Why do 99 percent of congressional incumbents win reelection?
You know some of the answers, like fund-raising, the ability to raise money and a built-in campaign bank advantage.
Then of course there's the fact that redistricting has been raised to a partisan art.
Now The Washington Post's Jim VandeHei and Charles Babington add a new wrinkle: tax payer-funded microtargeting by members of Congress. Is low-taxes your thing? Make sure your members know it and they'll be able to deluge you -- and the other people who care alot about it -- with emails on only that subject. Emails that will of course paint your congressman in a fine, fine light.
As VandeHei and Babington write:
In Ohio's 1st Congressional District, Republican incumbent Steve Chabot is running up against his toughest reelection challenge in years. But his Democratic opponent is running up against Chabot's computer.
In one of the lesser-known perks of power on Capitol Hill, lawmakers are using taxpayer-funded databases to cultivate constituents more attentively than ever. Chabot -- a six-term legislator from Cincinnati who finds himself imperiled this year after years of easy races -- has a list of e-mail addresses of people who are most interested in tax cuts. His office recently hit the send button on a personal message to alert them to the congressman's support for extending tax breaks on dividends and capital gains.
They add:
Chabot's computer is one factor to keep in mind when assessing the odds that Republicans will get evicted this November from their 12-year majority in the House. Anti-incumbent sentiment, as measured by polls and voter interviews, is stronger than it has been in years. But so, too, are certain structural advantages that overwhelmingly favor incumbents.Some are well known, such as the superior ability of incumbents to raise campaign funds and the fact that most lawmakers come from districts that have been carefully drawn to favor one party. Other benefits -- including the ways that lawmakers are using the latest "micro-targeting" techniques in their official communications -- are more obscure, virtually unheralded beyond the people who use them.
It's another reason why despite what the polls might say about either Bush's popularity or the generic congressional ballot, Nancy Pelosi should not start measuring drapes in the speaker's suite.
For more on this, see today's Note.
On the other hand, as Charlie Cook has pointed out, the GOP's levies can withstand a Category 1, 2 or 3 political storm. Categories 4 and 5, though, could break them -- and the majority.