Thomas Ferguson and Jie Chen wrote an article tying the recent Massachusetts Senate election to national political trends:
Passage of the health care reform bill has convinced some analysts that the Massachusetts Senate election might be a fluke. In fact, polls taken after the legislation passed show Republicans widening their lead in fall congressional races. This paper takes a closer look at the Massachusetts earthquake. It reviews popular interpretations of the election, especially those highlighting the influence of the “Tea Party” movement, and examines the role political money played in the outcome. Its main contribution, though, is an analysis of voting patterns by towns. Using spatial regression techniques, it shows that unemployment and housing price declines contributed to the Republican swing, along with a proportionately heavier drop in voting turnout in poorer towns that usually provide many votes to Democratic candidates. All these factors are likely to remain important in the November congressional elections.
Ferguson and Chen write:
It seems more likely that the citizens rallying under the Tea Party banner are pretty much what they say they are. They are ordinary Americans hammered by the almost Biblical series of economic plagues that for most began in the fall of 2008, when the decision to let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt turned a looming economic crisis into a world historical disaster. They have been driven to the breaking point by watching their jobs and retirement savings melt away as banks hit them with steeply rising fees on their credit and debit cards while paying next to nothing on what is left of their cash holdings. . . .
We are thus driven to conclude that the sometimes wild assertions and arguments advanced by Tea Partiers largely reflect the poverty of economic and political analysis in the establishment media. Indeed, the U.S. case bears an unsettling similarity to the situation in many parts of the parts of the Middle East. Political establishments and governments refuse to countenance critical discussion of social and economic problems. They marginalize alternative views, while beating the drums unceasingly for orthodoxy. When a crisis hits, however, no one believes them. So disaffected citizens set to work with the only tools they have – bits and snatches of traditional economic and political thinking – to analyze their predicament on their own. . . .
The key problem confronting the [Democratic] party is the one that has defined it since the halcyon days of the New Deal: the terms of trade between high finance and the rest of the party. Long before Obama won the nomination, it was plain from analysis of his early money that financial reform would not be a priority of his administration. Now, however, it is hard to see how the Democrats can hope to do much more than squeak through without revivals in both employment and housing markets. Both of these, however, are probably impossible without facing down Wall Street. . . .
The situation is no better – in fact, it may be worse – in regard to housing. . . . nothing has replaced the disastrous “shadow banking” system . . . since the Democrats now own this crisis, it may be Great Britain, 1931, when another coalition of Liberals and Labor lacking both courage and convictions endured repudiation at the hands of an electorate mortally afraid of both unemployment and budget deficits.
In some ways, this sort of work fills in the gap between general findings of political science and the blow-by-blow, issue-by-issue discussion in the news. Both levels are important–economic trends influence votes, but this happens in the context of particular issues. I find it useful to see these connections being made.