A hard hit for Democrats?

• Author: Hansen, Karen
• Position: November 1994 U.S. elections

ANALYSTS PREDICT THAT DEMOCRATS WILL SIT OUT THIS ELECTION IN DROVES, GIVING THE EDGE TO REPUBLICAN LEGISLATORS.

In this year's rematch of Democrats vs. Republicans some 6,000 legislative seats in 47 states are up for grabs. And quite a contest it will be. In 15 legislative chambers, partisan control is either tied or so tight that a handful of seats will determine the majority. The candidates, the issues, the turnout have seldom been so critical to an election outcome.

But the public has seldom been so disaffected, so cynical about government, either. One symptom of this malaise is the substantially lower voter turnout in many primary elections. Only 33 percent of California voters bothered to go to the polls this summer--an historic low--despite races for governor and U.S. Senate and millions of advertising dollars. Four years ago 41 percent voted in the primary.

Although neither New Jersey nor Virginia are conducting state legislative elections this year, turnout in both states' spring primaries for U.S. Senate and House seats was down from four years ago. The number of people voting in Virginia's Democratic U.S. Senate primary in June was the second lowest this century, with only 9.2 percent of registered voters going to the polls. A potentially low voter turnout is a wild card in this election.

But "primary turnout does not track with November turnout," according to Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. Nevertheless, the number of people who in Gans' poll describe themselves as "very interested" in the election is dramatically lower than it was four TABULAR DATA OMITTED years ago--30 percent as opposed to 40 percent in the last mid-term face-off.

The 1994 election could see the lowest turnout in more than a century, if Gans's summer indicators hold through the election. "In the last two mid-term general elections, we had 36.4 percent of the eligible voters casting ballots. We could go as low as 33 percent this time around." The last time so few people bothered to go to the polls was in the early 1800s.

Voters Are Apathetic

Partisanship. Social issues. Taxes. That's the stuff of elections. And the 1994 election promises hope or upheaval depending on one's perspective on how the incumbents have dealt with these and other issues.

But there are other factors that will contribute to November's ultimate outcome.

President Clinton, for instance.

"At this point, the biggest factor in the upcoming election is the lack of enthusiasm in basic Democratic constituencies for the Clinton administration," says Gans. "Not opposition, but lack of enthusiasm. Which means those people are most likely not to turn out. So a low turnout in this election, and I stress this election, is likely to hurt the Democrats."

Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution agrees. "It sure has the smell of an election in which the president's party loyalists are going to sit home disproportionately."

Democrats clearly dominate state legislatures going into the election, as they have for the past 30 years. But since the 1990 election, when they won control of 30 legislatures and appeared to be closing in once again on their decade high of 34 in 1983, their hold has slipped somewhat. Today they control both chambers in 24 states, Republicans in eight. Seventeen have split control (the Nebraska Unicameral Legislature is nonpartisan).

In 1990, the number of seats that changed hands was a scant net of 43. But those 43 seats gave Democrats control of the Arizona Senate, the Indiana House, the Kansas House and the Montana and Nevada senates, and tied the Idaho Senate. Democrats wrested four states from Republican control and added to their own...