Centerpiece

The Jewish Vote

2008-11-05T20:17:00.004-05:00

Obviously there are a lot of interesting storylines to write about coming out of this historic election. I intend to write about many of them, but I want to start with a pet peeve of mine.

I'm going to quote myself at length, if you'll permit me. A post I wrote back in February:

Tonight, during the Democratic debate, Tim Russert asked Senator Obama how he felt about having the support of Louis Farrakhan. Apparently, over the weekend Minister Farrakhan decided to publicly endorse Senator Obama for President. Russert's question about it during the debate is sure to spark another round of my least favorite stale election year debate: "Is this the year the Jews vote Republican?"

Yes folks, every four years we have to go through these motions. Some high profile Jewish Republican comes out and makes some case about how this year, the GOP is going to make strong in-roads in the Jewish community. So, let's take a little peeksy, shall we, at the numbers and see if those prognostications have ever been right.

In 1992, Bill Clinton received 80% of the Jewish vote.

In 1996, Bill Clinton received 78% of the Jewish vote.

In 2000, Al Gore received 79% of the Jewish vote.

In 2004, John Kerry received 74% of the Jewish vote.

Strong in-roads, indeed. A whopping 6% change from 1992 to 2004. Just for comparison's sake, during that same time, the GOP share of the evangelical vote went from 61% in 1992 to 78% in 2004. Now that's some in-roading.

The simple fact of the matter is that Jews in America vote for Democrats overwhelmingly. Sure, the Republican candidate can hope to capture 25% of the Jewish vote, but at the end of the day, the other three quarters are voting for the Democratic nominee. There has been a truckload written about why Jews, despite the relative affluence of the American Jewish community in general, continue to vote reliably Democratic and I'm not going to add anything to that discussion here. Suffice it to say that, despite any nasty e-mails floating about claiming Obama was secretly born in Ramallah and has nightly seances with the ghost of Yasser Arafat, Jews in 2008 will again vote 3 to 1 for the Democrat.

Last night, Barack Obama won 78% of the Jewish vote. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, a guy who's middle name is Hussein and who was the target of a seriously nasty whisper campaign directed specifically at Jews, nevertheless won a larger share of Jewish voters than did John Kerry. I made a variety of predictions over the course of this election campaign, and many were off base, but I did have my moments, and this was one of them.

Can we all make a promise that the next time we hear some talking head or lazy journalist suggest that "this is the year that Republicans win over the Jews," we will change the channel and/or tear up the article?

Yes, we can.

Liveblogging II

2008-11-04T21:16:00.006-05:00

10:18: 42 minutes until this race is officially over. At 11:00 PM, the networks will give Obama California, Oregon and Washington, and that will put him over 270 electoral votes and the Presidency!

9:49: Virginia Update. Right now, Obama is behind by only 2,000 votes with 75% of Fairfax county left to be counted. 1 in 7 voters live in Fairfax county and Obama will win it with 57% of the vote. It's closer than I expected, but Obama will win Virginia.

9:41: Game over. Ohio for Obama. McCain now has no realistic chance to be President.

9:17: It looks like my prediction regarding the networks calling Virginia is going to be wrong, but they still have not called Indiana, nor have they called North Carolina. Any one of those to Obama and its game over.

Liveblogging

2008-11-04T19:57:00.006-05:00

8:38: NBC calls Georgia for McCain. Too bad, but not too surprising. I'll still be interested to see the final tally there.

8:32: The longer it takes to call Indiana, the worse it is going to be for John McCain.

8:27: Prediction...the networks will call Virginia for Obama before 9:30 PM.

8:05 PM: NBC just called PA for Obama, 2 minutes after the polls closed there. That means big margins there! Bad news for John McCain. His path to the Presidency has narrowed significantly.

8:00 PM: Coming into the election, I went through every county in PA, VA, and FL to project what Obama would need to win those states. I'll be referring to those projections throughout the night.

First benchmark. The only county in VA that has fully reported in King and Queen County. in 2004, Kerry got 45%. I projected that Obama needed to match that (with about 1600 votes). Obama won King and Queen with 52% of the vote and 1900 votes.

Prediction

2008-11-03T23:44:00.003-05:00

Before it officially becomes election day, here is my prediction for tomorrow:

As you can see, I have Obama taking all the Kerry/Gore states plus Virginia, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada.

I came to this conclusion by taking the final five days worth of polling and averaging them together. Simple, but effective.

For most of the "battleground states," there was a clear leader. Several states, however, were very close, within 2 points. Those were North Carolina, Florida, Missouri, and Indiana. Obama lead in Florida by only 1.5 points, and McCain lead in Indiana by only 1.4 points. I allocated those two states to the nominal leaders. The other two were within half a point, but with McCain ever so slightly ahead in Missouri and vice versa in North Carolina. I went ahead and gave Obama both states figuring that in a "wave" election like this, things will likely break for Obama in very very close states.

I should note that even if McCain wins in every state where the average margin is less than three points, Obama still wins with 291 electoral votes.

My Posting Schedule

2008-11-03T08:00:00.002-05:00

I shall not abandon you in this, your hour of need.

It's just that I'm going canvassing.

I expect to post this evening, and then probably not again until after the Virginia polls close at 7 PM Tuesday. After that, I will be semi "live-blogging" the election returns. That means that I will post thoughts and analysis during election night, about every half hour or so. So if that sounds exciting to you, then a) make sure to point your browser over to Centerpiece and b) you're one of those people who is going to have to find a new hobby on Wednesday.

Polls open in VA in 22 hours.

A Win is a Win

2008-11-02T22:23:00.002-05:00

I detect a funny phenomenon among Obama supporters. I think I would call it "Landslide Letdown Syndrome." About ten days ago, it looked like there was a real chance for Obama to win upwards of 380 or 390 or even break 400 electoral votes. I think a lot of Obama supporters internalized this possibility and began to measure success against this very high bar.

Today, while it still looks like Obama will win the election, it seems much less likely that it will be a massive blowout. I think that's contributed to some of the "angst" that Obama supporters are feeling. In fact, today I heard a diehard Obama supporter say, after checking fivethirtyeight.com, "Oh my god, McCain's up to 200!"

Remember, though, that while the "expectations game" matters in the primaries, and it matters in the debates, it doesn't really matter on November 4. Whoever gets 270 electoral votes will be the next President whether he gets 270 exactly or 400. No one (except perhaps members of the losing party) is going to be saying, "Well, he won, but he didn't beat the spread, so he can't take office."

Just keep that in mind.

Like Catching A Hail Mary Pass on the 3 Yard Line

2008-11-01T18:56:00.004-04:00

In the past three days, no fewer than four polls have shown Barack Obama with a lead of fewer than 6 points. The daily PA tracking polling has also shown a decline in the margin between Obama and McCain and today had Obama leading by eight points. As you, of course, already know, I believe that polls (especially averaged together) are accurate. Therefore, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that John McCain's efforts in Pennsylvania are paying dividends. Where he was 10 or 11 points behind a week ago, he is now only 6 or 7 points behind.

Before talking about this more, I want to point out that I think this is really good evidence for the idea that campaigning matters. Spending time and resources in a state has a real, measurable impact.

Anyway, there are a few things to take away from these new polls. First off, it should be noted that Obama is still ahead, and he is still ahead by a margin much greater than those by which Kerry ever lead.

Second, looking at the bottom graph, you can see that most of the narrowing in the margin has come from McCain's support rising and very little comes from Obama's support dropping. This is unsurprising. As I wrote in my last post about Pennsylvania, there was never a realistic chance that McCain would only win 40% in this state. His numbers were low because a lot of the "undecideds" were actually Republicans. With his recent blitz of the state, he has been able to remind a lot of these people of their original inclinations. As I've written before, party identification is essentially the strongest predictor of voter preferences. It looks to me like the Pennsylvania Republicans are coming home.

The final important takeaway from these new polls is that, despite the narrowing, Obama still breaks 50%. McCain can win every undecided left and still lose if Obama stays above 50.

There will likely be a few more polls out of the Keystone state before Tuesday, so be on the lookout to see:

1) How much more ground McCain can make-up and;
2) If Obama stays over the magic line

Georgia on My Mind

2008-10-31T16:28:00.002-04:00

A week ago I asked, "Is Georgia in play?" I layed out three conditions that Obama needs to meet in order to win the Peach State:

1) Better than 90% support among African Americans
2) Black turnout approaching 35% of the electorate
3) Close to 25% White support.

As of today, more than 1.7 million voters have already cast ballots in Georgia. That represents more than half of the total number of ballots cast in 2004 overall. 35% of the early voters have been Black, and only 60.5% have been White. If these proportions hold throughout election day, Obama would need 23% of White votes (assuming 65% among other non-White voters, and 93% among Blacks). That's exactly what John Kerry got in 2004.

Moreover, there is some evidence that, among early voters, at least, Obama is far outperforming 23% among Whites. Here's the deal. According to the most recent Research 2000 poll among Georgia voters who have already cast a ballot, Obama is getting 55% (this is the only poll in Georiga that breaks it down by early voters, so we can't confirm). Now, we know that 35% of the early voters are Black, 60% are White and 4.5% are other non-White voters. If we allocate 99% of the Black voters to Obama and 90% of the other non-White voters to Obama, that gives him 38.7%. That means the remaining 16.6 points of his support come from White voters. Since 60.5% of the early voters are White, 16.6 of that is 27%.

Ok, that was pretty convoluted. Let me explain this another way. Imagine that there have only been 1000 early voters, 350 of whom are Black, 45 of whom are other non-Whites, and 605 of whom are White. Imagine futher that because of polling, we know that 550 of these early voters voted for Obama. We can safely assume that almost all of the 350 Black early voters were in the Obama camp (let's guess that only 4 didn't vote Obama). We can also guess that at least 30 or so of the other non-White voters were in the Obama camp as well. But let's be generous and assume that only 5 of them didn't vote for Obama. So, if we think that 386 (346 Blacks and 40 other voters who are not White) of the 550 Obama voters were not White, that means that 164 of them were White. In other words, out of the 605 Whites who voted early, 164 of them, 27%, voted Obama.

Does your head hurt? The takeaway point is that if that poll is basically right, and Obama is actually pulling in 55% of the early vote, then among early voters, Obama is besting Kerry's White support levels.

Bottom line: Right now Obama is meeting the 3 pronged standard for winning Georgia. The big question is how different will the NOvember 4th electorate be from the early voting electorate?

Pennsylvania, Part XVII

2008-10-31T11:56:00.003-04:00

Two new polls out this week spell doom for Barack Obama in Pennsylvania!

The latest NBC/Mason-Dixon poll has it Obama 47, McCain 43, and the most recent Strategic Vision poll has it Obama 49, McCain 44!

Now, as you know by now, I believe that polls, especially averaged together, present a highly accurate picture of the current state of public opinion, so I definitely do not dismiss these polls out of hand. But neither do I dismiss the other polls that came out the contemporaneously with these. CNN/Time, for example, released a poll on Wednesday that has Obama at 55% and McCain at 43%. Muhlenberg, which is running a daily tracking poll in Pennsylvania, pegs Obama at 53%, almost exactly the same as it has been for more than three weeks.

For a better view, let's take a look at our rolling five-day average of polls:

There seems to be no doubt that over the last 12 days, McCain's support has trended upward. In fact, on our graph here, McCain hit bottom on October 16, with only 39.25% support. Since then, however, he has picked up nearly 3 points, bringing him up to 42%. This is totally unsurprising. Even though McCain has run a pretty subpar campaign in an environment that is very hostile for Republicans, it is nevertheless very hard to imagine him winning less than 43 or 44% of the vote in a state where George W. Bush twice broke 47%.

Indeed, what I find more telling about this graph is that, for the past 10 days or so, Obama's support has also been ticking upwards, though at a slower pace than McCain's. He's gained about a point and a half since the 19th of October. Since McCain and Obama are both gaining, that suggests that undecideds are coming off the fence. The troubling thing for McCain is that, contrary to his pollster's hope, they are not breaking exclusively for McCain. In fact, over the past ten days, as the percentage of undecideds dropped by by four points, McCain seems to have gotten about 60% of them. That rate will definitely help make the final margin in Pennsylvania closer than the current ten point gap, but it will not be enough.

One last piece of eye-candy for you. Here's a graph which just shows the margin by which the Democratic candidate is leading in the rolling 5 day average.

It does seem clear that McCain made a little headway after he made it known that he was going to vigorously contest Pennsylvania, but since then, not a whole lot of movement in his direction, and a lot of ground to make up. Notice also that in 2004, the final margin was basically spot on.

Karl Rove is Wrong

2008-10-30T15:36:00.004-04:00

Today, in the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove counsels voters not to, "let the polls to affect your vote. They were wrong in 2000 and 2004." There are several things wrong with this, and the most glaring is actually that in the column, Rove writes only about exit polls. His argument is that exit polls can lead to erroneous assumptions about who the winner will be be (that's certainly true, and is especially true of "early exits" of the type that were leaked in 2004).

But the implication of this column is that we can't really trust public opinion polls, so we don't know if Obama is really ahead. This insinuation is popping up all over the place. Take a look at the bottom story on today's msnbc website:

Now, you can probably guess where I'm going with this.

I downloaded electoral-vote.com's entire cache of 2004 polls and then I took a simple average of each state's polling from the last five days of the election. I used a simple average because, unfortunately, the data did not include sample sizes. Here are the results (note that in 16 states there was no public polling in the final five days) :

State	Kerry Avg	Bush Avg
Alabama	42.0	53.0
Arizona	41.0	56.0
Arkansas	44.5	51.0
California	53.5	43.0
Colorado	46.3	48.9
Connecticut	52.0	42.0
Florida	47.3	47.9
Georgia	41.3	54.0
Illinois	53.0	42.0
Indiana	38.0	57.5
Iowa	47.0	46.7
Kentucky	38.0	59.0
Maine	52.0	44.0
Maryland	53.0	43.5
Michigan	48.4	46.1
Minnesota	48.4	45.9
Missouri	45.3	50.3
Nevada	45.4	50.4
New Hampshire	48.3	47.0
New Jersey	48.2	41.5
New Mexico	45.6	49.0
New York	54.3	37.7
North Carolina	44.0	53.0
Ohio	46.7	48.3
Oklahoma	34.0	64.0
Oregon	51.5	45.0
Pennsylvania	48.4	46.4
South Carolina	42.0	54.5
Tennessee	40.0	58.0
Texas	34.5	58.5
Utah	24.0	69.0
Virginia	46.0	50.5
Washington	51.7	45.3
West Virginia	43.0	51.0
Wisconsin	48.2	46.2

Of these 35 states, the polling correctly "predicted" the winner in 34 cases. The only exception is Iowa, where the final average was closest of all the states. Moreover, the average difference between the final margin in the polls and the actual final margin was less than 2.4 points. Indeed, in 21 of these states, the polls "predicted" the margin of victory to within 3 points.

The story is even better when looking only at "swing states." Among the fifteen "showdown states" identified by CNN, the average difference between the final polling margin and the actual margin was less than 1.9 points. In Pennsylvania, for example, the average of the final polls gave Kerry a lead of 2.1 points. The final margin was 2.2 points.

Can polls be wrong? Yes, of course, there is always a chance that individual polls are off base. But when taken together, polls paint an accurate picture. Even a simple averaging of polls yields very reliable results (though I prefer to weight my averages when I have the data to do so). 2004, despite Karl Rove's ominous column, is great evidence of that.

The Obamamercial

2008-10-30T10:22:00.001-04:00

From Samefacts.org:

Reminds me of a story JFK tells about Thomas Hart Benton in Profiles in Courage. One of Benton's political opponents threatened to write "a little book, in which the behavior of Sen. Benton will figure prominently." Benton replied by promising to write a large book, in which his opponent would not figure at all.

Over Fifty

2008-10-29T12:13:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, the closer we get to the election, the more important it is to look at whether one candidate is breaking through the fifty percent line. The reason that's key, of course, is that if one candidate is above 50, it means that the other candidate can't win, even if all the undecideds break his way. This is becoming a bit of a focus now, with McCain behind in so many places.

Yesterday, McCain's pollster released a memo arguing, basically, that Obama's support in the polls had reached a ceiling and that undecided voters would end up supporting McCain. Another Republican pollster recently made the same basic argument in Salon.com, and actually going even further by arguing that undecideds always vote for the White candidate if one candidate is Black. I'll leave it to others to debunk these claims but, for the moment, let's assume these folks are right and that Obama won't win a single undecided voter. Under that assumption, Obama can only win in states where he is at, or above, 50% in the polls. Taking the Pollster.com averages, here are the states where Barack Obama is above the magic line:

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusettes, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Those states alone are worth 282 electoral votes. Add in Rhode Island (which is missing since it has not been polled much recently and although the Pollster.com average has Obama more than 20 points ahead of McCain here, technically, he's still below 50, so I it off) and you've got 286 electoral votes.

