Assess the significance of midterm elections

This could be either a 15 marker of 45 marker, it's come up as a 15 marker before.

Significant	Insignificant
REFERENDUM ON THE PRESIDENT. The increasingly nationalised nature of US congressional elections in recent years to revolve around issues concerning the president mean that midterm elections today act as a referendum on the performance of the President. Early examples include the Contract with America (1994) on Bill Clinton, Six for 06 agenda (2006) by the Democrats on Bush and the Iraq war. In the 2010 midterms Obama declared that he received a ‘shellbacking’ when the Democrats lost 63 in the House and 6 in the Senate à the agenda was called Pledge to America which called for ‘constitutional government’ and a repeal of Obamacare. In last years midterms the mood was different but it was still seen as a referendum on the president (some news sites reported this one to be the most nationalised congressional election in 56 years), the defining issues here were the issue of the economy in first place, healthcare in second and terrorism and immigration in fourth and fifth place, Democrats subsequently lost 13 seats in the House and 9 in the Senate.	However, as Tipp O’Neill famously said, “all politics is local” and arguably this remains true today as despite the increasingly nationalised nature of congressional elections, they continue to revolve around local issues in the form of initiatives and propositions at the 2014 midterms, for instance, many states such as Alaska voted to legalise marijuana. Also, arguably people are simply voting for “change” as they got tired or fed up of having a mixed Congress (with Democrats controlling Senate and Republicans the House) and thus, voted for change.
REFERENDUM ON CONGRESS. The midterm elections are also obviously a referendum on Congress given the fact that that the whole House is up for re-election and 1/3 of the Senate. The approval ratings of Congress was just 15% in 2014 which could come as a consequence of the increasing polarisation in recent years and consistent gridlock which has go to a point where nothing is being done and 2013 was the least productive legislative year since 1948.	Perhaps it’s not a referendum on Congress as shown by the excessively high incumbency rates, in 2014 incumbency in the House was 95% and 82% in the Senate. So, perhaps voters are satisfied with their Congressional representative. Or, such incumbency rates can be brought about by gerrymandering which renders midterm elections for the House increasingly uncompetitive because they create safe seats, for instance, political commentators have suggested the 2014 midterms were rigged by the 2010 census in which Republicans used their REDistricting (REDMAP) strategy to create a number of safe seats for themselves – such as in Pennsylvannia where Democrats got 44% of the vote yet only got 5 out of 18 seats, in other words they got just 27% of the seats. Either way, this uncompetitive nature renders midterms insignificant.
WHOS VOTING? The midterms have got poor turnouts and this can give political parties and interest groups and indication of which groups of voters are not turning up to vote and can therefore target those specific groups in getting their vote. For instance, in the 2014 midterms only 13% of young Americans (18-29 years old) actually turned up to vote which is a significant decrease from 2012 when the figure stood at 19%. This has been of particular concern for the Democrats who in the 2014 midterms attracted 54% of the votes cast by 18-29 year olds while Republicans attracted just 43%, although Democrats got more this was significantly lower than what they got in 2012 which was 60%. This has meant that both parties have begun taking on new initiatives to encourage young voters to vote and to win their vote, organisations have been doing this also such as Rock the Vote who have been helping youths register to vote. Similalry, turnout around ethnic minorities such as African-Americans and Latinos was low in 2014 at 12 and 8% respectively (decrease from 13 and 10%). The Latino Vote in particularly is becoming of more importance since it’s the fastest growing group right now (roughly 54m) and since turnout was low at the 2014 midterms both parties are surely going to take on new initiatives to win over their votes (particularly the GOP in which some have already begun to appeal to Latinos such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio).	Regardless midterms continue to have low turnouts with a turnout of just 36.3% in 2014, the last time it was this low the US was fighting in World War 2 (72 years ago) and although attempts have indeed been made at appealing to certain groups of voters and engaging them more, this has had very little effect and thus, rendering the midterms insignificant due to the lack of political participation. Following the 2012 elections the GOP sought to appeal more to the Latino community, however, clearly this had little impact and in fact, the number of Latinos voting in 2014 (and African-Americans) decreased from 13 to 12% for African Americans and from 10 to 8% for Latinos. Similarly, number of youths voting has also decreased from 19% in 2012 to 13% in 2014.
GRIDLOCK AND PARTISANSHIP. Since the midterms reduce the president to status of lame-duck and change the composition of Congress they can lead to gridlock and a growth in partisanship. For instance, now that Congress is a GOP stronghold the President is unable to legislate nor push forward his agenda and this has already led to a lack of partisanship as illustrated by Obama’s state of the union address in which he made clear that he will be vetoing any attempts by Congress to repeal Obamacare or their refusal to implement immigration reform. This typically comes as a consequence of when the White House and Congress are dominated by two different political parties. Also, partisanship has already been evident as seen by the showdown between Democrats and Republicans over the renewal of certain provisions of the PATRIOT Act which even led to a filibuster (technically wasn’t but he did speak for 10 hours straight) by Rand Paul (who surprisingly sided with the Democrats on this one).	However, even though the midterms can change the composition of Congress and thus, change the mood of Washington Politics with regards to compromise or partisanship between the legislature and executive, there still remains several powers at the President’s disposal such as executive orders which render the outcome of midterm elections in significant. If the midterms lead to partisanship the president can resort to issuing vetoes (which he’s already done on the Keystone Pipeline) and even executive orders as Obama had already done so immediately after the 2014 midterms whereby an executive order was signed on immigration aiming to help 5 million illegal immigrants.
AFFECT FACTIONS. The midterm elections can impact upon certain factions which dominate a political party and potentially lead to party divisions arising. This was seen during the 2010 midterms whereby the Tea Party first emerged when they backed 138 candidates (129 for the House and 8 for the Senate), the Tea Party insurgency launched attacks on moderates in the Republican Party whom they described as Republicans In Name Only (RINO), leading to many moderates to lose their seats such as Maroc Rubio who won over Charlie Crist and as a result, the Tea Party rose to prominence in 2010. The opposite happened this year for the Blue Dog Democrats whereby their numbers in the House plummeted to just 14.