Unless both Senate runoff elections in Georgia go Democrats' way, President-elect Joe Biden will face divided government from the start of his presidency. Many observers foresee years of unremitting legislative deadlock, with Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) leading his party in obstruction, just as he did under President Obama. The emerging conventional wisdom is that the only chance for policymaking is to get a handful of GOP moderates, such as Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mitt Romney (R-UT), to work with Democrats on small-ticket items.
Our new book, The Limits of Party, finds that this Beltway wisdom misses the mark. Divided government is not as devastating for a party's legislative accomplishments as is usually thought. In today's polarized Congress, legislation generally passes by large, bipartisan majorities — or not at all. Regardless of unified or divided control, Congress enacts very few laws on party-line votes.