There are two other states that we could reasonably add to this list because a candidate, in practice, will usually win if he or she gets more than 49.5% of the vote (since about 1% will go to minor party candidates). If we make the threshold 49.5 instead of 50, then Obama picks up Ohio and Nevada, bringing his total to 311 electoral votes.

So as the tracking polls contintue to show "tightening," it bears keeping in mind that an average of all the recent polls gives Obama majority, not merely plurality, support in a winning combination of states. If McCain wants to win he's got to get Obama's support under 50 in at least a few of these states. Also, it's worth mentioning that, aside from Ohio and Nevada, the only other state where Obama's polling lower than 51% is New Mexico. Take these three states away from him, and he still wins with 281 electoral votes (assuming Rhode Island).

Steep hill to climb, indeed.

Late Update: Just today, new polls at Pollster.com have bumped Obama's average in Nevada over 50%. Just thought I'd let you know.

The Tightening

2008-10-28T16:39:00.004-04:00

The conventional wisdom is that Presidential races (and perhaps most races at all levels) get closer in the final week of an election. With Barack Obama holding a rather significant lead coming into today, exactly one week before election day, are we beginning to see that tightening? Certainly, if you look at Pollster.com and turn the "sensitivity" up to high, you get this picture:

It does look like John McCain is closing in a bit, and Obama is falling off somewhat. That seems to suggest that there is, at the least, a bit of tightening happening at the national level (the state level is another matter). But I want to point out a few things about the national "race."

Before get there, though, let's look at more fun graphs (one of my loyal readers, in particular, has been very positive about these graphs I make). I took all the national polls from Pollster.com and plotted them here based on a five-day rolling simple average (just like my state graphs):

The five day averaging smooths out quite a bit of the variation, and leaves me with the unmistakable impression of relative stability. There may, indeed, be a bit of tightening today but, even so, the range for each candidate has been really narrow. Obama's low of 49% came 27 days out from the election, and his high of 51.6% was 9 days out. That's a range of less than 3 percentage points (and in fact every day except for his high point was within the range 49-51%). McCain's support has ranged from 41.7% to 43.5%, also remarkably stable.

Now, as I mentioned, part of that stability comes from the fact that I'm using a five day average. For state polls, that's useful because there are, in general, fewer polls. For the national numbers, it may be better to use a shorter time span, say 3 days. Here's that picture, with the 5 day lines in there just for comparison's sake:

Not a whole heck of a lot of difference, though the recent tightening is a bit more pronounced. My point in posting this second version, with a shorter rolling average time-span is to underline the basic stability of this race over the past 20 days or so.

I have one other point to make. Ignore Senator McCain's level of support for a moment and focus on Senator Obama's. Using either the 3 day or the 5 day average*, its clear that Obama's support hovers right around 50%. That is actually the key takeaway from all this, and it's a point that doesn't get mentioned enough in the media.

The media and the talking heads usually focus on the spread, the difference between Obama and McCain in any given poll, and that's ok. That margin is a good indicator, especially in the early days of a campaign. But as we get closert to election day, if one candidate is consistently at 50% or above, the margin no longer matters. Don't forget, the final margin is actually irrellevant. We operate in a winner-take-all system, so what matters is who gets to 50% (or more like 49.5% assuming 1% to minor candidates). The bottom line here is that if Obama has a solidified support of 50% to McCain's 44 or 45%, and there only remains about 4 or 5% of voters who have yet to decide, then there's not enough "undecideds" left for McCain to win over. He would essentially have to win all of the remaining undecideds to have shot at pulling even (I'll write about my feelings on how the undecideds will break down in a later post).

This principle, to look and see if one candidate has crossed the 50% threshold, both nationally and on a state-by-state basis, is how you should read the polls for the next seven days. I'll apply my own advice to current polling in battle ground states in my next post.

*Incidentally, in addition to the 3 and 5 day simple averages, I also produced a few graphs using 3 and 5 day weighted averages wherein polls are weighted according to sample size (bigger samples are more accurate). For those of you who are interested, here's that graph:

More 2004 and 2008 Comparisons

2008-10-27T14:45:00.013-04:00

A few days ago I wrote about how Barack Obama is outperforming both John Kerry and George Bush both nationally and in a couple of key states. Here is a quick update to that post. You can click on the graphs below to enlarge them and get a better look.

And here's one additional state for your viewing pleasure:

A couple of quick notes about these graphs. First, it does seem like, despite all the polls showing small movements here and there, the race has been pretty stable for the past 10 days or so. Second, Obama continues to do far better than Kerry* did, both at the national level and in key states. Third, the Florida race still looks a lot like a repeat of 2004, but with the parties flipped. I don't have any good reason for this, but it is interesting none-the-less. Finally, these numbers suggest that Obama is actually in a better position in Ohio than he is in Florida. I'm not sure if that jibes with my gut feeling, but them's the numbers.

*"Kerry" here refers to Senator John Kerry, 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate, and not to my Portland fan base. Hi Portland!

Is Georgia in Play?

2008-10-23T14:18:00.004-04:00

There is a new poll out today from Democracy Corps that shows Obama down only 2 points in Georgia. That's a substantially closer margin than most other recent polls, but it does beg the question, "Could Obama win Georgia?"

After the Mississippi primary back in the spring, I wrote a post asking that same question about Mississippi and the answer was basically, "no." In order for Obama to have a realistic shot in Mississippi, African American turnout would have to go up by about 10 percentage points over 2004 levels, or Obama would have to win substantially more white voters than Kerry did.

Georgia, it turns out, is a somewhat easier task, but still a long shot. Take a look at this graph:

This grpah shows the percentage of white voters that Obama would have to win in order to carry the state, given a variety of other assumptions (I assume 5% of the electoral will be both not White and not Black and that Obama will win 60% of these voters). The three blue lines correspond to differing levels of Black support for Obama, and on the X axis you have increasing degrees of Black turnout as a percentage of total voters. You can see pretty easily that as Black turnout increases, the share of White voters Obama needs to win goes down. That makes perfect sense. Also, the stronger the Black support is for Obama, the less White support he needs. Again, no surprise there.

Now, for the moment let's look at the middle blue line, which assumes 90% of Black voters will cast a ballot for Obama. This is a reasonable, though perhaps conservative, assumption given that 88% of African American voters supported Kerry four years ago. With 90% of the black vote, and 2004 turnout levels (as indicated by the red arrow on the left), you can see that Obama would need just under 35% of the White vote to win. Kerry got 23%, and even in today's very optimistic Democracy Corps survey, Obama's only winning 24% of Whites.

So, basically, Obama needs three ingrediants to win Georgia (or any state in the South for that matter):

1) Strong support among Black voters approaching unanimity
2) Black turnout at record levels
3) Slightly stronger support from White voters than Kerry got

To be more specific, for a squeaker win, Obama needs better than 90% Black support, an electorate with about 35% Black voters, and 25% of the White vote. Can he do it? Let's take them one at a time.

1) Better than 90% Black support? The Democracy Corps survey pegs his Black support at 90% even. The second most recent survey, from Research 2000, has it at 91%. Interestingly, both surveys show McCain with anemic levels of Black support, far lower than even Bush got four years ago (2% and 5% respectively, compare to 12% for Bush). Both polls, therefor, suggest that there are between 5 and 7% of Black voters who are still "undecided." If those folks split evenly, or even largely to McCain, that means Obama's support among African Americans will be closer to 92 or 93%. So, first ingredient: check.

2) African Americans make up about 30% of Georgia's population, but were only 25% of Georgia's electorate four years ago. Is a ten percent jump possible? The early data says that maybe it is. Early voting has already begun in Georgia, and already close to 900,000 ballots have been cast. That's 27% of the total ballots cast four years ago. So far, African Americans have made up about 35.5% of all early voters. Can that rate hold througout the election? I don't know, but for now, second ingredient: check.

3) Democracy corps has 24% of White voters supporting Obama, Research 2000 has it at 21%. Of course, these are polls, so we can't really know exactly where Obama's White support currently is. At the very least, it's not outside the realm of possibility that he gets to 25%.

The bottom line is that Obama has a real, but slim chance to win Georgia. This might be one state to watch on election night (call it an upset special, if you will).

All Pennsylvania, All the Time

2008-10-22T17:27:00.002-04:00

One of my loyal readers recently asked, "Will you please start posting about some other state besides Pennsylvania?" Fair enough, and I was all set to do that but then John McCain apparently decided to go "all in" on a Pennsylvania strategy.

In case you have missed it, the basic story is that McCain's campaign seems to think that along with Iowa and New Mexico, Colorado is also essentially out of reach for them. The problem, then, is that if Obama wins all the Kerry states along with those three states, that gives Obama 273 electoral votes and thus the Presidency. Note that this map would mean an Obama victory even if McCain won Ohio and Florida and Virginia and North Carolina and Missouri and Indiana. What has finally become clear to the McCain campaign is that if this election is allowed to play out entirely in "Red" states, then McCain cannot realistically hope to win the election. Unfortunately for the Republicans, there aren't many Kerry states where they both have a realistic shot at winning and are big enough to make a difference. Pennsylvania, I guess, is the state that comes closest (although if you'd asked anyone two months ago, everyone would have said Michigan was their best bet).

If you've read this blog before, you know that I think Pennsylvania is out of reach for McCain due in large part to the huge registration advantage the Democrats now have. Combine that with available polling which shows Obama ahead by double digit margins and it leaves one wondering how McCain thinks he can win there.

There is some suggestion that the internal polling from both campaigns shows a much closer race than the public polls do. That's possible, but there's no logical reason why internal polls would be inherently more accurate than public polls. Both suffer from the same sources of error (random variation, response bias, etc). This being the case, even if internal polls show a 4 or 5 point margin, compared to the 10 or 12 point margin the public polls, that still means a substantial Obama lead.

I do think that Obama is very unlikely to win Pennsylvania by more than, say, 6 or 7 points. But don't forget that Obama is competitive, maybe even ahead, in places like Virginia and Indiana. Kerry lost those states by big margins (8 and 20 points respectively). Even though Kerry won PA by only 2 points, there's no reason to think that Obama can't improve on that margin by some significant amounts since he's clearly besting Kerry's showing in other places.

Nevertheless, if McCain and Governor Palin begin spending much, even most, of their remaining time in Pennsylvania, do expect to see the polls reflect that attention. Will it be enough? I don't think so, but given the electoral map and the dwindling number of days left before November 4, I can certainly understand why the McCain camp is hoping they can pull off a big upset.

New PA Poll Really Bad News For McCain

2008-10-20T17:34:00.002-04:00

There's a new poll out of Pennsylvanian today that shows Obama ahead of McCain by 8 points. That's actually closer than many other polls have shown recently. So the question is, "Is McCain closing in Pennsylvania?" Actually, a close look at this poll suggests that McCain is actually toast in Pennsylvania.

First, there's the demographic make-up of the poll. Only 8% of the respondents were African-American, only 6% were aged 18-29, and only 18% were aged 30-44. Now, in 2004, the Pennsylvania electorate was 13% African American, 21% were under 29 years old, and 28% were 30 to 44 years old. So this sample was both much much older than the PA electorate and much whiter. Does anyone think that this year African-American and younger voters will turnout in lower numbers this year than four years ago?

Second, even though the sample is skewed towards demographic groups that lean McCain, he's still behind by a statistically significant margin. Furthermore, McCain's favorability rating is only 44% in this poll, and has only a +4 net favorability (Obama's is 52%, +18). What does that mean? It means like even in an older, whiter version of Pennsylvania, McCain is not so popular.

The bottom line is that McCain is in a deep hole in Pennsylvania. This doesn't mean that the media won't keep pretending that Pennsylvania's a battleground, because they will. It's important for the media that Pennsylvania be considered "close," because without PA, McCain has an extraordinarily narrow path to the White House.

Anyway, sorry to keep harping on the Keystone state.

Comparing 2008 to 2004

2008-10-17T16:58:00.012-04:00

By this point, I’m sure most of you don’t need much convincing that the contours of the current Presidential election are very different from 2004. But its worth looking at just how different. First, let’s take a very wide view. Below I’ve created a graph that plots the electoral votes that each candidate is projected to win based on Electoral-Vote.com, over the 30 days leading up to the election in both 2004 and this year.

There’s some interesting things here, but first we need to get some basics out of the way. The methodology of Electoral-Vote.com in 2004 was to award each state’s electoral votes based on the leader of the most current poll. That’s why you see such big swings back and forth between Kerry and Bush. There were a bunch of states that were very close and therefore polls kept showing the lead flip from one candidate to another. This year, however, Electoral-Vote.com decided to switch up its methods and now they use an average of the most recent polls (going back a week, I believe). The difference in methodologies explains why the 2008 lines are much more stable than the 2004 lines.

Stability issues aside, the graph reveals quite dramatically how different this race is right now. Obama has a lead that is greater than anything either Bush or Kerry ever achieved. Moreover, McCain is dwelling down in vote totals lower than anything suffered by Bush or Kerry. Indeed, neither Bush nor Kerry ever broke 300 electoral votes, and neither ever fell below 225. By contrast, Obama has not yet fallen below 350 electoral votes and McCain has yet to climb above 200.
So that’s the national picture. What about at the state level. Well, let’s look at my favorite state, Pennsylvania. Below is a graph of a the polling in Pennsylvania over the last 32 days leading up to election day this year and four years ago. Each day’s level is a simple average of all polls released that day and four days prior (a five-day rolling average, in other words).

This graph has a lot of the same patterns as the national picture. Obama is far outperforming Kerry and McCain is way behind Bush. The result is a big lead for Obama.

Finally, let’s look at one more state: Florida, that swingiest of swing states. Here’s the same graph for Florida:

Now this is really interesting. Again, Obama is outperforming Kerry and McCain is underperforming compared to Bush. But what I think is fascinating is how similar the Obama line is to the Bush line and how similar the McCain line is to the Kerry line. Of course, past performance is no guarantee of future behavior, but one wonders if the pattern will hold through the next few weeks. If so, we can expect polls to tighten some in Florida, but the averages will favor Obama.

One final note about Florida. Notice that in the final tally, Bush actually did far better than final polling suggested (by about 4 points). Since it is unlikely that all the undecideds broke his way (exit polls indicated that late deciders split about evenly), this disparity suggests the effects of a very successful get-out-the-vote effort. Indeed, we know that President Bush implemented an unprecedented GOTV operation in both Ohio and Florida (he similarly over-performed in Ohio by about 3 points). What does that mean for 2008? Well, if Obama does have a GOTV advantage, it could be worth up to four points.

Speculation aside, there is really no doubt that 2008 looks very different from 2004.

Another Look at Pennsylvania

2008-10-16T16:29:00.001-04:00

Three weeks ago, I wrote a long post about how registration data in Pennsylvania could be used to predict the outcome of the election there. I found that, even after making some generous assumptions for Senator McCain, he would still lose because there are simply way more Democrats than Republicans this year in Pennsylvania.

Well, three weeks have gone by and Pennsylvania isn’t looking quite as close as it did back in the middle of September (even my parents have mostly stopped worrying). Pollster.com now has Senator Obama ahead of Senator McCain by more than 12 points in PA. RealClearPolitics has the deficit at more than 13 points, and FiveThirtyEight.com has Obama ahead by 11. All three sites now list Pennsylvania as “Safe,” “Solid,” or “Strong,” for Obama. Quite a dramatic change from three weeks ago. But it might even be worse for McCain than that.

In the time since I wrote that initial post, registration has closed in Pennsylvania and so we have some “final” numbers to look at. If you’ll recall, my methodology is to use the relationship between county registration numbers and vote tallies from 2004 to predict the 2008 tallies. Three weeks ago, using this method, I came up with the following unadjusted prediction:

Obama – 54.6%
McCain – 45.4%

Now, between then and now, Democrats have added another 117,000 registrants while the Republicans have added only 41,000 new registrants. That’s right. In just a few weeks, the Democrats added to their registration advantage by more than half of the total margin by which John Kerry defeated George Bush. What do all these new registrations do to my prediction? Have a look:

Obama – 59.7%
McCain – 40.3%

A twenty point blow-out! Is that possible? Yes. Is it likely? Probably not, but it certainly suggests those polls showing Obama up by 15 are not outliers.

