In April I blogged about Larry Sabato’s statement that, in the wake of the much-vaunted 2008 Obama realignment, “we’re on our way from being a two-party system to being a party-and-a-half system. And the Republicans are the half a party.”  Sabato was all over the tube last night and today, but I didn’t hear any mea culpas from him about what now seems like a ridiculous prediction.  Nor did I hear any apologies from the many other pundits who made similar predictions.

Obama’s 2008 victory in Virginia was the crown jewel of the supposed realignment.  Now it’s a glaring example of how silly virtually every declaration of realignment turns out to be.  As I said in April, such declarations “are appealing in their simplicity and particularly persuasive in the aftermath of a one-sided election.  But, like all analyses based on sample sizes of one or two elections, they’re essentially worthless.”

While the specific dynamics of November’s election are not yet known, University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato is wasting no time in making bold assertions. To say nothing of the fact the first African-American was elected President of the United States, he maintains 2008 was no ordinary election. 2008 was just the tip of the iceberg – a dramatic shift of political coalitions, likely ushering in an extended period of Democratic control, according to his new political anthology, “The Year of Obama: How Barack Obama won the White House.”

To be sure, when the most-quoted political scientist in the land speaks up, people listen, but has the good doctor misdiagnosed ailing Republicans’ present predicament?

Before arriving at the intricacies of Sabato’s argument, it’s worth explaining the rather amorphic notion of political “realignment,” particularly given the state of reporting on the matter. A political realignment is a dramatic and enduring shift in voters’ loyalties and fundamental perceptions of the parties in government. We have witnessed three such instances: the 1896 election with the emergence of a national campaign, the 1932 election following the nation’s greatest financial disaster to date, and the 1980 election marking the meteoric rise of social conservativism.

The political landscape for 2010 and beyond, as Sabato sees it, will create a lasting Democratic majority, due in part to three giant demographic shifts: The intense preference among younger voters for the Democratic Party is unlikely to fade, with more than 2-1 voting for Obama; accelerated minority voter participation largely benefits Democrats; and professionals – those with post-graduate degrees – have begun to self-identify as Democrats in large numbers.

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Since November, I’ve become accustomed to predictions that the Republican Party is on its way to irrelevance.  Nonetheless, I was disappointed to hear that sentiment voiced by University of Virginia professor and pundit Larry Sabato, who generally tries to provide a relatively objective analysis.  On MSNBC’s Hardball today, Sabato opined that “we’re on our way from being a two-party system to being a party-and-a-half system. And the Republicans are the half a party.”  Here’s Sabato’s analysis followed by my thoughts on why such predictions are silly.

Essentially, it boils down to this. Minorities are going to be the majority by 2042. It could even be by the 2030s. Young people 18 to 29, they voted more than two to one for Obama, and their turnout is going to go up with each additional year as they age. The same with people with graduate degrees, who used to vote Republican on fiscal issues. Now they’re so turned off to Republicans because of [conservative rhetoric] and the social issues, they turned Democratic. Hey, you can`t just win with white male voters in the South, and that’s what the Republicans have left.

This sort of analysis sounds quite logical but is reminiscent of what the pundits said following the re-election of both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.  After the 1984 election, expert after expert explained why the shift of population and thus electoral votes to the Sun Belt had given the Republicans a “lock on the Electoral College.”  Despite my youthful eagerness for a GOP presidential monopoly, this electoral analysis struck me as too sweeping and simplistic to be correct.  Unfortunately, I was right.

Following the 2004 election, the message from the experts was the same, though the explanation had changed.  Now the Democrats had little chance of winning presidential elections because they were only competing in states that accounted for barely half of the 538 electoral votes.  It was a seductive argument, but again it was too simplistic and backward-looking to be true.

Predictions of electoral locks are appealing in their simplicity and particularly persuasive in the aftermath of a one-sided election.  But, like all analyses based on sample sizes of one or two elections, they’re essentially worthless, if only because the news headlines and candidates that await us are unknowable  Although it’s much less fun and won’t get you a guest appearance on MSNBC or FOX, the only honest analysis is admitting that you haven’t got a clue about what’s going to happen in future elections.

Larry Sabato has done the first half of his anaylsis of the governor’s races for 2010 (the Democratic half): the basic results are below.

• ARKANSAS: DEMOCRATIC HOLD.
• COLORADO: LEANS DEMOCRATIC.
• ILLINOIS: TOSS-UP.
• IOWA: LEANS DEMOCRATIC.
• KANSAS: LEANS REPUBLICAN TURNOVER.
• MAINE: TOSS-UP.
• MARYLAND: LEANS DEMOCRATIC.
• MASSACHUSETTS: DEMOCRATIC HOLD.
• MICHIGAN: TOSS-UP.
• NEW HAMPSHIRE: DEMOCRATIC HOLD / TOSS-UP
• NEW MEXICO: LEANS DEMOCRATIC HOLD
• NEW YORK: LEANS DEMOCRATIC / TOSS UP
• OHIO: LEANS DEMOCRATIC.
• OKLAHOMA: TOSS-UP.
• OREGON: TOSS-UP
• PENNSYLVANIA: TOSS-UP.
• TENNESSEE: TOSS-UP.
• WISCONSIN: LEANS DEMOCRATIC.
• WYOMING: LEANS DEMOCRATIC.

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