Why 2014 Isn't as Good as It Seems for the Republicans

The Republicans are looking forward to having a good week. They are favored to win the Senate, and they could pick up enough House seats to finish with their largest margin since 1928.

But perhaps more important to the party's long-term prospects than Tuesday's results is what unfolds in the presidential battleground states. If the night ends with tight races in Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado and Georgia, as the polls suggest, then the results will not be as great for Republicans as many analysts will surely proclaim.

Even if the Republicans win these states, which would all but ensure Senate control, it will probably be mostly because of low midterm turnout among Democratic-leaning young and nonwhite voters. The implication would be that Republican Senate candidates did not win many voters who supported President Obama in 2012. And it would suggest that Republicans have made little progress in attracting voters they would need to take back the White House.

If there were a time when the Republicans ought to be making inroads into the Obama coalition, this should be it. The economy remains mediocre in many respects; there is turmoil in much of the world; and the American public is decidedly downbeat about the state of the country under Mr. Obama. His approval ratings have sagged into the low 40s. A significant proportion of Democratic-leaning voters say they disapprove of his performance.

Historically, presidential ratings like these have permitted the party that does not hold the White House to make substantial gains. This year, however, Democratic Senate candidates in the battleground states have largely reassembled the coalition that supported Mr. Obama two years ago. Democratic candidates would probably win Colorado, North Carolina, Iowa and Georgia - along with control of the Senate - if those who vote were as young, diverse and Democratic as they were in 2012 or will be in 2016.

This is not to say that the Democratic coalition is invulnerable. Polls suggest that the party is not faring as well among young or Hispanic voters as in years past. But the inability of Republicans to secure additional gains is a telling indicator of how hardened political sentiments are in the post-Bush, late Obama era. It also shows the limited appeal of Republican candidates to the voters who supported Mr. Obama in 2012 but are dissatisfied with him now. Mr. Obama and his low approval ratings won't be on the ballot in 2016; the Republican Party and its even lower approval ratings will be.

Above all, the pattern is a reminder of how difficult it will be for Republicans to overcome the demographic and generational changes that have marginalized their traditional coalition in presidential elections. Republicans fare poorly among every large demographic group that is a growing share of the electorate, including Latinos, Asian-Americans and young adults.

Republicans need to compensate for that demographic change by picking up voters who have traditionally supported Democrats in presidential elections. To do so, they will need to broaden their appeal with different candidates and messages, or count on external forces - like a weak national economy, or an emboldened Democratic Party that takes increasingly liberal and unpopular stances.

To a certain extent, the Republicans are already compensating. They remain competitive nationally, despite the large demographic changes, because the Democrats have lost a huge share of support among white Southerners over the last decade. These losses have given the Republicans a decided advantage in the House, and are giving them an opportunity to win the Senate this year. But the Republican gains have done little good in the presidential battleground states, which are largely outside the South, putting Republicans at a slight disadvantage in the Electoral College.

The fact that the races in all of the presidential battleground states stayed close, despite an older and whiter electorate, suggests that Mr. Obama is not yet so unpopular as to cause the voters who remained Democratic-leaning through 2012 to vote Republicans into federal office.

This is perhaps most evident in Iowa, an overwhelmingly white state. It has tilted just slightly Democratic. If Republicans were going to gain voters who used to lean Democratic, Iowa would be the place where we would see it. Mr. Obama's approval ratings in Iowa are particularly weak, in part because the state is full of white voters without college degrees - the group where Mr. Obama's support has always been weakest.

The Democratic Senate candidate in Iowa, Bruce Braley, has not run a great campaign. He committed one of the more cringe-worthy gaffes of the cycle when he belittled Senator Charles E. Grassley for being 'a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school' at a fund-raiser with a group of lawyers. Yet Mr. Braley is locked in a tight race with his Republican opponent, Joni Ernst. If Ms. Ernst wins by a margin of a point or two, that suggests she probably would have lost with a presidential-year electorate.

The story is perhaps even more troubling for Republicans in the South, where Democratic candidates are doing well among white voters.

If Republicans cannot maintain their exceptional margins among Southern white voters in the post-Obama era, their path to victory will get very narrow in states like Georgia and Florida. In both, the white share of the electorate has dropped by more than 10 percentage points since 2000.

The Republicans have their best shot at a breakthrough in Colorado, where polls show Cory Gardner, the Republican candidate, ahead by a modest margin in a state President Obama won comfortably in 2012. As in the other states, the off-year voters will probably be more favorable to Mr. Gardner than presidential-year voters, but the state now has universal mail voting, which should encourage more Democratic voters.

If turnout is high and Mr. Gardner wins by a modest margin, it will be a sign that he won voters who did not support Mitt Romney in 2012. That would be an impressive and important accomplishment against a Democratic incumbent in a state that the Democrats will be counting on to get to 270 electoral votes in 2016.

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