I also want to take this opportunity to address a question that readers have asked about the methodology. The questions is, “What about the independents?” As you probably noticed, I talked a lot about Democratic and Republic registration numbers, and how these numbers can be used to predict the outcome. Where are the independents? Well, they are actually already implicitly included in the model. The idea here is that the number of registered Democrats in a given county is an excellent predictor of the total number of votes that the Democratic candidate will receive in that county. Those votes can come from Democrats, Republicans and Independents, it doesn’t matter. The point is that the registration numbers are, indeed, great predictors of vote totals (at least in Pennsylvania). If there are many more registered Democrats than Republicans in a given county, it doesn’t matter how many registered Independents there are, the Democratic candidate will win that county. Why is this the case? Well, its probably the case because Independents aren’t usually all that independent. In fact, it turns out that most Independents have a fairly consisted lean toward one party or another. Moreover, and I’m speculating a bit here, it seems likely that in a county that is dominated by, say, Republicans, that the Independents are likely to be Republican leaners. Similarly, in a more closely divided county, it seems likely that the Independents are likely to more evenly divided. This may account for the fact that we can predict real vote totals based on party registrations alone.

The other question I’ve gotten is, “What about race?” Some have asked if race won’t make some of these Democrats act more like Republicans. That’s a fair question and even though I think that the events of the past few weeks will mitigate some of this behavior, I also think that there will be some otherwise Democratic-leaning voters who pull the lever for McCain because of race. But it would take a huge number of these folks to change the outcome. Indeed, for the regression model to predict a McCain victory, about 800,000 registered Democrats need to switch over and be treated like registered Republicans. For reference, 800,000 is more than 60% of the total number of voters who cast their ballot for Hillary Clinton in the primary. If McCain’s gonna pick off any Democrats its going to be among former Hillary voters. Does anyone believe that he can win more than 10% or 15% or even 20% of them?

The bottom line today is the same as it was three weeks ago. McCain will lose Pennsylvania because there are simply many more Democrats than Republicans in the state.

Wonkery in the Face of Wankery

2008-10-10T16:49:00.004-04:00

You might have noticed that most political reporting over the past several days has been focused on a guy named Bill Ayers. I have not written anything about Mr. Ayers nor do I intend to. Instead, in my own tiny little protest of how astoundingly useless the cable “news” networks are, I’m going to offer you the following wonky post about John McCain’s health care plan.

There are over 40 million people in this country without health insurance (8 million of them, by the way, are children), but the number of the uninsured is only one metric of the growing healthcare crisis we face. There are millions more who are “underinsured,” meaning they have some insurance but not enough to cover many illnesses or injuries. And then there are the millions of Americans for whom, though they have health insurance, health care costs are nevertheless eating up more and more of their budgets.

Not surprisingly, both candidates have plans to address this. Barack Obama’s plan (which I’m not going to go into in much detail) essentially builds on the current system, relying heavily on the employer-based healthcare coverage model, while expanding successful programs like Medicaid and SCHIP, and it includes subsidies for low-income families and mandatory coverage for children. Implementing Obama’s plan would actually mean very little for people who already have health insurance (though it may become somewhat cheaper under Obama’s plan), and is, fundamentally, not a particularly “revolutionary” proposal.

McCain’s plan, counter-intuitively, is much more radical, though much simpler. In a nutshell, Senator McCain wants to give everyone a $2,500 tax credit ($5,000 for couples) with which they can purchase their own health insurance coverage. This sounds great. If you don’t have health insurance, with the McCain tax credit, you’ll be able to buy it. If you do have health insurance, you can use the credit to help pay for it. Of course, in order to ensure that the credit is used only for health care, the money doesn’t go to you, it goes straight to the insurance company, but for those of you who already pay for health insurance (and most people do), that still means money in your pocket.

Now, if giving out checks of $2,500 to every American seems kind of expensive, you’re right, it is. McCain knows this and so his proposal is to begin taxing employer sponsored health benefits as income. This would be the first time in history that health benefits would be taxed like this.

To better understand this, let’s imagine up a hypothetical worker. Bob, age 25 and in good health, makes $40,000 a year at his job with Generic Co., where he also gets health insurance. His health benefit costs his employer $5,000 a year (which is about average for single coverage), and Bob pays about $50 a month. This year, when Bob pays his federal income taxes, his taxable income doesn’t include that $5,000 benefit, but under McCain’s plan, that $5,000 would be considered income and so, because Bob is in the 25% tax bracket, he would have to pay an additional $1,250 in federal income taxes.

But for Bob, that’s still a good deal. Sure, he has to pay more income taxes, but that’s offset by the tax credit, and the rest of the credit goes to pay all his health premiums. At the end of the day he’s $750 better off.

But wait. Bob’s a smart guy and he realizes pretty quickly that there is an easy way for him to be even better off under McCain’s plan. All he has to do is drop his employer provided health insurance and instead buy his own health coverage. Why? Because if he’s buying his own insurance instead of getting from his job, then he won’t be taxed on that benefit. He’ll still get the health credit to buy insurance, and he won’t have to pay the extra money in federal taxes. As long as he can find a private insurance policy that costs less than $2,500 a year, then he’ll end up the full $2,500 better off (and that’s not a problem for him, a young, single, healthy guy).

So, Bob drops his employer sponsored health coverage in favor of a policy purchased on the open market and he’s just made himself $2,500 richer. Herein lies the huge problem with the McCain health plan. It works just fine for people like Bob who are young and healthy and have no families to support. But for everyone else, things don’t work out quite as well.

Health insurance is, at base, is a bet that you make with your policy provider. You bet that’ll get sick sometime this year, and they bet you won’t. You pay them a monthly fee, and if you “win” they’ll pay for your care. If they “win” they get to keep your premiums. If you’re young and healthy, the health insurance company is especially eager to take that bet, and they’ll even take smaller monthly payments. If you’re older or you have some health problems, that company is going to be much more reluctant to make the bet without much higher payments from you and maybe they won’t make the bet at all.

But…perhaps they’d be willing to cover the older, sicker individual, to bet with him on his health, if he finds a young, healthy person to come in on the bet too, for a slightly higher cost than she would otherwise have to pay on her own. In that case, you see, the company feels a bit better about the bet because even if they lose on the older guy, they’ll win on the younger gal, and make money anyway. That’s essentially what happens with employer-sponsored coverage. The health insurance company offers “reasonable” premiums to large firms because they have both young and old workers, both sick and healthy employees.

Now back to Bob. Bob has figured out that under John McCain’s health plan he’s better off going outside his employer and getting health insurance on his own. Bob tells his co-worker Jackie, who is 28 and also healthy, about his discovery and she too drops out of the employer-sponsored coverage.

Jackie tells her colleague Sally about how great she has it now that McCain is President. Sally, unfortunately, is a bit older, and she has two kids. For family coverage, Generic Co. pays $12,000 a year (again, that’s the average cost for employer sponsored family coverage), of which Sally pays $100 a month. Sally makes $60,000 (also in the 25% tax bracket), and so the McCain plan means her health benefit costs her an additional $3,000 in income taxes at the end of the year, more than the $2,500 tax credit. Ouch. McCain has just cost her $500. Sally looks around for a private policy, but with her age and her two kids, she can’t find a single good policy (one with anything lower than a $1,000 deductible) that would cost less than $3,000 a year. Oh well, she guesses she’ll just stick with her employer coverage, even though its now costing her $500 more a year.

So far, we’ve seen that McCain’s plan is good for Bob and Jackie but not so good for Sally. Sadly, things are about to get a whole lot worse for Sally. Pretty soon, most of Generic Co.’s younger, healthier employees figure out that they’d rather get their coverage from private insurers. Soon after that, the health insurance company realizes that its bets on Generic’s employees aren’t looking so hot since all of the “good” bets are out of the game. They have no choice but to raise premiums for Generic Co. Now, Sally’s policy costs Generic Co. $15,000 instead of $12,000, and Sally’s income taxes rise by another $750. Moreover, Generic Co. can’t keep charging Sally only $100 a month, so they raise her monthly premium to $150 a month. All of sudden, the McCain health plan, which gave young and healthy Bob an additional $2,500 a year, has cost Sally and her two kids $1,850.

Sally’s actually not the biggest victim of the McCain plan, however. Sally, at least, still has health coverage because Generic Co. decided to eat the extra costs instead of dropping health coverage all-together. Lots of other companies, of course, will make the obvious choice and forgo offering health insurance altogether. Offering health benefits only to your older and sicker employees is a profit-killer, and most businesses won’t do it.

McCain wants people to buy health insurance on the open market like they would any other good, and his plan would certainly make this happen. It might take a few years, but the end result of his proposal would be an end to employer based coverage. While that might work out ok for young, healthy, single folks, it would be an absolute disaster for the middle-aged, for sick people, and for parents and kids.

I should also note, by the way, that I haven’t even touched on several other aspects of McCain’s plan that would also have extremely negative, but currently hidden, effects (things like the impact of the rising costs of health care, and his proposal to allow people to buy insurance across state lines).

Wonky blog post accomplished. Take that, CNN.

McCain Campaign Incapable of "Straight Talk"

2008-10-03T16:46:00.004-04:00

In my continuing quest to bring you incredibly minor pieces of election related "news," today I call your attention to the following web ad that appeared on the Washington Post's website:

Notice the attribution for the quote? Ah, a "famous person" thought that Palin, "killed." That's pretty funny, right? Clearly the campaign made a tiny mistake and sent out a version of the ad before it was finalized. This kind of thing is pretty common in campaigns. You add a bit of filler text to something (a memo, a press release, a web ad, etc.) and then you forget to go back in and replace the filler with the actual content. Totally harmless (the "famous person," by the way, was supposed to be Peggy Noonan, who apparently did make that comment on MSNBC last night), right?

Weird, then, that when the McCain campaign is asked about this little mistake, their response is:

"Is she not a famous person?" asked McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb, queried about the ad. Given an assent that Noonan is, indeed, famous (or, at least, famous in political circles), he continued, "OK, so what's the problem?"

"If there's no factual inaccuracy, I don't know what the problem is," he added.

"I don't know what the problem is." What a strange response. Why doesn't he just say something like, "Whoops, this is a little mistake. The ad's designer wasn't told who gave the quote and we just forgot to replace the filler with the real name. The quote's obviously right, so harm done." Instead, it appears that Mr. Goldfarb wants us to believe either that the campaign released the ad that way on purpose ("Is she not a famous person") or that there's nothing wrong with an ad that has no actual attribution of the central quote on it ("I don't know what the problem is"). Either way, it's a really odd answer, and totally unneccesary.

Without reading too much into this strange small episode, I do think it reflects the defensive crouch from which the McCain campaign seems to be operating lately. Every little question is interpreted as an attack. No mistake can be admitted. Slip-ups are denied, flubs are obfuscated, and gaffes are spun. Of course, every campaign does this to one degree or another, but with this web ad, I think McCain's team is taking it to a whole new level.

David Broder: Bellwether for Lazy Pundits

2008-10-02T16:26:00.004-04:00

I admit that I've never been a big fan of David Broder. I find his columns generally boring and not very insightful. I also think he is too enamored of his own status as a shaper of the conventional wisdom. But today's column in the Washington Post is a real doozy. It's not that the column is overtly wrong or misleading or anything like that. It's just...well...lazy and mildly stupid.

In this column, Broder writes about going to Michigan to "check the public reaction to the first debate of 2008." He does this by doing "man-on-the-street" interviews with people, "outside a Sam's Club in one shopping center, outside a Target in a second and on a downtown...corner with three fast-food restaurants." This, on the face of it, is really stupid. Anecdotal evidence is almost completely useless when one is trying to gauge public opinion. Standing outside a Sam's Club or some fast food restaurants doesn't change that, despite the implicit suggestion that "real Americans" can be found in these places. These types of interviews can be used to illustrate findings in scientific polls, certainly, but Broder's column is based entirely on them, despite the fact that there has been ample public polling coming out of Michigan in recent days.

Broder does mention these polls at the very top of his column writing:

The Michigan polls I had seen...drew a confusing picture. One had Obama ahead by four points; another by seven, a third by 10 and the last by 13.

A confusing picture? Really? There were four polls, all showed Obama ahead, three of the four showed Obama ahead by statistically significant margins, and two of them showed him with double digit leads. What's confusing? These polls all point strongly towards a substantial Obama lead. For some reason, Broder pretends that four polls showing an average Obama lead of 8.5 points is "confusing."

Then Broder explains that he's going to talk to voters in Oakland County, Michgian because Oakland County, "is a classic bellwether area." It's such a bellwether, writes Broder, that:

In 2000, when Al Gore carried Michigan by 5.1 percentage points, he won Oakland by 1.2 points. In 2004, both were even closer. John Kerry won Michigan by 3.4 percentage points and Oakland by one-half a point.

Ok, this is getting ridiculous. Generally, when we talk about "bellwethers" we're talking about places that reflect the views or preferences of the larger public. A "bellwether" state, for example, is one in which the vote closely aligns with the national popular vote. Similarly, if Oakland County were really a "bellwether" county for Michigan, then its votes in 2000 and 2004 should have been in line with the statewide vote. But it wasn't. In fact, as Broder tells us, in both years, Bush did about 3 percentage points better in Oakland County then he did statewide. Oakland's not a bellwether, it's more Republican leaning than the state as a whole.

Broder seems to be confusing a "bellwether" with someplace that's evenly divided. Think about the 1988 election, for example. In that year, George H.W. Bush won the popular vote by about 8 percentage points. In Pennsylvania, however, he won by only about 2%. Does that make Pennsylvania a "bellwether?" Of course not. If you treated Pennsylvania as a good indication of the election as a whole, you'd have a skewed picture of the outcome. Ohio, on the other hand, went for Bush that year by 9%, a much better "bellwether."

Look, I don't mean to harp on this one point, but a lot of people read David Broder and this column is just full of laziness. It really reads like he wrote the column two weeks ago and didn't bother to make it fit reality. Michigan's not actually all that close, Oakland County is not a good bellwether, anectodal interviews are utterly useless and don't illuminate anything, and finally, the column ends without making any coherent point.

At the risk of being glib, Broder is a good "bellwether" for the chattering classes. They aren't evil or stupid or biased, they're just lazy and suffer terribly from a lack of creative and critical thinking. This column is a perfect example of those weaknesses.

Is It Over?

2008-10-01T18:53:00.005-04:00

Whew, today was a seriously bad day of polling for Senator John McCain. Tons of new polls out, both nationally and at the state level, that show Obama ahead by significant margins (and I use that term in the statistical as well as real world sense). Most troubling for the McCain Camp has got to be these polls from Quinnipiac:

Florida: Obama 51, McCain 43

Ohio: Obama 50, McCain 42

Pennsylvania: Obama 54, McCain 39

If McCain loses these three states, there is simply no realistic way for him to win. Indeed, if he loses two of these three, his chances of winning are very slim, so this poll is very worrying for them. But I'm sure that they'd like to take comfort in the fact that this is only one poll, and that, in all likelihood, Obama isn't really up by 15 points in Pennsylvania, right?

Yes and no. It does seem unlikely that Obama is really ahead by that much in PA. On the other hand, how do you explain this:

Franklin and Marshall College (9/23-28/08) Obama 48, McCain 43
FOX/Rasmussen (9/28/08) Obama 50, McCain 42
Muhlenberg (9/26-30/08) Obama 48, McCain 41

Three other polls out today all showing Obama with leads of between 5 and 8 points. Yikes.

The story is the same with Florida. Even if you don't believe the Quinnipiac polls, it's tough to ignore these other polls:

CNN/Time (9/28-30/08) Obama 51, McCain 47
Suffolk (9/27-30/08) Obama 46 , McCain 42

The story is a bit more complicated in Ohio where one other poll out today showed a slim Obama lead, while a third showed a slim McCain lead.

Leaving Ohio aside for the moment, I think we can say with near certainty that if the election were held today, Obama would win both Pennsylvania (comfortably) and Florida (narrowly), as well as the national popular vote (comfortably - as mentioned, there have been, like, a kabillion polls out today showing Obama leads of at least 5 points) and thus the Presidency. That brings me to the title of this post. Is it over?

Short answer: no. As I've argued before, I think that Pennsylvania is in the bag for Obama. I thought that even before his big move in the polls. But Obama needs more than PA to win the election. Conservatively, he needs some (at most two) of the following states: Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri. He is close or ahead right now in all of these states, putting him in very good position. But let's not forget that one of the big reasons Obama is polling so well in places like North Carolina is the recent economic news. When Americans are focused on economic issues, Obama does better. There is no guarantee that the economy will remain issue #1 from now until the election. In fact, it is likely that there will be some news that redirects the public's attention. Indeed, John McCain's campaign will try to do whatever they can to help American's focus on something else (expect some really nasty ads).

