The 2010 electorate wasn't the 2008 electorate. Twenty-nine million members of the Obama coalition stayed home Tuesday, according to ABC. A different slice of America showed up at the polls on Tuesday: same gender, slightly whiter, much older, and much more conservative.



Of course, if demographics drive election outcomes, public policy also drives demographics. Voters stay home because they're frustrated about policies, or they think they'll lose anyway. On the other hand, voters turn out in higher numbers when they're impassioned, usually about something going wrong. Liberals were frustrated, conservatives were impassioned, and the White House agenda stoked these feelings. There is no doubt that the message on Tuesday, boiled down to its basics, was Something isn't working.

But beware arguments that boil down causality to a single variable -- an "it."

Was "it" health care? Only 17% of the voters considered health care the most important issue in this election. Of those more than half voted for Democrats.

Was "it" the president? CNN's exit poll found that only 37 percent of voters "meant to express opposition to Obama."

Was "it" the economy? Of the 16 congressional districts hit hardest by the recession and represented by Democrats, just one of the 16 leaned Republican on Monday.

As National Journal's Charlie Cook notes, this was a perfect storm election. If the economy was this bad and nothing else, it might have been enough to turn the House. If the economy was this bad and Democrats looked feckless to cure it, it might have been enough. If the economy was this bad and Democrats looked feckless to cure it while passing a liberal agenda that galvanized a national movement against the party, it might have been enough. But all of these factors, and many more, on top of the accordion-like nature of midterm elections to mitigate the ruling parties' power, proved utterly fatal.

For the Democratic House, it was death by firing squad. We don't know what killed the majority. There were too many bullets.

_________

*Edited statistic

**Not counting Sen. Arlen Specter's loss in the Democratic primary.

