GETTING THE FACTS
overall, Dem- der the blame (fairly or not) when the post-World War II liberal order fails, as in the 2008 global financial crisis; and they’ve embraced a politics of identity that alienates large swaths of the electorate.
A central premise to Zakaria’s argument was the statistic about Democrats’ near-historically low influence in Congress and at the state level. A CNN spokes- woman said Zakaria had been relying on a Real Clear Politics analysis of more than a century of data, as well as a piece in 538.com.
We contacted the RCP researchers Sean Trende and David Byler (who is now with the Weekly Standard), who shared their dataset with us. Zakaria deviated slightly from their methodology (he omitted partisan data on presidents), but the down-ballot numbers seem to back up his point about Democrats’ waning power.
“Zakaria’s chart doesn’t include presidential performance, which is included in our original metric,” Trende said. “That wouldn’t, however, alter the basic conclusion, and his findings are a fair representation of our research.”
To establish their parti- san power index, Trende and Byler devised a points system for Democrats’ and Republicans’ performance in five electoral categories: president, House, Senate, state legislatures and gubernatorial performance. They added the five metrics together for each party, at two-year intervals. The party with the higher number had more power relative to the other.
Byler noted a couple of caveats. For starters, the dataset ends at the 2016 election. Furthermore, the researchers made certain judgment calls that resulted in the index not tracking exactly with election results. For example, Janet Napoli- tano won the 2006 Arizona gubernatorial election, but left relatively soon after the 2008 election to join the Obama administration. That meant Jan Brewer, a Repub- lican, was in office for much We are now working with PolitiFact, a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics. We will check into what they say and tell you whether it’s true.
of 2009-11.
Under the RCP index, we found three historical instances where Democrats held a weaker position, relative to Republicans, than they did following the 2016 election: in 1920, 1926 and 1928.
Given Zakaria’s hedging — he said Democrats almost have their lowest representation in about 100 years — we think his claim passes muster.
Congress
The RCP data shows the Democrats’ Senate representation was weakest in 1920 during the Republican presidency of Warren G. Harding. At that point, the GOP held a 59-37 seat advantage — with Democrats holding 10 fewer seats than they do today.
(Technically, Democrats currently hold 47 seats, though two Independent senators — Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine — caucus with the Democrats, giving Republicans a razor-thin 51-seat majority.)