In addition, history suggests that all races tighten to some degree as election day draws near. Even though Obama is likely enjoying his largest lead of the year, it is unlikely to remain this big all the way until election day.

All of this is to say that Obama supporters should steel themselves for some, as yet undetermined, point in the next five weeks when it appears that the race has gotten "too close to call" again.

A Small Suggestion for Congress

2008-09-29T17:18:00.002-04:00

With the bailout plan going down in spectacular flames today and the markets following suit, the question is now, "what happens next." As Nate Silver points out, a big part of the failure of the plan was that Congressman in competitive districts voted against it. This shouldn't have been much of a surprise. Usually, Congress tries to adjourn well before an election without voting on anything substantial. This is because its very difficult to get Members to take hard votes with an election looming right in front of them. Can you imagine trying to pass a huge bill, with very little time for public education, just five weeks before an election?

So, here's my proposal. Treasury Secretary Paulson has already said that, even with the $700 billion he's asking for, he's only planning on using about $50 billion a month. Why doesn't Congress give him the $50 billion for next month, and then come back after the election for a lame-duck session to pass the rest of the plan (in whatever form they want)? That way, the markets can calm down a bit knowing that Paulson is able to get started right now, Congress can focus on coming up with a plan that will garner wider support without the pressures of an election a month away, and it gives them more time to explain the situation to us in the public. There is a reason that major legislation almost always happens in the first few months of a new Congress.

So let's do the smart thing here. Give Paulson some money and put this off until electoral politics won't poison the whole discussion.

Forgetting Her Lines

2008-09-26T18:50:00.003-04:00

I was chatting tonight with my wife about Governor Palin's interview with Katie Couric. If you haven't seen it, it's pretty tough to watch. Palin struggles to put together coherent responses to Couric's questions, even when Couric gives her a second (and sometimes third) chance to pull it together. Witness this exchange:

Katie Couric: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

Sarah Palin: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundry that we have with Canada. It's funny that a comment like that was kinda made to … I don't know, you know … reporters.

Couric: Mocked?

Palin: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.

Couric: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign-policy credentials.

Palin: Well, it certainly does, because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there…

Couric: Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

Palin: We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It's very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right next to, they are right next to our state.

The video of it is actually even more remarkable. I honestly could not figure out how it was possible for her, a woman who must have gone through hours and hours of preparation, to botch this interview so badly.

My wife had the best take on it I've heard so far. She and I both did a bit of theater when we were younger and she said that Palin's responses reminded her of nothing so much as someone forgetting their lines in a play. She characterized it this way (I'm paraphrasing my wife here):

There are two kinds of actors when it comes to forgetting your lines. The first type is the actor who has internalized the meaning of the lines, the bigger ideas and flow of the scene and therefore, if she forgets the exact line, she can ad lib her way through even if the words aren't precisely what was in the script. The second type is the actor who just memorizes the words themselves, not the words' place in some larger thematic picture. For this actor, if he forgets the words, he's lost, and can't get through the scene because he hasn't really learned what the scene is about or where its going. This actor tries desperately to remember the exact lines and begins spitting out any words he can remember from the script in the hope that he'll jumpstart his memory.

Palin is like the second type. Of course she's been given lines to repeat. All candidates have lines to some degree. Her problem is that if the interviewer throws a curveball, or frames a question in an unfamiliar way, or if she simply forgets her script, she's lost. Clearly, Palin had some talking points floating around in her head about Russia and its proximity to Alaska, but she couldn't quite pull them out all together, and because she hasn't actually internalized the structure of that argument, or the overall theme of that argument, she couldn't save herself and instead offered a jumble of words that don't make much sense together.

This problem is even clearer in other parts of the interview. So, does this disqualify her for the Vice-Presidency? I don't know, but it certainly raises some questions about her supposed reputation as a "quick study." Memorizing (and then forgetting) your lines without understanding the ideas behind them is not a good strategy for an actor, and its not a good strategy for someone aspiring to the number two office in the country.

Could McCain's Debate Snub Put Mississippi in Play?

2008-09-25T22:26:00.009-04:00

Several polls have now been taken and Americans want to see a debate tomorrow night. And people in Oxford, Mississippi really want to see a debate tomorrow night. They have invested millions of dollars and several years(!) planning for this, and even the Republican Governor got in front of the cameras today and made it clear he wants a debate tomorrow night.

Could Mississippians feel sufficiently snubbed by McCain as to put the state in play? Certainly, if David Letterman's reaction to being blown off by McCain is any indication (which, of course, it's not), then some folks in Oxford might be feeling pretty darn angry with the Republican candidate for President.

What would it take for Obama to win in Mississippi? A few months back, after Obama's huge primary win there, I produced this graph (at right).

It shows that, in order for Obama to win Mississippi, he would need big African American turnout (say, 38 or 39% of the electorate), win 90 or 95% of African Americans, and then win upwards of 20 to 25% of the white vote (Kerry won 14% of the white vote). Those are some tall orders.

There have been two relatively recent polls of Mississippi, and they both show basically the same thing. ARG has the race as McCain 55, Obama 39, and Research 2000 has the race as McCain 52, Obama 39. Looking internally, the polls have Obama winning 11% and 14% of white voters, and then 88% and 80% of black voters (incidentally, both polls have a sample size of 600 likely voters).

Now, let's imagine that McCain's snub has its biggest affect in Oxford and NE region of Mississippi. That region makes up about a quarter of the state's electorate, and right now, according to the Research 2000 poll, McCain is winning that region 57-34. A swing of 5 percent of the population (-5 to McCain +5 to Obama) in this region and 2 percent in the other parts of the state would leave the race at McCain 49, Obama 42. That leaves about 8% undecided, if we give 1% to 3rd party candidates. According to both polls, most of the undecided voters, interestingly, are Black. Assuming Obama wins the vast majority of these Black undecided voters (say 70%), that would be a 5 point boost, bringing Obama up to 47%. Close, but no cigar.

The fact is, the underlying structure of the electorate in Mississippi is too heavily weighted in McCain's favor (just like Pennsylvania is too heavily weighted against him). I think it is possible, if people in Mississippi are angry about the debate shenanigan, that you could see some polls showing Obama a bit closer here then he was before, but in reality, it's too far a reach for him barring absolutely massive African American turnout.

Cell Phones and Polls

2008-09-25T17:43:00.002-04:00

I have been a skeptic of the argument that the polls are undercounting Obama supporters due to a “cell-phone” affect. The idea here is thus: most polling outfits use only landlines to contact potential respondents. A growing number of people do not have landlines, but use only cell phones. These cell-phone only folks are likely to be younger, and therefore likely to be Obama supporters. Excluding cell-phone voters means a biasing your sample in favor of McCain.

People started making this argument back in 2004 and as I said, I have been very skeptical of it. For one thing, I doubted that the number of cell-phone only voters was nearly large enough to make any kind of difference. For example, there must be some number of voters out there who don’t have phones at all. These people also are likely to back the Democratic candidate (based on the assumption that they don’t have phones due to financial constraints), but we never heard much about their impact, or lack thereof, on public polling because there just aren’t enough of them. Secondly, I figured that even if pollsters were worried about those cell-voters, they could easily reweight their sample to add slightly more young people since there was no reason to believe that, if voters who only have cell phones are disproportionately young, they are any different politically from other young voters. Finally, and most importantly, I was skeptical because I didn’t see actual hard evidence supporting the claim.

As recently as this weekend I maintained my skepticism as the effects of cell phone only voters. But I have to admit that, this week, I have begun to reevaluate my opinion based on two new analyses. First, Nate Silver at fivethrityeight.com did some analysis comparing polls taken by firms that include cell phones in their samples and those that do not. He found that adding cell phones improves Obama’s relative standing by about 2.8 percentage points on average (meaning if he was ahead by 2 before cell phones, he’s ahead by about 5 afterwards). Then, today, we have a new report from Pew about cell phones and polling and they find that adding cell phones “results in slightly more support for Obama and slightly less for McCain, a consistent difference of two-to-three points in the margin.” Nearly identical findings to Nate Silver. Furthermore, a big part of the reason for this impact is that, contrary to my assumptions stated above, cell-phone only voters are actually different from young people in general. More specifically, they appear to be even likelier to back Obama.

So what does this mean? Should we all just add two points for Obama to every poll we see? Hmm, probably not. For starters, some polls actually are already including cell phones in their samples (see here ) so there’s no reason to adjust those polls. Also, it’s not at all clear that the effect is the same across states. There might be good reason to believe, in fact, that the cell phone affect would be higher in some places than others (New York probably has a higher percentage of cell phone only voters than Iowa, for example).

This is probably a good place for me to reiterate my belief that looking at the day to day fluctuations of individual polls isn’t a very good way to evaluate the state of the race. We all tend to treats poll as if they were censuses (“Obama IS two points ahead,” “McCain gained three from last week”) when of course they are samples. Sampling contains error, both inherent random error and human introduced error. Cell phones are only one part of that.

I think the lesson here is less about what the polls tell us than about what they don’t. Polls are very good tools, but they can’t give us a perfect picture of the electorate’s preferences. Cell phones and weighting by party id (a topic for another post) and Bradley affects are part of the package. My bet is that 39 days from now, the polls will still show a close race with about 5% undecided, and even then all will be reasonably sure of is that no one’s gonna run away with it.

Ow! No Fair! Time Out!

2008-09-24T17:26:00.002-04:00

For some reason, today's news reminded me of my youth. Specifically, I recall incidents wherein my older brother and I would be wrestling on the floor of our living room and him pinning me. Since he was larger than I, and stronger (at the time...now I could totally take him), my strategy was to call a "Time Out!"

"Come on, time out! Time out! I need to catch my breath. No, seriously, time out!"

My brother didn't fall for that and neither should Barack Obama.

On a day when poll after poll after poll after poll has shown Obama moving into the lead, and when news reports reveal that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis was on the payroll Freddie Mac payroll (to the tune of $15,000 a month) up until just a few weeks ago, McCain tries to call a time out.

I understand his strategy. It was the same strategy I used back when I was 7. He needs to try to change the narrative here. The race was already shifting back to equilibrium before last Monday and since then, things have gotten worse for McCain. He's looking at the next six weeks and wondering how he can possibly get the upper hand if the whole election is about the economy. He's pinned. So what he wants to do is get the referees to let him reset.

And that's the big question. What will the refs do? The refs, back on the living room floor, were my parents. In this case, the refs are the press. So, will the press treat this as what it obviously is, a naked ploy to alter the trajectory of the campaign, or will they pretend that a politician running for president is actually being apolitical?

Let's hope the press follows the lead of the American public: only 14% of Americans think the refs should grant a time out.

Poll Suggests Clinton Backers Still Wary of Obama; I Suggest Poll is Stupid

2008-09-23T22:24:00.004-04:00

A new AP poll out yesterday suggests that Obama is still having a lot of trouble convincing former Clinton backers to come around and support him. Specifically, the poll found that only 58% of Clinton supporters have made the switch to Obama. Boy, that seems like real bad news for Obama, right?

I don’t think so. For two reasons. First, this AP poll is almost certainly understating the percentage. This poll uses a somewhat strange methodology. Instead of taking a new sample every time, they took one sample of about 2,000 people back in November of 2007 and then they go back to the same sample every few months to gauge how their opinions have shifted. That is a serious mistake, in my opinion. The reason that pollsters take new samples each time is because the make-up of the electorate, both demographically and in terms of opinions, is not static. Indeed, it is extraordinarily unlikely that the electorate looks the same today as it did 10 months ago. Think about all that’s happened since November 2007. For one thing, there has been a huge addition to the pool of possible voters, in the form of new registrations. A sample collected 10 months ago doesn’t, by definition, include any of those new registered voters (including those people who registered so they could vote for Clinton in the primaries). If a pollster came to us and said, “I took this sample in 1998, it should still be good as a representative sample today,” we’d laugh them right out of the room. Of course, there is a difference between 10 years and 10 months, but the sample is stale none-the-less.

Furthermore, the people in this stale sample have, of course, been asked these same questions multiple times by the same survey organization (that’s the whole idea with this ‘methodology’). It seems to me that the strong psychological imperative to appear “consistent” might be at play here much more than out in the regular world.

So, there are strong reasons to discount this poll out of hand. But let’s assume, for the moment, that the poll is generally accurate. Does it mean that Obama is doomed? Actually, I’d argue the opposite is true. According to this poll, Obama is getting 60% of former Clinton supporters, while John McCain is getting about 25%. That means that, assuming Clinton supporters make up about half of all Democrats, Obama is currently ahead in the national polls even though he only has the support of 80% of Democrats. John McCain is, apparently, winning about 12.5% of Democrats, so that leaves 7.5% of Democrats who are still undecided. If Democrats make up about 35% of the electorate, then that would mean that among the approximately 5% of the whole electorate that currently tell pollsters they are undecided, according to this poll, about half are actually Clinton Democrats. Essentially, this poll, if correct, means that most of the undecideds out there lean heavily towards the Democrats, and are likely to either end up voting for Obama or staying home. Sure there’s some resentment there, but if they haven’t moved to McCain yet, they probably never will, and most of them will vote their party when they get to the ballot box.

So that poll would be great news for Obama, if it weren’t terribly flawed.

Why Barack Obama Will Win Pennsylvania

2008-09-23T01:48:00.002-04:00

A seriously long post to make up for months of not posting at all.

I’m originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (as most of you probably know), so who wins my home state means a quite a bit to me. Also, I’ve been having an ongoing argument with my parents (who still live in Pittsburgh) trying to persuade them of my belief that Barack Obama will win the Keystone state.

Now, polls have the state very close. Pollster.com says its 47.4% to 44.7% in Obama’s favor. RealClearPolitics has it as 47% to 44.5%, and fivethirtyeight.com says 46.8% to 43.6%. All together, it’s close. And despite Obama’s recent uptick in the national (and several state) polls, he doesn’t appear to be gaining much ground in PA.

This being the case, why am I so confident of Obama’s chances in Pennsylvania? Two words: registration advantage.

Let me back up a bit and go over some fundamental statistical concepts (feel free to skip down if this gets boring). Correlation is a measure of the strength of the relationship between two sets of numbers. For example, there is a strong correlation between the height and weight of an adult human male (female too). If you know someone’s height, you can guess their weight with relative accuracy. If two sets of numbers have a perfect correlation, that means if you know one, then you know for certain what the other is. Here’s a simple example. I give test to 100 students. The test has 10 questions on it, and every student gives an answer to every question on the test. There is a perfect correlation between the number of right answers a student gives and the number of wrong answers that same student gives (i.e. if I say Student A got 4 right, can you tell me with certainty how many she got wrong?).

In math terms, we measure perfect correlation as the number 1. We measure no correlation as the number 0. Everything in between is some correlation (negative correlation also exits, but its not really relevant here – indeed the above example of the test scores is actually an example of negative correlation, but I digress), with higher numbers meaning stronger predictive relationship between the two sets of numbers.

Ok, enough with the stats for a moment. In 2004, there was an exceedingly strong correlation between the number of people registered as Democrats, by county, in Pennsylvania and the number of votes cast for the Democratic candidate for President, John Kerry. In fact, the correlation was approximately 0.98 (that’s really high!). What that means is, that after a bit of fancy math (essentially conducting a bi-variate regression), we can take the registration numbers in each county and predict, with a high degree of accuracy what the vote totals look like. For those of you who are interested, the regression equation for the Democrats in 2004 was:

Votes for Kerry = (0.6986 x Dem Registration) + 2295.1

What that just means is that if you tell me that, in November 2004, there were 92,922 Democrats registered in Erie County (there were), then the regression equation would suggest that Kerry should receive 67,210 votes in Erie county. In fact, he got 67,921 votes. Not too shabby (there are some counties which don’t work as well, which I will come to later).

You might see where I’m going with this, but before I get there, let me mention a few other things. The Republicans also have a regression equation that helps us predict vote totals from registration numbers. The correlation, for the GOP, is not quite as strong as the Democrats’, but, at 0.97, its still quite strong. Here’s the Republican 2004 equation:

Votes for Bush = (0.7694 x GOP Registration) + 2594.3

Those of you who remember your high school math will recognize that decimal in both equations as the slope of the line. In this context the slope can be thought of as the number of votes each candidate can expect from every 1 voter registered in his or her party – in other words, its kind of like turnout. In 2004, the GOP turned out nearly 77% of its party members to the Democrats 70%. It’s not precise, of course, because there are independents and third party registrants who end up voting for the major candidates. Nevertheless, the slope is certainly a good measure of relative turnout, if not absolute turnout – in 2004, the GOP got more bang for its registration buck (the number after the plus sign is the intercept – the way to conceptualize this is that the intercept is the number of votes you’d get in a county that has zero registrants in your party).

