Link: FairVote - 6. The 50-State Question.
When former Vermont governor Howard Dean took the helm of the Democratic National Committee, he made a strategic decision to pump resources into all 50 states, in an attempt to build the Democratic Party in places where it hasn’t been competitive in presidential races and most federal races for years. His so-called “50-state strategy” has been the source of much controversy, leading to Dean’s public battles with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Rahm Emanuel, who favors focused spending on targeted races. Who is right? There are two ways to try to measure the answer: what happens in 2006 and what happens in 2016. The true measurement of Dean’s decision will not be measurable for at least a decade, and that only if the Democrats continue to invest in his strategy for several election cycles. The Democratic Party’s electoral problems in congressional races in recent years are grounded in a political geography that they must transform if they are to ever have a relatively secure majority. In today’s electoral politics, when the national partisan division is evenly divided, Republicans win more than 50% support in 30 out of 50 states, which translates into Republicans winning 60 of 100 U.S. Senate seats if every voter voted for the same party in races for president and Senate. Republicans also would win a majority of the vote in 41 more of today’s House seats than Democrats in such an election. If Democrats cannot either break out of a 50-50 political reality or reshape where they win support, their majorities will always be dependent on their candidates winning in Republican-leaning area
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