Partisans will take Saxy Chambliss's victory to heart, under and over-interpreting it to fit their assessment of the electorate. Maybe -- Georgians, already fed up with Democratic control, re-elected Chambliss to send a message to Obama and the Democrats. Or; Obama had no coattails whatsoever and Democrats ought to be nervous about 2010. Or; the lessions from this special election have about as much relevance to the whole of the polity as Duke "The Dumpster" Droese had to the legacy of the World Wrestling Federation.
In truth, the national environment always has, at the least a marginal influence on special elections, hereby defined as elections held on an unusual date. Giving the influence a median value of, say, .2, tells us nothing about the multiplier effects and what they might be. Habitual voters tend to vote in special elections; in Georgia, there are more Republican habitual voters than Democratic habitual voters; the minds of Republican habitual voters were no doubt focused on Chambliss's sudden cameo as the bullwark against an overweening Democratic majority. But these habitual voters are an ideologically charged subset of the electorate. On November 4, 3.7 million Georgians voted. Yesterday, about 2.1 million Georgians did.
Barack Obama pulled out all the stops for Martin? Not really. His campaign lent some expertise and people, but Obama did not campaign in the state; radio ads in urban markets doesn't cover all of the "stops." If Obama's coattails still fluttered in December, they were gossamer-thin. In November, they were thick and meaty, backed by strands of expensive television advertising, significant early vote efforts in the black community, and hundreds, if not thousands, more volunteers. The Obama political team chose to stay out of Georgia for the most part, and they did so for several reasons, not the least of which was their desire to send a message that mere politics isn't what's important right now. Also, candidly, some Obama advisers didn't think Martin had a chance to win, and they didn't want to expose Obama to a losing campaign.
Nonetheless, it is conceivable that the fact of the exisrence of a President-elect Obama helped his opponents, who had something to run against. Jim Martin had change; but the general election already took care of that. Getting to 60 in the Senate isn't terribly compelling. Some Democrats will read into this result the return of racial polarity; that is, the strong correlation between the intensity of black turnout and the intensity of white turnout against the object of black voter intensity. There's no evidence this is the case, unless you're willing to make the argument that white suburbanites in Georgia are retrograde racists -- or, suddenly, became retrograde racists since November 4. Maybe it's true that the base Republican electorate in Georgia has less liberal views on race, but that attribute is, without facts we won't have, probably incidental. Indeed, if there was a racial polarity effect, it existed in the general election: Obama took only 23% of the white vote in Georgia compared to 35% in North Carolina.
All this might be detail. Georgia's political demography is changing, but it's not changing as rapidly as in North Carolina, where, despite recieving only a third of the white vote, Obama managed to win, pulling together a coalition of newly transplanted white suburbinites, 95% of African Americans, some Hispanics, and more than two thirds of first-time voters. (Here's what worries GOPers these days: can a Republican ever expect to exceed 65% of the white vote against a black candidate? That is -- if the Republican managed to get two thirds of white voters and still lose, technology and sloganeering are the least of the party's problems.)
Back to this race. Should Republicans have reason to crow about their chances in 2010? On the one hand, there's no Bush on the ticket. Ok, there might be one, but he'll be in Florida, and besides, he's not THAT Bush. Two: the Democrats are in charge, and Republicans will have something to rally the base with. Three: ... three is a "but." But... more Republican retirements are expected, including at least two in blue states (Chuck Grassley of Iowa and George Voinovich of Ohio. (A Voinovich spokesperson denies the retirement rumor.))
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