Before turning to how all this can be used to predict the outcome of the 2008 election, it is important to remember that one year of data, no matter how robust, could be just an aberration. Have no fear. I looked at 2000 as well. Though the two elections have some significant differences, overall, the basic outline is the same. The correlation between registration and votes is 0.98 for the Democrats and 0.96 for the Republicans; so again, registration is a good predictor of vote tallies. The biggest difference is that turnout was much lower for both parties. Here are the regression equations for 2000:

Votes for Gore = (0.6056 x Dem Registration) + 3330.2
Votes for Bush = ( 0.6298 x GOP Registration) + 3490.7

From 2000 to 2004, both parties increased their turnout, getting more votes per registered voter than they had in the previous election (though the GOP did better in both years), but overall, the predictive strength of the equations is very good for both parties in both elections.

One last thing, and then I promise we’re getting to the good stuff. As you’ve no doubt figured out by now, my intention is to apply the 2004 regression equations to the 2008 registration numbers to get a projection for the county by county vote in Pennsylvania, but before I do that, let’s take a quick look at how this method would have fared four years ago. Taking the 2000 regression equation and then applying it to 2004 registration data would have resulted in the following projected statewide vote tallies:

Kerry – 2,413,651
Bush – 2,378,521

And the actual vote tallies were:

Kerry – 2,938,095
Bush – 2,793,847

“Gosh those projections were off,” you’re probably thinking right now, and of course you’d be right. The 2000 regression equations assume 2000 turnout levels. But of course turnout in 2004 was much higher for both parties, so the actual vote totals are higher than the projections. But forget the absolute numbers for a moment. Let’s look at the percentage of the two-party vote. First the projection:

Kerry – 50.4%
Bush – 49.6%

Now the actual:

Kerry – 51.2%
Bush – 48.8%

Not bad, not bad at all. And don’t forget, the key thing is getting the order right. In other words, based on the number and distribution of registered voters in 2004, we would have accurately predicted a slim Kerry win.

Ok, the moment you’ve been waiting for…let’s take a look at the projection of votes resulting from an application of the 2004 regression equations onto the 2008 (as of September 9) registration numbers:

Obama – 3,162,681 (54.6%)
McCain – 2,627,249 ( 45.4%)

Whoa, mama! A nine point win! What the heck? How could that be? Well, here’s what happened. Since 2004, the Democrats have added 320,000 additional registered voters. That’s what accounts for Obama’s projected 200,000 vote improvement over Kerry. And what accounts for McCain actually doing worse than Bush? Well, since 2004, the number of GOP registered voters has dropped by 215,000. That means that even though the GOP gets more “bang for their buck,” more votes per registered voter, with a net loss of more than 500,000, that’s a deep hole to climb out of.

But now you’re thinking, “Yeah, but 2008 isn’t 2004, and besides aren’t some of those new ‘Democrats’ really Republicans who just switched so they could vote in the primary, and what about all those Democrats who voted for Clinton but who’ll never vote for Obama and…” All good points. Let’s address them one at a time.

First, how many of those new “Democrats” are actually just Republicans who switched in order to vote in a more meaningful primary. Well, between November 2007 and April 2008, the number of registered GOP voters fell by 60,000. The Dem rolls increased by much more than that, but let’s assume that all 60,000 of those former GOP voters simply switched over. Though that seems somewhat unlikely, it does jibe with the exit polls from the primary which suggested about 3% of voters in the Democratic primary were Republican. In any case, let’s be generous and assume that all 60,000 of those people should be treated like Republican registered voters, not Democratic registered voters. With these new registration numbers the projection looks like this:

Obama – 3,119,457 ( 53.8%)
McCain – 2,674,854 (46.2%)

Ok, but what about Clinton! Presumably some of those “Democrats” who voted in the Primary for Senator Clinton should really be treated as Republicans, right? Sure, I buy that to some degree. Fortunately, we can take the primary results and allocate some of those Clinton supporters who are, after all registered Democrats, and have the regression equation treat them as if they were registered Republicans. But how many? Well, polls seem to suggest that Obama is “having trouble” winning over anywhere between 10% and 20% of former Clinton supporters. So let’s start at 15% and see where that gets us.

Just to be clear, we’re taking 15% of the Clinton voters in every county and telling the regression equation to treat them as Republicans rather than Democrats. Basically, we’re giving the GOP a registration boost of about 190,000, and taking away the same from the Democrats (a net gain for the GOP of 380,000 voters). Also, we’re keeping in our switch of 60,000 faux Democrats, despite the fact that we’re certainly double counting (some of those 60,000 are also in the 190,000 Clinton voters) so that brings the total net registration gain for the GOP to 500,000. Not only that, we’ll assume that McCain can turn out these lapsed Democrats out at the same rate as actual registered Republicans, another generous assumption. What happens to our projection now?

Obama – 2,985,846 (51.4%)
McCain – 2,822,006 (48.6%)

Obama still wins, albeit by much smaller margin. Finally, one last tweak. There are four counties, large counties, in which the regression equation either greatly overestimates or underestimates the turnout per registered voter for one or both parties. In Allegheny county, for example, in both 200 and 2004 the Bush actually earned more votes than there were registered republicans. On the other hand, in Delaware County, in both 2000 and 2004 Bush’s vote total was only a bit more than half the total number of registered Republicans. There are a few of these counties for Democrats too. After adjusting the projection for county-specific affects, here is the last projection:

Obama – 3,018,099 (51.7%)
McCain – 2,818,630 (48.3%)

So…why am I confident that Barack Obama will win Pennsylvania? Because right now, he holds a registration advantage of over 1.1 million voters. Because in the past two elections, the correlation between registrations and vote tallies approached perfection. Because even if 20% of people who voted for Clinton in the primary decide to act more like Republicans than Democrats then Obama still wins (in fact, with my assumptions, the “Clinton voter as Republican” rate would have to be 26% to switch the outcome). Because this whole exercise doesn’t even take into account the fact that in 2004, there were 250,000 registered Democrats in Philadelphia alone who didn’t vote!

The polls suggest Pennsylvania will be close, and I think it will be. But close isn’t going to do it for John McCain. When we get closer to the election, I’ll write a post about what vote totals to look for on election night to see if McCain has a chance to pull off a major upset.

For those of you who made it to the end of this post, congratulations. I hope it was worth your time.

Registration data and election results come from PA Dept. of State.

The Speech

2008-03-18T22:08:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about Senator Obama's speech all day. I've been having trouble getting my thoughts straight and figuring out what to write about it. Not that I have to write about it. There's plenty of commentary out there that I think is both astute and insightful.

So, I will add only one basic thought.

In this country, politics has been tied up with race since the very beginning. From slavery to civil rights to immigration to affirmative action, every generation of Americans has grappled with race and expressed some of those struggles through the political process. Most of the time, race bubbles beneath the surface, informing and influencing. A good example is the Southern Strategy of the 1970's and 80's, whereby the Republicans used subtly racist appeals to Southern white voters to shift those states into the GOP column. The strategy clearly worked and I think you can easily make the argument that its effects are still being felt today.

Other times, rare times, race takes center stage. Often when that happens, it comes with violence, unrest and lingering bitterness. There aren't many political leaders who can talk about race in a way that doesn't delegitimize people's genuine concerns, but does empower them to consider another viewpoint. In many ways, people like Al Sharpton and Pat Buchanan are very similar. They both talk about race and they both speak to their constituencies with relative openness about their grievances. But both have utterly failed to bring about anything that we might call healing.

I don't know if Barack Obama can deliver "healing". I do know that, for the first time in my life, I feel some real hope for national progress on issues of race. I think we'll be talking about this speech for decades.

Politics and Pr-hos

2008-03-17T21:30:00.003-04:00

As you may have noticed (all 15 of you), I did not post at all on the biggest political story from last week. I am referring, of course, to the surprising and sad revelations regarding former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer. I want to say now, with his resignation behind us and the media beginning to move on to more important things, that I deliberately did not want to post because I did not want to add even the tiny little voice of this blog to the horrible cacophonic dissonance that burst out of the gaping maw that is the modern media. It was hard not to miss the barely concealed glee with which the "reporters" on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News doled out every last scrap of information. I don't know if you were watching but on the day Mr. Spitzer announced his resignation, every single one of those so-called news organizations showed non-stop coverage of the car in which the then-governor was traveling to the announcement. The car! It was just driving through the streets of the city and yet not one station cut away to anything else. In fact, on MSNBC they were even showing a split screen with the car on one side and the empty podium, the car's destination, on the other. A driving car and an empty podium. This is what passes for news.

So I did not post on that story. As my own little protest, I resolved not to post until the story had died down, and the new governor was sworn in.

With my rant on the sorry state of tv news out of the way, let me "begin" by saying that Mr. Spitzer was right to resign. He committed a crime, he betrayed the public trust, and, from a purely political perspective, the story was just too huge for him to outlast it. But I think there is an important question that has not only been unanswered during all of this...it has gone completely unasked by the news media. That question is: "Why is Senator David Vitter still a Senator?"

Last year, it was revealed that Senator Vitter frequently used the services of a DC prostitution ring run by the "DC madam." Senator Vitter is married, Senator Vitter ran for Congress on the idea of "Family Values" (when he originally ran for the House he was replacing Congressman Livingston who resigned amidst a sex scandal of his own), and Senator Vitter is a public servant who broke the law and betrayed the public trust in exactly the same way as Mr. Spitzer. So...why is he still a Senator.

Well, Senator Vitter explains it this way:

Anybody who looks at the two cases will see there is an enormous difference between the two of them.

That difference, apparently, is left for everyone else to discern. Suffice it say that I fail to see one. I do think that when you run for public office you take on the responsibility to hold yourself to a higher standard of conduct, and that even if you don't, the public has a right to hold it to you for you. Of course there are differences of degree and paying money to prostitutes has to be at the upper end of the "that's a no-no" scale. That being said, two politicians, both admitting to the SAME crime, should be held to the SAME standard.

Senator Vitter should resign.

Useless Poll Alert

2008-03-17T16:12:00.003-04:00

At the end of last week Zogby released a poll which showed John McCain ahead of either Democratic candidate by about 4 or 5 points. This is was newsworthy since most recent polls have shown the race much closer, and usually with the Democrats ahead. Here was the result of the poll:

McCain 45%, Clinton 39%
McCain 44%, Obama 39%

Now this poll jumped out at me for two reasons. First, as I mentioned above, most polls taken recently have shown a very different picture. Second, this poll had both Democrats below 40%, something I hadn't seen in any poll in the past month. So, why the strange results? Because I, like many news outlets, failed to report the full results from that Zogby poll. Here's the full results:

McCain 45%, Clinton 39%, Nader 6%
McCain 44%, Clinton 38%, Nader 5%

That's right. Apparently Zogby thinks that if the election were held today, Ralph Nader would pull over 5% of the national vote. Is that so unreasonable?

In a word: Yes.
In thirty-four words: Ralph Nader is more likely to wake up one morning to find that he has grown a second head (though, thankfully, not a second ego) than he is to win 5% of the vote.

Ralph Nader has run for President in each of the past three elections, never coming close to 5%. In fact, even in 2000, when Nader's base (young, white, upper-middle class liberals) was feeling a little left out of the Gore/Bush contest, Nader could only manage 2.7% of the vote. Last time, in 2004, Nader actually did worse than he did the first time, back in 1996, when he wasn't even really campaigning. Yes folks, in 2004 Ralph Nader managed a whopping 0.38% of the vote. For him to pull 5% in 2008, he would have to score 13 times as many voters as he did just four short years ago. Even if Ralph Nader goes out and captures Osama Bin Laden himself with his bare hands and then, for an encore, singlehandedly turns the US economy around by inventing some kind of amazing subprime-mess-fixing-machine, he still might not get to 5%.

So, what does this mean for that Zogby poll? It means we should take that poll, and any poll that actively offers Ralph Nader as an option to respondents, with a truckload of rock salt.

Someone Take Those Numbers Away From Him!

2008-03-16T23:55:00.003-04:00

Over at mydd.com, a blog that I frequently read and usually enjoy, I happened upon this post regarding McCain's age and simply could not resist heaping scorn upon it.

The post begins by listing all the major party candidates for President going back to Stevenson v. Eisenhower as well as their ages. The author is trying to see if there is some pattern that emerges regarding the age of the candidates. Do younger candidates tend to win? Do older candidates tend to win? A reasonable question, given the fact that Senator McCain would is the oldest candidate ever to run for President (for a first term).

But then the whole thing goes off the rails. After listing all the candidates and their ages, the author, J Ro, comes to this conclusion:

Republican candidates who win are almost as a rule older then their opponents. Democrats who win are younger than theirs.

Hmm. Republican winners are older, while Democratic winners are younger. Fascinating. Or is it?

Out of the 14 races since 1952, in 10 of them, the Democratic candidate has been younger than the Republican, so of course when the Democrat wins he's younger than the Republican and when the Republican wins he's older. That's not a function of any kind of weird age preference from the general election voters, its a function of the fact that the Democratic candidates are almost always younger. Take 1960 as an example. JFK is younger than Richard Nixon, and he wins. So J Ro can say, "Look, the Democratic winner is younger than the guy he beat." But if the election had gone the other way, J Ro could just as easily have said, "Look, the Republican candidate is older than the guy he beat." That, my friends, it what I call a useless conclusion.

The relevant observation here is NOT that Democratic winners are younger than their opponents, but Republican winners are older than their opponents, the relevant observation, rather, is that over the past fifty years Democrats have tended to nominate candidates who are younger than their Republican counterparts. Some of the young'uns have won while others have lost. That's it. That's the lesson from the past fifty years when it comes to age.

The Math Strategy

2008-03-12T14:08:00.003-04:00

The new media message about Obama is that he is pursuing a "math strategy." Apparently, in his efforts to reach the 2025 delegates needed to secure the nomination, Barack Obama is focusing too much energy on math.

You see, Obama's delegate lead today is actually larger than it was before Clinton's wins in Texas and Ohio. In fact, even with a big win in Pennsylvania, there is basically no way for Clinton to catch Obama in terms of pledged delegates. Obama campaign manager, David Plouffe: "As the number of remaining pledged delegates dwindles, Hillary Clinton's path to the nomination seems less and less plausible."

While Plouffe’s point is unarguably true, that’s not what the media focuses on.

Here's Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post:

The danger for the Obama campaign -- as we've written before -- is that math is not a message. Process arguments about the number of pledged delegates each campaign has won may well be effective for the inside-the-Beltway crowd but they aren't likely to move the needle with average voters.

Boy oh boy, Chris gets this so wrong. Obama’s message to average voters has nothing to do with delegate counts. You don’t see any references to this sort of thing in his ads, or his speeches or his direct mail. Obama’s message to “average voters” is about change, and hope and all that, not about math or delegates.

But here’s the thing. At the end of this process, when all the “average voters” have cast their ballots, who is actually going to decide the outcome? Not average voters. Superdelegates will. And how might you describe a large majority of those superdelegates? I don’t know, maybe as part of an “inside-the-Beltway crowd.”

Obama isn’t pushing his “math strategy” as some sort of new overarching campaign message (“Delegate Leads We Can Believe In”). He’s trying to lay out the case for why superdelegates should ultimately choose him over his opponent.

I think there is something a bit strange about the fact that the media is so dismissive of the mathematical realities of this race. At the end of the day, whatever you think about the Democratic nomination process, it's always been about who can get to 2025. Just as the general election is about getting to 270, a math strategy is really the only strategy.

Could Obama Carry Mississippi in the General?

2008-03-11T14:43:00.005-04:00

Unlikely.

Because Mississippi is holding its primary today, and because Senator Obama has been relatively successful at increasing African American turnout (more about that below), there has been a little bit of chatter about whether or not Obama could actually win Mississippi against McCain in the general. The chatter basically centers around the fact that Mississippi has the largest share of African American residents in the country (save for DC). Theoretically, if Obama could get Black voters to turn out in big numbers, shouldn't that put Mississippi in play? Let's look at the numbers.

