Senate Coat Tails

Barack Obama is widely seen as having had coat tails in 2008. There's evidence for this, as his party had their highest House of Representatives voting percentage since 1982. There are 435 House elections every two years and the House is easy to compare. The senate is more difficult to determine since there are only 33-34 up every two years and the states and senators differ every two years. With the Democrats picking up 8 senate seats, including seats in Alaska and Virginia, he's widely seen as having an impact.

In the House, the President doesn't have the same impact in re-election, as most of the time his party gets a lower percentage of the vote and doesn't make a big impact on the seat totals. What about the Senate? I compared 2000 to 2004 for three categories of senators, Republican incumbents, Republican challengers, and open seats.

Not surprisingly Republican incumbents beat Bush each year. On average Republican incumbents beat Bush in their states by 7.5% each time. There was no impact. It's possible that the President has no real impact on incumbents and they are more the driving force in their races.

The results were similar with Republican challengers, running way behind George W. Bush.

Republicans challenging for open seats did about the same as Bush did in 2000 if you average them. When you look closer the Nebraska disappointment was balanced by better performances in Nevada, New Jersey, and New York.

The results weren't nearly as good in 2004, as they ran behind Bush in most races. Republicans were still able to pick up several seats, so Bush may have had some impact dragging candidates past the line.