After Republicans next win control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, will they maintain control for the following ten years?
In other words, after the Republican party next gains control of the executive and legislative branches, will they win the following two midterms and elections?
The possibility of Republicans putting to end to democracy in America is being increasingly discussed as midterm elections near. I wanted to put a number on that possibility. I tried to choose a set of resolution criteria which would be as objective as possible.
RESOLUTION EDGE CASES:
If elections are abolished entirely, I will resolve this YES early rather than wait to see if they get re-established. If elections are postponed or "put on hold temporarily" , then if there's a very plausible alibi I'll allow a single election to be skipped and "pause the stopwatch" until the next election, if this happens twice I just resolve YES.
If the Republican party loses power non-electorally, for instance in a coup, I will resolve NO early.
If there's a civil war in which multiple groups are recognized as the legitimate government of the United States by at least 20 other countries, and this civil war lasts long enough to interrupt an election, I will resolve NA.
Related questions
@L My thinking is that:
America's self image revolves around being a democracy. That makes it uniquely hard to erode/destroy democracy in America because it would be impossible to retain legitimacy.
Although Trump is popular among approx 40% of the population, he's not popular among the most important parts of the population, aka. urban professionals, federal bureaucrats, the media, etc. Many of the people who most hate Trump are the very people you most want on your side when attempting a coup.
@IsaacKing I was trying to get around the edge case of "Donald Trump dies of old age, passes the imperial throne to Barron Trump," it's a hard question to operationalize in an objective way.
@Boklam Yeah. What edge case were you imagining, a swing vote in the legislature changing parties? I'm going to say a brief hiccup isn't enough to resolve NO.
@MichaelWheatley I was imagining that the Ds win the House for a single election (two years). The Rs hold the Senate and presidency for the full 10 years, but the House for only 8. This is NO... right?
@Boklam Yeah, that would be a NO. I feel like they're not rigging democracy very thoroughly if they're still losing midterms.
@MichaelWheatley I just chose the House as one of the three. I wanted to make sure "control" meant "control all three", not "control a majority".
@MichaelWheatley BTW maintaining control is not necessarily the same thing as rigging democracy. It has certainly happened before that one party controlled all 3 for over 10 years -- the Democrats in 1933-1947 or the Republicans in 1897-1911.
https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/Party-Government/
The Democrats seem to have controlled both houses of the legislature from 1955-1981 (thirteen consecutive elections!) though the presidency changed hands several times during the same period.
(One might argue that Roosevelt broke with precedent to run for third and fourth terms, and that he violated political norms in other ways as well. But my impression is that he and his party won elections on the basis of widespread popular support, and I don't think it's fair to say the elections were "rigged".)
@Boklam Yeah, it's not quite the same thing. but I prefer to predict a proxy indicator rather than get involved in political arguments about which elections count as "rigged." If the Democrats fall flat on their faces hard enough, this could certainly happen organically.
@MichaelWheatley I'd be happy to let this market stand, knowing that it's an imperfect proxy for "Republicans cheat democracy". It's hard for me to think of a better form of the question, and I appreciate the wisdom of not wanting to start a political argument.