According to the 2006 American Community Survey run by the US Census, about 37% of Mississippi residents are African American, and 60% of Mississippi residents are white. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Obama wins 90% of the Black vote in Mississippi. If African Americans turn out in proportion to their overall share of the population (which they didn't in 2004), then Obama would still need about 27% of the white vote to win. That doesn't sound like much, but in 2004 John Kerry only managed 14% of the white vote. Take a look at the graph:
Click on the graph to expand.

Basically, what we see here is that, in order for Obama to win Mississippi, even with 95% of the Black vote, he would need two things to happen. First, he would need Black turnout to exceed the actual share of African Americans in the state. Second, he would need top improve his showing among whites over Kerry's totals. Both need to happen. For example, say African Americans are really motivated, turn out in huge numbers and end up making up 41 or 42% of all voters (exceeding their real share of population by 4 or 5 points). That would be a huge turnout and an amazing accomplishment for the Obama campaign. But even then, Obama would still need to outperform Kerry by a several points among white voters.

Still, there is a somewhat plausible scenario under which Mississippi could go blue. Imagine Black turnout exceeds real population share by 1 or 2 points (possible, but still difficult) and Black voters make up 39% of all voters. Imagine further that 95% of all Black voters cast their ballots for Obama (very possible). Senator Obama would still need about 22% of the white vote to win. While Kerry only got 14%, in 2000 Al Gore got closer to 18%. Obama would need to outperform Gore by 4 points. That'll be difficult, but not totally outside the realm of possibility.

So, as I said, unlikely.

More Non-Presidential Blogging

2008-03-10T21:36:00.002-04:00

Apparently, Mike Ciresi, Democratic candidate for Senate in Minnesota, is dropping out, clearing the way for former SNL star, Al Franken to take the nomination and then face sitting Senator Norm Coleman. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, Ciresi was a credible candidate. He consistently polled within striking distance of Coleman and he had the ability to self-fund. But in recent weeks, Franken seems to have convinced almost everyone that he is the stronger candidate despite his funny-man background (Ciresi's slogan, by the way, was "serious about change." Not exactly a veiled reference).

This is generally good news for Democrats and bad news for Norm Coleman. Coleman was bound to be facing a difficult reelection battle in any case, but he was certainly hoping for a nasty primary to soften up his eventual opponent (for whatever that's worth). Now, the Minnesota and national Dems will rally around Franken, who was already doing very well on the fundraising front.

Now, Coleman's team wants to push the line that Franken's background and his long record of "outrageous comments" will come back to haunt him. That's their public position. Inside the campaign, they are probably pretty worried. Franken has shown that he has a particular talent for public relations and for communications strategy. If Coleman thinks that he can pull out a victory based solely on tv commercials featuring Stuart Smalley, then he is in for an embarrassing loss.

Minnesota is looking increasingly like a real pick-up opportunity for the Democrats.

Illinois 14th

2008-03-10T13:39:00.004-04:00

Though Wyoming held its Presidential primary contest this past weekend, it was a smaller race in Illinois that really should have dominated the headlines. In the Illinois 14th, Democratic candidate Bill Foster defeated Republican candidate Jim Oberweis in a special election to fill retiring Congressman Dennis Hastert's seat. Congressman Hastert, you might remember, was Speaker of the House for about a decade.

Now, to really get a proper sense for why this race matters so much, you have to know that the Illinois 14th encompasses large swaths of Kane County, Kendall County, Dekalb County, Lee County, and Henry County. In 2004, every one of those counties voted for George Bush over John Kerry, some by as much as 23 points (Kendall County). Denny Hastert never faced a serious challenger, and in 2006 won reelection by 20 points. This, friends, is a GOP district. And yet, on Saturday, the 14th Congressional District of Illinois elected a Democrat.

If there is anyone out there who had serious thoughts about the GOP retaking control of the House, then this weekend should have put those ideas to bed. I think the results pretty clearly show that voters, while unhappy with congress in general, are still more willing to give the Democrats more time and are loathe to put the Republicans back in charge.

Does this have any implications for the Presidential race? Maybe, but I would be careful about extrapolating too far. There were some Illinois specific circumstances with this race (like the fact that Oberweis is a terrible candidate for anything, having lost about a billion races before this) that make it hard to generalize any results too much. Having said that, the 14th is not a swing district and whenever one party loses a seat from their "base," it does not bode well for them.

Is McCain the Big Winner?

2008-03-05T13:58:00.002-05:00

Not surprisingly, one of the big questions coming out of yesterday's results is whether the real winner was John McCain and the GOP. The prospect of a protracted primary fight among the Dems while McCain sits back and watches his eventual opponent get bloodied and dirtied certainly seems like it improves his chances. Indeed, Ezra Klein over at the American Prospect spins out a scenario that would almost certainly spell doom for the Dems:

Clinton's problem now is that she doesn't need to beat Obama, she has to convince the superdelegates to beat Obama for her. And this requires a different sort of argument. Even under assumptions very favorable to Clinton, Obama is likely to end the primaries with 100-or-so more pledged delegates than she has. Her only hope is that the party elders, the so-called superdelegates, will grow so uncomfortable with Obama's weaknesses that they'll intervene on her behalf, risking the ire of their constituents, the fury of African-American voters who feel betrayed by their party, and a convention storyline that blames a smoke-filled backroom for overturning the will of the voters. That's a tall order.
To convince them to do so, she'll need to fatally wound Obama. But attacking that ferociously will destroy her candidacy, too, and infuriate superdelegates who see her irreversibly bloodying the Democrats' likely nominee, and thus hurting the party's chances for victory.

If you're rooting for a Democrat to be in the White House come January, then this has to send shivers up your spine. But is it likely? Will a month or two more of Obama and Clinton going after one another mean smoother sailing for McCain?

Probably so, but also probably not as much as it might seem right now. November is still eight months away, an eternity in election time. Think about how different the race seemed eight months ago. Of course the degree of nastiness in the primary now will reverberate somewhat down the line, but come September, there will be one Democratic nominee and one Republican nominee and they will spend the last two months battling it out. It's in those last two months that the general election will be won and lost.

One last thing. A year ago, the conventional wisdom was that the Democratic candidate would have significant advantages over the Republican. For one thing, Americans have been pretty reluctant to give any one party more than two terms in a row. For another, President Bush is extremely unpopular, and even given the relative decrease in violence, Iraq is still unpopular as well. Add in the souring economy, and you've got a recipe for Democratic victory. None of that changes because of a primary battle. As long as neither candidate pursues a "scorched earth" policy, those existing advantages will still be there for whomever, Clinton or Obama, emerges victorious.

Groundog Day

2008-03-05T11:10:00.002-05:00

So, the voters in Ohio and Texas saw their shadow and declared that there will be six more weeks of campaigning. Get ready Pennsylvania, your airwaves are about to become clogged with ads.

There's no question that Senator Clinton had a good night last night. She needed a win in both states to keep going and she got 'em. Now the race turns to a new phase. Even if one candidate won all the remaining delegates, they could still not reach the magic 2025. That means that the Superdelegates will be crucial. There have been reports that 50 superdelegates are set to endorse Obama soon, and that Clinton is trying desperately to "freeze" them. That's all well and good, but at the end of the day, either someone will have to drop out, or a deal will have to be made. Even six more weeks and then PA won't change that basic fact.

Predictions

2008-03-03T20:51:00.002-05:00

Ohio and Texas tomorrow, and it's been a while since I've had the opportunity to make predictions that turn out to be wrong, so I'm excited.

Let's start with Texas.

In the past 10 days there have been 21 publicly available polls taken of the Democratic race in Texas, and the bottom line is that almost every one has suggested a tight race. 17 of the 21 polls have the two candidates within four points of each other. 13 have Obama ahead, 5 have Clinton ahead, and 3 have the race tied. According to the weighted average, these 21 polls have the race as follows:

Obama: 47.2%
Clinton: 46%
Undecided: 6.8%

There doesn't appear to have been a whole lot of movement over the past ten days. Polls taken before the 27th of February have the race essentially in the same place as polls taken after. This race is going to come down to turnout, organization, and undecideds. I'd say that, on balance, those three favor Obama, so my prediction is as follows:

Obama: 54%
Clinton: 46%

Now to Ohio. There have been 20 polls taken since February 21, and 18 in the past 10 days. Like the Texas polls, they have been pretty consistent. Of the 20 polls, all but one show a Clinton lead, and 15 show a lead of 5 points or more. Despite news reports of "momentum shift" and whatnot, the polls from 12 days ago show about the same thing as polls from the last few days. Here's what the weighted poll shows:

Clinton: 48.9%
Obama: 42.7%

As with Texas, there don't appear to be any trends within these past 12 days. The first five polls have Obama at 41.3 and Clinton at 48.9 (a spread of 7.6 points), the last five have Obama at 43.6 and Clinton at 50.4 (a spread of 6.8 points). So it appears to me that Clinton has a small, but real lead in Ohio and that it would take a big break of undecideds and some serious organizational muscle for Obama to pull it out. My prediction:

Clinton: 52%
Obama: 48%

Until tomorrow night...

Veepstakes

2008-02-28T22:24:00.002-05:00

I promised a friend a week or so ago that I would post about potential Vice Presidential picks, and though it has taken me some time, here is that promised post.

For most of the post-war period, the process of choosing a running mate was driven by the idea of "geographic balance." This was the thought that if the guy at the top of the ticket was from the North then the number 2 had better be from the South. If your Presidential candidate was from the West, then Veep should be an Easterner, etc. You can see that pattern in most of the post-war tickets from 1952 with Stevenson (Illinois) and Sparkman (Alabama) to 1960 with Kennedy (MA) and Johnson (TX) to 1980 with Reagan (CA) and Bush (sort of New England, sort of TX).

The idea that you needed to balance the ticket with people from different regions is still has a lot of resonance among veteran politicos. Unfortunately for them, "regional balance" just doesn't come into play much anymore. Consider the past 4 presidential elections. Here are the the eight tickets from 1992 to 2004:

1992 - Clinton/Gore vs. Bush/Quayle
1996 - Clinton/Gore vs. Dole/Kemp
2000 - Gore/Lieberman vs. Bush/Cheney
2004 - Kerry/Edwards vs. Bush/Cheney

Out of those eight tickets, one could conceivably categorize half of them as regionally balanced. The Clinton/Gore tickets, of course weren't balanced. They were both southerners. The Bush/Cheney ticket wasn't so balanced, unless you can argue that Wyoming brings a lot of regional heft to the table.

The other four all have some degree of regional balance. Now a couple of points. First, and most obviously, in each of the past four elections, the non-regionally balanced ticket prevailed over the "balanced" one. Second, though the Democratic tickets in 2000 and 2004 appear to ft the traditional mold, in these cases regional considerations were not really at the top of the list when the Presidential candidates were choosing their running mate. In Gore's case, he was looking for someone who didn't have the tarnish of the Clinton campaign and he found it in the Democratic Senator who was first to denounce, on the Senate floor, the President's Oval Office behavior. Choosing Lieberman, Gore Hoped, would inoculate his campaign from some guilt by association problems.

Kerry, too, wasn't thinking about the Civil War when he picked John Edwards. He knew that the Carolinas were beyond his reach no matter the VP. Rather, Senator Kerry needed youth and vigor on his ticket. He needed Edwards' charisma, not his state.

In fact, it really seems like, while regional balance is out, the general concept of balance is still very much in. Clinton, for his first run in 1992, needed a partner who had a reputation for scrupulous morals since Clinton himself didn't quite have that reputation. He also wanted someone who was more familiar to the Beltway and Democratic establishment than he was as governor of Arkansas. Gore was a perfect fit for that kind of balance.

Bush, in 2000, needed "gravitas" and someone who could help him navigate the unfamiliar Washington terrain. Cheney balanced out his ticket in that way.

So, balance is still the watchword, but regional, not so much.

Now, all that being said, there will still be enormous pressure on both nominees to choose a VP based on regional concerns. That would be, in my estimation a mistake, but the pressure will be there.

Keeping all of this in mind, who will be on the short list for each candidate? My thoughts on that in an upcoming post...

The Dems and the Jews

2008-02-26T22:30:00.004-05:00

Tonight, during the Democratic debate, Tim Russert asked Senator Obama how he felt about having the support of Louis Farrakhan. Apparently, over the weekend Minister Farrakhan decided to publicly endorse Senator Obama for President. Russert's question about it during the debate is sure to spark another round of my least favorite stale election year debate: "Is this the year the Jews vote Republican?"

Yes folks, every four years we have to go through these motions. Some high profile Jewish Republican comes out and makes some case about how this year, the GOP is going to make strong in-roads in the Jewish community. So, let's take a little peeksy, shall we, at the numbers and see if those prognostications have ever been right.

In 1992, Bill Clinton received 80% of the Jewish vote.

In 1996, Bill Clinton received 78% of the Jewish vote.

In 2000, Al Gore received 79% of the Jewish vote.

In 2004, John Kerry received 74% of the Jewish vote.

Strong in-roads, indeed. A whopping 6% change from 1992 to 2004. Just for comparison's sake, during that same time, the GOP share of the evangelical vote went from 61% in 1992 to 78% in 2004. Now that's some in-roading.

The simple fact of the matter is that Jews in America vote for Democrats overwhelmingly. Sure, the Republican candidate can hope to capture 25% of the Jewish vote, but at the end of the day, the other three quarters are voting for the Democratic nominee. There has been a truckload written about why Jews, despite the relative affluence of the American Jewish community in general, continue to vote reliably Democratic and I'm not going to add anything to that discussion here. Suffice it to say that, despite any nasty e-mails floating about claiming Obama was secretly born in Ramallah and has nightly seances with the ghost of Yasser Arafat, Jews in 2008 will again vote 3 to 1 for the Democrat.

Poll Averages

2008-02-25T01:29:00.003-05:00

So, apparently, the Wall Street Journal has decided to horn in on my turf with an article about how simple averages of polling data can have misleading results. From the article:

Polls have different sample sizes, yet in the composite, those with more respondents are weighted the same.

Regular readers of this blog already know full well that you can't simply combine two polls together as if both had the same accuracy, and that a better (though still not perfect) method is to take account of the varying sample sizes.

The article goes on to mention several other problems with averaging poll results:

They are fielded at different times, some before respondents have absorbed the results from other states' primaries. They cover different populations, especially during primaries when turnout is traditionally lower. It's expensive to reach the target number of likely voters, so some pollsters apply looser screens. Also, pollsters apply different weights to adjust for voters they've missed. And wording of questions can differ, which makes it especially tricky to count undecided voters. Even identifying these differences isn't easy, as some of the included polls aren't adequately footnoted.

These are all good points. There is no question that using a simple average to combine poll results isn't particularly precise. Even my preferred method suffers from most of the drawbacks described above. Nevertheless, good public opinion polls offer us a reasonably accurate snapshot of the state of an election, and several polls give us several snapshots. Of course these snapshots are taken from slightly different angles and with somewhat different lenses and the subject is a moving target. So we can choose to either look at each photo as if it is totally independent from the others, or we can do our best to put them all together into a more coherent picture, even thought they don't fit perfectly.

Obviously, I choose the latter, caveats and all.

Scandalgate

2008-02-21T10:51:00.002-05:00

By now, you probably know all about the New York Times story that insinuates (but never actually comes right out and says) that John McCain had an affair with a lobbyist and then did favors for her clients. The piece itself is pretty odd. It starts out with this paragraph:

A female lobbyist [Vicki Iseman] had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

Then the article pivots to McCain's history of somewhat questionable relationships with lobbyists and special interest groups. When the piece does come back around to McCain's potential affair with Vicki Iseman, it doesn't offer much more detail of their relationship. It's an odd piece.

What's the back story here? Well, first of all, the Drudge Report had this story three months ago, so I'm pretty sure it's been kicking around Washington since for at least that long. According to other blog posts, it seems several news outlets were preparing stories on this, but were holding off for some reason. Maybe they were waiting for confirmation of the affair, maybe they were feeling too much pressure from the McCain camp, maybe they just didn't have enough to run a whole story. Whatever it was, the barn doors are open now, and the horses are running free.

So what does it all mean? Well, if McCain really did have an affair with a lobbyist and then steer favors her way, that would be absolutely devastating to his campaign. However, unless there's some smoking gun out there (like, say, an incriminating e-mail or voice message) or unless Ms. Iseman "tells all," it's unlikely that we'll know for sure. In that case, this story plays out in one of two basic ways.

