do campaign for re-election. Normally, one out of seven people legally able to vote do so in primary elections. That means that the legislator in question should look for the support of this minority to win.

In fact, the major cause of “renovation” in the House of Representatives is that representatives retire.

Why does this happen? There are many explanations. One is that, logically, it is better to have the position and defend it than try and steal it from someone. Come on, just like in Spain, in the United States, elections are not won, but rather lost.

Being an incumbent also helps in gaining campaign financing. In the United States, candidates receive very little financial help or help from their party’s organization. It is, therefore, up to the candidate. If someone has been in Congress for two years, it is very likely that he or she will successfully get funding or campaign support from all kinds of businesses, organizations and groups — from ecologists to trade unions, passing by minorities — for which they have done some type of favor. On average, a congressperson campaigning for re-election has 15 times more funding than a rival candidate, according to a study by James B. Campbell: (http://www.cfinst.org/pdf/books-reports/LAR/LAR_ch8.pdf).**

And finally, the electoral districts in the U.S. are changed every time a new census is done; those changes are decided on by the states. If one state is controlled by Democrats, it will form districts that cannot be won by Republicans and vice versa. If this were to occur in Putin’s Russia or in Kirchner’s Argentina, we would say that it is an embarrassment. However, it happens so often in the U.S. that it even has a verb: “to gerrymander.”

With these factors, it matters little or none that the U.S. Congress (composed of two chambers, the Senate and the House of Representatives) has an approval rating of 5 percent, according to Gallup Consulting, because 40 percent of citizens approve of what their own district’s congressperson is doing. Or rather, they approve of their own congressperson, but not others.

Therefore, no one has any reason to change.

*Editor’s note: A verifying source could not be found.

**Editor’s note: The source actually estimates a lower rate of spending than the author claims.