ELECTION DAY: THE SPIRIT OF ’86

Last week about 30 political analysts met at one of Washington’s leading think tanks to pass judgment on the 1986 midterm election. The verdict: a turned-off electorate. No big issues. No excitement. No national themes. A ho-hum election, distinguished only by mudslinging and negative campaigning. Politics as usual.

There is something about 1986 they don’t understand, however. A normal vote this year may produce interesting, even spectacular results. Why? Because so few of our elections in recent years have been normal. A ho-hum election on Tuesday with only die-hard partisans bothering to show up at the polls would result in plenty of change. The Republicans, who are in power, don’t want that to happen. They are doing everything they can to drive up turnout and make the election a national referendum.

It is usual for voter turnout to drop in a midterm election. But low turnout on Tuesday will hurt Republicans. That may sound funny, since Republicans are supposed to do better among well-educated voters who vote all the time. In recent years, however, Republicans have been doing very well among casual voters who vote only in presidential years. Those voters helped elect a great many new Republican senators in 1980. The senators from the class of 1980 are up for reelection this year, and they are going to be in trouble if presidential Republicans stay home. The party knows it.

The GOP is planning to telephone 11 million people in 25 states to urge them to go to the polls next week. Many will hear a recorded message from President Reagan. “It’s the most extraordinary, massive get-out-the-vote operation ever mounted,” said Democratic pollster Patrick H. Caddell.

The Republicans are also trying to nationalize the 1986 election. They want a referendum on the Reagan presidency. The Democrats would just as soon not talk about national issues. “Democrats are fighting very hard to keep the races local,” said Douglas E. Schoen, a Democratic poll-taker, “because, man to man and woman to woman, the Democrats are rated as good as or better than their opponents.”

There is another reason. On most major national issues--managing the economy, holding down inflation, handling foreign relations--the Republicans have been rated better than the Democrats lately. That is why Republicans have been doing so well in presidential elections. Presidential elections are concerned with the overall direction of national policy. Midterm elections are usually fought on narrower issues, such as which candidate can provide more benefits and services--Democrats’ territory.

This distinction helps to explain a puzzling poll finding. Voters say they have more confidence in the Republicans when it comes to making national policy. But they prefer to see the Democrats in control of Congress. “We think the Republicans have better national policies,” the voters seem to be saying, “but we want the Democrats around to protect us and provide for us.”

The economy is working for the Democrats this year precisely because it is more of a local than a national issue. The party talks about a “Swiss cheese economy,” with some areas enjoying prosperity while others suffer from recession. So while President Reagan says, as he did last week, “We’re headed for a second boom,” the Democrats are doing very well in those parts of the country that never experienced the first one.

Fearing that 1986 was beginning to look like politics as usual, the Republicans started to get a little panicky. “For us to hold on in the Senate,” said one GOP strategist, “everything has to break perfectly in a lot of states. I’ve never seen a midterm election in which everything breaks perfectly.” So they decided to get out the ultimate weapon. “Either the President is going to do it for us or we’re not going to do it,” said a party official.

During the last 10 days, the President has made a “last hurrah” campaign swing through Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Indiana, South Dakota, Missouri, Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Idaho and California. Almost all of them are states where Republican Senate candidates are in trouble.

Reagan’s 1986 campaign, however, exposes a basic flaw in the Republicans’ strategy: The Administration has no real agenda for the next two years. The President got what he wanted out of Congress this year--tax reform and military aid to the contras in Nicaragua. If the President tells the voters he needs a Republican Senate to support his program, they will naturally ask, “What program?” “The same program we had in 1980” is not a very convincing answer.

The fact that there are no overriding national issues explains why so many candidates have resorted to negative campaign tactics this year. If there is not much else to talk about, you might as well accuse your opponent of flip-flopping on the issues (as Alan Cranston did of Ed Zschau) or of being soft on terrorism (as Ed Zschau did of Alan Cranston). After all, you have to give people some reason to vote for you. Negative campaigning signifies the complete victory of “politics as usual” over the Administration’s effort to create a national theme.

So if it’s politics as usual, what’s going to happen?

In the House of Representatives, not much. The Democrats are likely to gain no more than 10 new House seats. That is nowhere near the 53 House seats usually gained by a party that has been out of the White House for six years. The Democrats will not do very well in the House this year because the Republicans didn’t do very well in the House in 1984. So the GOP doesn’t have many vulnerable House seats to defend when the vote “returns to normal” this year.

The Republicans can expect to gain several governorships. The reason is that the Democrats gained seven new governors in 1982, when the country was in a deep recession. So the Democrats are much more exposed this year, with 27 governorships at stake compared with nine for the Republicans. Most of the action will be in the 19 states where no incumbent governor is running for reelection; 15 of those states now have Democratic governors. The odds, therefore, favor the GOP.

The Senate, of course, is the big enchilada. The Republicans will be defending their 1980 landslide, with 22 GOP seats at stake compared with 12 for the Democrats. The odds certainly favor the Democrats, but the question is, by how many seats? Most insiders figure the Democrats will pick up two to four new Senate seats on Tuesday. If they gain two seats, the Republicans will still be in the majority. If they gain four seats, the Democrats will regain control of the Senate and, therefore, the entire Congress. A Democratic gain of three seats would mean a 50-50 tie. Vice President George Bush, who presides over the Senate, would cast the tie-breaking vote and enable the GOP to remain the majority party--nominally.

Of the nine incumbent Democratic senators running for reelection, the only one who seems to be in trouble is Cranston--last week the California Poll reported him in a dead heat with Republican Zschau of Los Altos. So far, both candidates have spent a fortune running negative television ads. The result, not surprisingly, is that both candidates’ favorability ratings have dropped. The smart money says Cranston by a hair.

If the headlines on Nov. 5 say: “Democrats Regain Senate,” “Mandate of 1980 Reversed,” and “Reagan Repudiated at Polls,” Democrats will have won just half the battle. They will also have to win the interpretation. The Reagan Administration is very adept at “spin control,” as they demonstrated after the Iceland summit. That is the process of placing a favorable interpretation on an unfavorable outcome (for instance, Iceland was not an arms-control setback but a breakthrough because of the agreement we almost got). The “spin doctors” will tell us that the Democrats really lost by winning. Control of Congress will set the Democrats up as a target. Republicans will attack them for obstructing the President’s policies. The Democrats will have to share responsibility for whatever happens in the next two years.

Yes, the Democrats could run into problems if they win control of the Senate. Only one thing would be worse for them: not winning control of the Senate. With the odds so heavily in the Democrats’ favor, a failure this year would be deeply demoralizing. After all, 1986 is supposed to be the “six-year itch,” when the party in control of the White House for six years suffers a serious reversal at the polls. It happened to the Democrats in 1938 and 1966. It happened to the Republicans in 1958 and 1974.

Each of those elections was held under extraordinary circumstances--depression, Vietnam, racial violence, recession, Watergate, energy crisis. By comparison, 1986 looks like a fairly normal election year. Just politics as usual--”the six-year scratch.”