1. More and more details come out in dribs and drabs, making McCain respond every time, dragging this thing out for weeks and seriously weakening McCain as a candidate in the long run. Remember, voters are just now beginning to think of McCain as the GOP nominee, and if that thought is connected to scandal and favor peddling, that perception will last the whole campaign.
2. There aren't more details, McCain squashes it by overwhelming denials and the story goes away after a week or two. Scandal stories like this need oxygen to keep going, they need the dirt to come to light slowly. If the news media can't find more details, or more corroborating evidence, then this story dies, goes away, and McCain can basically put it behind him.

Could this scandal imperil his shot at the nomination? Possibly. No one's really talking about that now, but if the story starts looking like it's gonna go the number 1 route, then there could be a serious movement to anoint some other candidate (Huckabee or even Romney could jump back in--remember, his campaign is only "suspended"). If McCain loses two weeks from now in Texas and Ohio, that could be the start of more serious effort to find ABM (anybody but McCain).

So it looks like Texas and Ohio now mean something for the Republicans too.

The Democratic Race

2008-02-20T13:41:00.002-05:00

According to CNN, here's where the race stands:

Obama has a total of 1315 delegates (1154 pledged)
Clinton has a total of 1245 delegates (1011 pledged)

Technically, to win the Democratic nomination, a candidate needs 2025 delegates. The 16 states and territories that have yet to hold their contests contribute a total of 1191 delegates, and 210 of those are superdelegates. That math has the following consequences:

1. For Barack Obama to win the nomination straight out, without additional Superdelegates, he would have to win 72% of the remaining available pledged delegates.
2. For Hillary Clinton to win the nomination straight out, without additional Superdelegates, she would have to win 80% of the remaining available pledged delegates.

So, neither Obama nor Clinton can reasonably expect to simply win a majority of the delegates by capturing enough pledged delegates. But let's put aside reality for a moment and imagine if there were no Superdelegates at all...if the nomination were decided purely by delegates awarded through the nominating contests. In that case, in order to win the Democratic nomination, a candidate would have to capture only 1627 delegates (because there are 3253 pledged delegates total).

Why bother even looking at this imaginary situation since in the real world sueprdelegates do exist? Well, most Superdelegates have not committed to either candidate and even then ones who have are free to change their minds at any time. My guess is that if one of the two candidates has a clear lead in the pledged delegate count, most superdelegates will side with the popular victor. It is hard to imagine a situation in which Candidate A, behind by a couple of hundred pledged delegates, could convince enough supers to swing the nomination away from Candidate B. That would seriously damage the eventual nominee, not to mention the Democratic Party. That's why I think it is likely that the winner of the pledged delegates will be the winner overall.

That being the case, right now Barack Obama has the inside track. Obama requires only 473 more pledged delegates to claim a majority of all pledged delegates. Clinton requires 616 more. The remaining contests will award 981 pledged delegates, so Obama needs 48% of these to win a clear majority of the pledged delegates (Clinton needs 63%). There are also about 100 pledged delegates from previous contests that have not yet been officially awarded. For simplicity's sake, lets assume that they get split evenly between the two candidates. That being the case, Obama would have 1204 delegates and Clinton 1061.

Based on his victories so far, Vermont (15 pledged), Wyoming (12), Mississippi (33), North Carolina (115), Oregon (52), Montana (16), and South Dakota (15) look like easy wins for Senator Obama. Of course, all delegates are awarded proportionally, so lets give him 60% of these delegates. That would give him 155 delegates to Clinton's 103, and bring his total up to 1359 (magic number - 268). I would guess that Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia might all be good for Obama as well (a total of 151 pledged). If he wins 55% of those delegates, Obama will be up to 1442 (magic number - 185). Clinton is favored in Rhode Island, so let's award Obama only 8 of those 21 delegates. Guam will likely split its four delegates, and Puerto Rico, who knows (let's just split them evenly for arguments sake). All together, that would bring the total to 1480 for Obama to Clinton's 1274.

That leaves only the big three: Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. If Obama splits Texas with Clinton (and that looks like it might be a conservative estimate of his vote total), that brings him up to 1577 pledged delegates, only 50 away from the promised land. That's only 35% of the Ohio delegates. Under the scenario we've described above, even if Obama wins only 40% of the delegates in each of these big three, he would still end up with 1676 delegates to Clinton's 1570.

What's the bottom line on all this? If Senator Obama wins in Texas, that's the ballgame (in terms of pledged delegates, mind you). If Senator Obama loses Texas, but comes close there and also in Ohio, that's also probably the ballgame.

I don't see a way for Clinton to win among pledged delegates. Say she wins big on March 4 and she pulls out a 60-40 win in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island. She'll have closed the delegate gap in half (from about 140 to about 70), but the next two contests are Wyoming and Mississippi, two likely losses for Clinton regardless of the Texas/Ohio outcome. Then comes Pennsylvania. Even a 60-40 win here would still leave her 50 delegates behind Obama with essentially only Obama-favorable states left. She would need 60-40 victories in basically all of the remaining states. The only scenario under which this happens is an Obama meltdown, a massive swing of momentum, or some other miracle. It could happen. But I doubt it.

My Apologies

2008-02-20T13:38:00.002-05:00

To all my dedicated readers (all dozen or so of you), I am so sorry to have left you high and dry these past two weeks. Between work and a little time off, I completely neglected my blogging duties.

I am back now, and will be blogging at my regular pace again.

Super Tuesday Analysis, Part II

2008-02-01T23:29:00.000-05:00

So, if you're Mitt Romney, what you're asking yourself right now is, "Is there any way to stop the McMentum?" McCain goes into Tuesday with a near lock on at least 300 of the 1,081 delegates up for grabs. But that's not the only problem for Romney. McCain comes out of Super Tuesday with a lock on the nomination in two ways:

1) He wins 650 to 750 of the available delegates. If McCain does that, he'll be only 300 delegates or so away from the magic number, and essentially impossible to catch.

2) He wins the popular vote in 15 to 16 or more of the states, even if it's close. One could conceivably imagine an outcome in which McCain narrowly ekes out victories in lots of states, giving him 400 or 500 delegates, with Huckabee and Romney sharing the rest. Even though the delegate race would still be pretty wide open, the media would undoubtedly call this a landslide, and crown McCain the nominee.

So, if Romney wants this primary to continue on after Tuesday, he's got to prevent both of these things from happening. One other consideration: if Huckabee manages to win the second most delegates on Super Tuesday, that would be pretty bad for Romney too. So add that to the mix as well.

Taking all this into consideration, my advice to the Romney campaign would be as follows:

A) Forget the northeast (except Mass.) -- you can't win here, and most states are winner take all. Resources spent here are resources wasted.

B) Forget Missouri. This is a winner-take-all state and yes, you're close here. Close, but behind. Give this one up, and hope your voters go to Huckabee instead of McCain. Denying McCain these 58 delegates and the win is more important than giving those delegates to Huckabee.

C) Limit yourself in Georgia. Delegates awarded by Congressional district, so focus on a few where you can win. Careful though, you don't want to take too much from Huckabee here and give the popular vote win to McCain.

D) California, Illinois, California, Illinois, and then California some more. Between the two of them, 243 delegates. You're not going to win them all, but if you can pull out a popular vote victory in these two states (along with your three strongholds), then you have saved yourself for another few weeks. Even if you can't grab the "win," keep as many delegates away from McCain as you can.

The best Romney can realistically hope for is 350-400 delegates. If Huckabee can pull out 150-200, that would leave McCain with 500-600. Still a win for him, but maybe not enough to end the race right there.

Next post, by popular demand: The Democrats.

Super Tuesday Analysis, Part I

2008-01-31T21:15:00.001-05:00

In four days twenty-one different states will hold their nomination contests, and America will have its first semi-national primary. For both parties, but especially for the GOP, the results will play a huge part in deciding the nominee.

Let's take a closer look at the situation for the Republicans. First off, remember that, at the end of the day, this is a race for delegates. To win the Republican nomination, a candidate needs to garner about 1,200 delegates. Here's where the three remaining GOP candidates currently stand (according to CNN):

McCain - 97
Romney - 74
Huckabee - 29

Clearly, none of these guys is truly within reach of actually wrapping the nomination up. There are 1,081 delegates at stake on Feb 5, so technically, even if one of them wins every single delegate, they would still not have officially captured the nomination. Anyway, it's pretty clear that no one's gonna make a clean sweep, so what really matters is how those delegates shake out.

McCain's Strongholds

New York. 101 delegates. This is the second largest pot of delegates (101) on Tuesday and the state is winner take all. McCain will win here on Tuesday (polling had him winning even before Giuliani dropped out). Bottom Line: +101 for McCain

Arizona. 53 delegates. McCain's home state. Winner take all. Bottom Line: +53 for McCain

New Jersey. 52 delegates. Giuliani's endorsement will bump up McCain's already substantial lead here. Winner take all. Bottom Line: +52 for McCain

Minnesota. 41 delegates. Minnesota's strong core of independents, along with its open caucus will give McCain a wide victory here. Delegates awarded proportionally. Bottom line: +20 to 30 delegates McCain

Connecticut. 30 delegates. Same as New Jersey. Winner take all. Bottom Line: +30 delegates for McCain

Delaware. 18 delegates. Not much recent polling, but Delaware's similarity to NY, NJ, and CT points to a McCain win. Winner take all. Bottom line: +18 for McCain

Total for McCain so far: +280 or so

Romney's Strongholds

Colorado. 46 delegates. Pre-Florida polls have Romney pretty far ahead here (and no impact from Giuliani). If that holds, Romney can hope to pick up about half or more of Colorado's delegates. Bottom line: +20 to 30 delegates for Romney

Massachusetts. 43 delegates. Though he probably wouldn't win reelection as governor here, Romney will still carry MA in the GOP primary. Delegates mostly awarded based on the winner of each congressional district. Bottom line: +25 to 35 for Romney

Utah. 36 delegates. Nearly every major elected official in Utah belongs to the Church of Latter Day Saints. Winner take all. Bottom line: +36 for Romney

Total for Romney so far: + 90 or so

Huckabee's Stronghold

Arkansas. 34 delegates. Huckabee's home state. Some delegates awarded based on Congressional district (CD), some statewide. Bottom Line: +34 for Huckabee

Total for Huckabee so far: +34 or so

Let's pause and look at the scoreboard after taking into account these 10 states.

McCain: ~ 380
Romney: ~ 160
Huckabee: ~ 60

The Big Battlegrounds.

California. 173 delegates. There hasn't been any polling since Giuliani dropped out and Schwarzenegger endorsed, but the latest polls show this as a dog-fight. McCain is ahead right now, and recent events will probably push him up more. Romney should be spending a lot time here this weekend. Delegates awarded by CD.

Georgia. 72 delegates. Polling has this as a three-way race, with McCain currently ahead. This is one of those places where Huckabee and Romney are splitting the Conservative vote and giving McCain a lead. Delegates awarded by CD.

Illinois. 70 delegates. This one's a reprise of Michigan. Midwest battleground state; open primary; economic messaging. McCain v. Romney.

Missouri. 58 delegates. Huckabee and McCain are leading here, with Romney a close third, but this one is winner take all--no prize for a close second.

Tennessee. 55 delegates. This one should be Huckabee's but McCain's momentum is giving him a good run. Delegates awarded by CD.

Alabama. 48 delegates. Same as Tennessee. Half of the delegates are awarded by CD, the other half to the popular vote winner.

The Rest

Oklahoma
Montana
North Dakota
Alaska
West Virginia

150 delegates combined.

More to come.

GOP Race: Is It Over?

2008-01-31T13:39:00.000-05:00

Not yet. McCain's victory on Tuesday puts him in good position to win the nomination, and, for the first time since voting started, gives the GOP a clear front-runner for the party base to rally around. But...Romney still has a chance.

Romney's hope is that he can get it down to a one-on-one with McCain. McCain has still not won among Conservatives and Republicans (even in closed-primary Florida, McCain was boosted by self-described moderates and independents), so Romney thinks that if it's a two-man race, the GOP base will back him over McCain.

Unfortunately for Romney, there are two major obstacles to this strategy. First, Huckabee is still drawing a sizable chunk of Conservative Republicans. Those folks would likely migrate to Romney if Huckabee were out, but he's not yet. Second, Giuliani's exit means that whatever support he was drawing away from McCain will not flow back. With Huckabee in and Giuliani out, Romney's at a disadvantage. Huckbee knows that his presence hurts Romney and I think he's fine with that. The scuttlebut is that Romney is not well-liked among the GOP candidates and also Huckabee's angling for a spot on McCain's ticket.

I still doubt that McCain can knock Romney completely out next Tuesday, although it is possible. More likely is that Huckabee stays in through Super Tuesday, mortally wounding Romney by attracting delegates that would otherwise go to him, and then he drops out once it becomes nearly impossible for Romney to win.

Later, I'll post a Super Tuesday, state-by-state analysis for the GOP race.

That Last Post...

2008-01-30T19:28:00.001-05:00

was a joke. You know, no highlights. Come on people.

Highlights from the Giuliani Campaign

2008-01-30T13:02:00.001-05:00

Florida Wrap-Up

2008-01-30T10:20:00.001-05:00

Big win last night for John McCain.

How did I do? Take a look:

	Predicted	Actual	Difference
McCain	33%	36%	+3%
Romney	35%	31%	-4%
Giuliani	16%	15%	-1%
Huckabee	12%	13%	+1%
Paul	4%	3%	-1%

Well, aside from predicting the wrong winner (ahem), my percentages were pretty good. Overall, I'd say that these results were a vindication of polling, which really had the race pretty well pegged. Since the polling had Romney and McCain very close to each other, it was difficult to predict the eventual outcome with any certainty.

I do want to note that the final Reuters/Zogby/MSNBC tracking poll called it almost spot on. They had McCain at 35 and Romney at 31.

Florida Predicton

2008-01-29T18:13:00.000-05:00

Here is my mega-poll combination of the 23 publicly available polls taken since January 23:

Romney: 30.03%
McCain: 29.66%
Giuliani: 14.65%
Huckabee : 13.09%
Paul: 4.15%
Undecided: 8.42%

With a total sample size of almost 15,000, the margins of error are small, about 0.8%, but not small enough to have any real confidence about the actual order. Clearly, McCain and Romney are battling for first, and Giuliani and Huckabee for third. Now, Giuliani is hoping that early voters will help push him into contention, but I am really skeptical that he'll be able to make up the 10-15% he'd need just on the backs of early voters. Mark Blumenthal has a good post about this over at Pollster.com.

The other question to ask is if there has been any late movement. In South Carolina, I saw late movement and as a result, overestimated Edwards' share. In New Hampshire, I missed the late movement and so overestimated Obama's share. So, who's share do I get to overestimate now?

Here are mega-poll results from all polls taken on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th:

McCain: 28.21%
Romney: 27.62%
Giuliani: 15.65%
Huckabee: 13.55%
Paul: 4.63%
Undecided: 10.35%

Now the mega-poll for polls taken on the 26th, 27, and 28th:

Romney: 31.25%
McCain: 30.33%
Giuliani: 14.06%
Huckabee: 12.84%
Paul: 3.64%
Undecided: 7.87%

Romney's growth of about 3.5% is statistically significant, and McCain's boost of 2% is marginally significant. The difference between them, however, is not significant. Both men are gaining, mostly at the expense of the undecideds (which is what we would expect), though it appears that Romney is gaining a bit more. But wait, let's now look just at the last two days of polling, after Florida's governor Crist endorsed McCain:

Romney: 32.17%
McCain: 31.69%
Giuliani: 13.59%
Huckabee: 12.51%
Paul: 3.8%
Undecided: 6.24%

Romney's still "up", but not by nearly a statistically significant margin.

All that basically just tells us what we already knew - it's close. I'm going to go ahead and guess that Romney comes out barely on top. I think a fair number of Huckabee voters might get into the voting booth, decide their guy's not in this one, and pull the lever for their second choice: Mitt Romney. Also, to whatever extent Giuliani out performs these polling numbers due to early voters, that takes away from McCain. So here goes...my prediction:

Romney: 35%
McCain: 33%
Giuliani: 16%
Huckabee: 12%
Paul: 4%

Polls close in 80 minutes, so not long to find out how I did this time.

Sunshine Showdown

2008-01-29T14:16:00.000-05:00

Florida.

The Everglades. Disneyworld. My Grandfather (and perhaps yours).

Electoral turning point?

The GOP race in Florida (going on as we speak) is shaping up to be a crucial contest for three out of four candidates. Here's the skinny on each:

McCain - A win here cements his status as front-runner and signals to GOP rank and file that, if they want to get behind the winner, McCain's the guy. Florida's primary is also the first closed primary (meaning that only registered Republicans can vote) and McCain definitely wants to prove that he can win loyal members of his party, and not simply rely on independents to carry him. A loss here would not be devastating. McCain is likely to do well on Super Tuesday in the Northeast, as well as his home state of Arizona and probably California as well. A loss here doesn't change that, but it could mean lower vote totals in places like Missouri, Colorado (where he is already trailing a bit), and Minnesota.

Romney - Winning Florida would be a huge boost for him. Romney's "strength" as a candidate is that he can theoretically appeal to all the different parts of the GOP base. Unlike the other candidates, all of whom have at least one part of the base who dislikes/distrusts them, Romney could pull the whole party together -- if only anyone actually liked him. Romney's problem is that the GOP electorate isn't sure he's the real deal. They'll get behind him if he shows he's viable. Up until now he's won in Wyoming (yawn), Nevada (lots of Mormons), and Michigan (born there, dad was governor). If Romney wins in Florida, he'll get a second look from a lot of the GOP base.

Giuliani - Is this the end of Mayor Giuliani? Tune in tonight to find out. For months the former NY mayor has been saying that Florida would be his springboard into Super Tuesday and the nomination. He essentially skipped everything else up until now, and as a result, Ron Paul currently has received more votes and won more delegates than Giuliani. If he comes in a distant third, as the current polls indicate, then he's finished. He is already polling behind McCain in New York (in NEW YORK, for goodness sakes) as well as New Jersey. If Giuliani loses tonight, any remaining support he had will disappear.

Huckabee - Perhaps wisely, Governor Huckabee decided not to fully compete in Florida. He read the tea leaves, decided he couldn't win here with his current resources, and so minimized his losses by getting out. A likely fourth place finish here won't hurt him, since no one's expecting him to do well. He's focusing on Super Tuesday Southern states where he's likely to pick up a nice pot of delegates.

Next post: my (utterly useless) predictions.

SC Look-Back

2008-01-29T10:55:00.000-05:00

Good news first. I correctly predicted the order in which the candidates would finish. I also pretty much nailed Senator Clinton's percentage.

Now the bad news. I underestimated Barack Obama's vote share and overestimated Edwards'. Here's the breakdown:

Obama +12%
Clinton -2%
Edwards -10%

My predicted percentages were off for, I think, two reasons. First, I will admit that I placed too much emphasis on the late "surge" in Edwards support. Based on the polling, it does seem that Edwards did gain a bit in the late days of the election. In mid-January, Edwards was polling in the low teens, and ended up at 18%. So he did gain. But not nearly as much as I predicted.

The second reason I was off was the huge turnout. Polls taken in the days and weeks before the election use "screens" to weed out people that the polling firm thinks are unlikely to vote. This is good practice since it does us no good to poll non-voters on their voting preferences. In order to screen out these "unlikely" voters, most pollsters use a combination of the following questions:

1. Do you intend to vote?
2. Did you vote in the last election?
3. How closely have you been following the election?

Some pollsters add in some others, but basically, they use these questions to gauge whether or not that person is "likely" to vote.

In normal circumstances, polling "likely" voters like this leads to more accurate results. But, when you get turnout like we had in South Carolina, which was almost double the turnout from 2004, these likely voter screens become significantly less useful.

It's interesting to note that, putting my predictions aside, the mega-poll combination was a very good predictor of Clinton's and Edward's final vote share. It did, however, underestimate Obama's. I think that is mainly because of the huge turnout of "unlikely" voters who mostly supported Obama. This hypothesis is supported somewhat by the exit polls. Among the 7% of people who never voted before, Obama won 63% to Clinton's 23%. Among the 20% of voters who had never voted in a primary before, Obama won 57% to Clinton's 28%.

Recap: Edwards gained, but not as much as I thought and although Obama was probably going to win anyway, he benefited from big turnout which boosted his vote share from the mid 40's into the 50's.

South Carolina Prediction Time

2008-01-26T12:49:00.000-05:00

Time for me to get out my SC prediction so that later on tonight I can come back and post about how and why I got it wrong.

There have been 12 publicly available polls taken in the week prior to today. For the vast hordes of new readers, let me quickly recap my feelings about polling. Polls are excellent tools for generating a snapshot of how the electorate feels at any given time. They are somewhat less useful for predicting results, especially in a close, volatile race with lots of undecideds. Moreover, when each poll is considered all by itself, without regard to other polls that were taken in the same general timeframe, then we are further reducing their predictive power. Each poll has its own margin of error (usually about 3.5% to 4.5% depending on the size of the sample), so that introduces another element of uncertainty.

I think it is a big mistake for the media to report on new polls as if they indicate real movement in the electorate. In most cases, that "movement" is too small to be statistically significant, which means that we can't say with any certainty that candidate A really has gone up over the last time we polled.

But, if all of the polls that were taken in a similar time-frame are combined into one mega poll, we can get a much better sense of what's going on and be more confident in our results.

Getting back to South Carolina, these twelve polls range in their results. One has Clinton as low as 24, another has her as high as 36. Those kind of disparate results are what make people throw up their hands in disgust when they hear about polling. But, if we take all twelve polls, and instead of thinking about them as individual samples, we think of them as one big 6 day sample with 7939 people polled, then we get these results:

Obama - 41.6%
Clinton - 27.3%
Edwards - 18.2%
Undecided - 12.9%

Before we stop right there and say, "that's how the SC electorate feels," let's remember that using this methodology missed something back in the early states: late movement. As I said earlier, one poll showing Candidate X up two points is usually not enough to convince me that said candidate is really gaining ground. But, just to be sure, I took the last six polls conducted this week and combined them together, and then I took the first six polls conducted this week and combined them together, and compared the results. Interesting outcome. Take a look:

First Six

Obama - 41.7%
Clinton - 27.6%
Edwards - 15.7%
Undecided - 15%

Last Six

Obama - 41.5%
Clinton - 27%
Edwards - 20.7%
Undecided - 10.7%

There has been a statistically significant increase in Edwards' level of support. Put plainly, he's jumped five points, while Obama and Clinton have stayed pretty much the same. That, of course, leads to the conclusion that the undecideds are breaking to Edwards in a big way.

So, my prediction.

Obama - 43%
Clinton - 29%
Edwards - 28%

I think Obama will win, and Clinton was come in second, but I think it will be a closer race for second than was originally predicted. With undecideds breaking so heavily for Edwards, he could really challenge her for second.

Happy South Carolina Democratic Primary Day!

Head to Head

2008-01-25T11:23:00.001-05:00

More in our continuing series of Q&A.

TTF asked:

"Today [my husband] heard some kind of poll that suggested that if McCain ran against Obama today, or if Hillary ran against Romney today, there wouldn't be much of a difference between them. I know how ridiculous polls like this can be, but how possible do you think it would be for the Republicans to end up winning the presidency?"

TTF is right to question the validity of general election match-up polls this far out, and before we even know who the candidate is. Four years ago, a Fox News poll taken on January 21 and 22, showed President Bush beating John Kerry by 7 points, 49-42, while an ARG poll had John Kerry edging out Bush 47-46. A month later, a CBS poll had John Kerry up 8 points, 50-42. These polls did not give us any clue as the final outcome. Rather, they give you somewhat of a sense of each candidate's base of support. None of the early polls had either candidate below 41 or 42%, so that gave us a good idea that this would be a close race, fought out among the 18 or 19% of "undecideds."

So what do the early polls for this contest show? Here are the results of a recent LA Times poll:

Clinton	46	Obama	41
McCain	42	McCain	42

Clinton	50	Obama	46
Romney	39	Romney	35

Clinton	51	Obama	47
Huckabee	38	Huckabee	37

Clinton	53	Obama	49
Giuliani	37	Giuliani	32

And, just to round it out, here are the results from a recent Wall Street Journal Poll:

Clinton	44	Obama	42
McCain	46	McCain	42

Clinton	52	Obama	48
Romney	36	Romney	35

Clinton	50	Obama	55
Huckabee	41	Huckabee	35

Clinton	52	Obama	54
Giuliani	37	Giuliani	34

So what do all these numbers tell us. I'd say that, like the early polls from 2004, they indicate floors of support. All told, we have eight different numbers for each Democrat, and four different numbers for each Republican. The lowest that Hillary Clinton goes, out of all 8 numbers, is 44%. That seems to be her floor. Using the same idea, here are all the candidates' "floors:"

Clinton 44%
Obama 39%
McCain 42%
Romney 35%
Huckabee 35%
Giuliani 32%

Of course, with more polling we can get an even better sense, but it is interesting to note that Senator Clinton seems to have the highest floor. It looks like she starts with the largest base of support, the largest group of folks who are gonna vote for her, as opposed to the Republican nominee, no matter what. On the Republican side, it's John McCain, no contest. The other three have far lower floors.

These floors do not necessarily mean that Clinton and McCain are the strongest general election candidates (although I think McCain clearly is the GOP's best chance). When it comes down to it, the election will still be won and lost among those 18-20% of "swing" voters. Clinton starts at 44% but can she close the deal on another 6%?

This is all very fun and interesting, but let's end with where we began. A lot can and will happen between now and November, and these polls are only a snapshot of voter preferences right now. They are not necessarily good predictors.

Stimulus

2008-01-24T15:49:00.000-05:00

So it looks like Congress has agreed upon a $150 billion stimulus package.

The outlines of the deal include:

a tax rebate of up to $600 per individual ($1200 per married couple), with an additional $300 for each dependent child
a 100% increase in the amount of "new investments" a small business can write off as a tax deductions
limited mortgage lending reforms

For more about stimulus packages, see this post.

Many progressive interest groups have expressed their disappointment with the deal because it does not include bumps in unemployment insurance or food stamp benefits. Chris Hayes, Washington editor for the Nation and Brown University alum, has termed it, "Worst. Stimulus. Ever."

I'll defer to him on the mortgage aspects of the deal, but I will say that the tax rebate part is pretty good. For one thing, the rebate won't be limited to just people who payed income tax last year. There are millions of Americans (about 35 million) who work, but don't earn enough to owe income taxes. Many of these people don't even file income tax returns. In 2001, the tax rebate only went to those who filed returns, leaving out these low-income workers. This is both unfair and kind of stupid, since its these low-income workers who are most likely to spend the money. This year's rebate will go to pretty much everyone making anywhere between $3,000 and $75,000 a year ($150,000 for couples).

Second, the rebate takes into account the impact of children. The last time the government sent out rebate checks, a couple with no kids got the same amount as a couple with four kids. Again, not fair and not smart. Families with children are far more likely to turn around and put that money back into the economy. This year's rebate will expand for larger families.

So the rebate part of the stimulus package is good, the mortgage part is bad, and the business tax part is silly. Ideally, if the government decides to spend $150 billion on a stimulus package, we'd like to see at least an extra $150 billion in economic activity. That's certainly not going to happen this time, since some of the most efficient ways to get money into the economy (unemployment insurance, aid to states, etc) weren't included, but I do think, given the political realities, that this deal's not so bad.

Q&A (part 1)

2008-01-23T14:10:00.000-05:00

One benefit of having a small (but extremely dedicated?) readership is that I can actually answer the questions that are posted in the comments section. You all should also feel free to post your answers.

On to the first set of questions. bgill asked:

"Does Thompson's exit help Huckabee, (Huckabee blamed Thompson for taking votes away from him in SC) or Romney more? Huckabee is not going to be campaigning strongly in FL., so the conservatives there could swing towards Romney. Either way, is it safe to say Thompson's exit will surely hurt McCain?"

Great question, and I don't think there is a super clear answer. Certainly, as I've written on this blog before, I think it's clear that Thompson helped McCain win South Carolina by eating into Huckabee's conservative and evangelical support. So I do think that in the south especially, some of Thompson's former supporters will migrate to Huckabee. But, as bgill points out, Huckabee's pulling back in Flordia, which is going to be an absolutely crucial state. Thompson was polling at around 7 or 8% in Florida, so where do those folks go? Well, let's take a look at this graph from pollster.com:

The graph shows all the publicly available Flordia polls from the past year. The graph suggests a few interesting things about where Thompson supporters might go. First off, it seems pretty clear that McCain's rise in Florida comes almost exclusively at the expense of Giuliani. The purple line turns down at almost exactly the same moment that the orange line points up (and at essentially the same angle). Indeed, since about October, Giuliani and McCain combined have consistently drawn about 45% of the vote. It seems to me that those two are battling it out for the same voters.

The other trend that jumps out at me is the similar relationship between Thompson's line and Huckabee's line. At the same time that Thompson hit his peak and began to fall, Huckabee's line begins to rise. So, my guess is that most of those Thompson people would fit most naturally in the Huckabee campe. But, as we already said, Huckabee's not competing fully in the Florida contest and that's already being reflected in the polls. That leaves Romney. His brown line has been creeping steadily upwards for months, ignoring the jumps and dives of the candidates around him. He also has plenty of money to compete in Florida, and my guess is that voters who were once in Thomspon's camp, if faced with the decision between McCain, Giuliani, a fading Huckbee, and Romney, will probably pull the lever for Romney.

It's too early, being six days out, to make a prediction for Florida, but right now trends favor Romney.

UPDATE: There's a new poll out for Florida that, for the first time, excludes Thompson. Who's leading? Mitt Romney.

Debate reaction

2008-01-22T18:21:00.000-05:00

I did not actually watch the debate last night (I don't have cable television...gasp), so I cannot give my reactions. However, I did read a lot of other people's reactions and, in a lot of ways, the reaction is the most crucial part of the debate. That doesn't mean the substance doesn't matter, but most people don't watch the debate itself, they see after-the-fact coverage of the debate (me, for example).

The media, especially the TV media, need red meat to produce their election coverage stories. Since they are laughably bad at covering policy, the media (again, especially the TV media) usually stick to process stories, or horse-race coverage. Process stories are the ones about strategy, and who's running the campaign, and campaign missteps, etc. Horse-race coverage is all about who's up and who's down. Debates satisfy both of these categories. The media get to talk about who "won" the debate, and they get to talk about how that person managed to win it. Of course, they rarely discuss the actual policy differences between candidates, but that would be too much to ask for.

So last night's debate was important because of how it will contribute to the press narrative.
Clearly, the press are treating this as a "gloves come off" kind of moment. The story is about how the debate got personal, and how there was a tinge of anger and resentment. This probably plays to Senator Clinton's advantage. A lot of Barack Obama's support seems to come from people who are tired of traditional politics, with its personal attacks, and cynical backstabbing, etc. If it seems like Obama is getting drawn into that, then he might lose some appeal. On the other hand, one concern that many Democratic voters have about Obama is that his "post-partisan" rhetoric suggests he won't ever fight the good fight, and right now a lot of Democrats want someone who's willing to get in the trenches. So if Obama wants to prove he's tough enough to fight it out with his opponents. It's a tightrope.

All in all, without having watched the debate, I'd simply point out that one debate rarely has a measurable electoral impact. If, however, the next few weeks prove to be characterized by a much sharper tone, then this debate will be seen as the turning point.

NV, SC recap

2008-01-20T14:59:00.000-05:00

Two out of three. One of these days I'm gonna hit it spot on. I called Nevada pretty much right on. I overestimated Edwards' percentage, partly because I neglected to take into account Nevada caucus rules governing viability (similar to Iowa's). But Clinton did win a relatively narrow victory, which she is painting as a big victory. Romney won huge, as expected.

South Carolina is a different story. I got the percentages almost exactly right, but flipped the top the two (obviously a big miss). Here's the rundown:

McCain +4%

Huckabee -3%

Thompson spot on

Romney +1%

Paul spot on

Giuliani -1%

So I inverted the top two, but otherwise called it right.

Now I want to respond to a comment from last post. Yes, But wrote...

"But how do you explain McCain doing so well in S. Carolina? Huckabee is an evangelical, from a souther state...but McCain did so much better here than in 2000 despite the same dirty tricks tried vs. him as before."

Interesting to note that actually, McCain did worse in South Carolina this year than he did in 2000. Here are the 2000 results:

Bush - 305,000 votes, 53.4%

McCain - 240,000 votes, 41.9%

Yesterday, McCain won 140,000 votes and 33% of the vote. Of course, McCain was facing three viable candidates (Huckabee, Romney, Thompson) instead of one, but I think it is difficult to say that he did better here than in 2000. He got 100,000 fewer votes this time around.

McCain won yesterday because Fred Thompson siphoned off some of the hard Conservative vote from Huckabee. Among the 34% of voters who said they were "Very Conservative," 22% voted for Thompson (his largest bloc). This group was the only group Huckabee won, but he didn't win it by enough to overcome McCain's lead among the more moderate voters. Without Thompson, Huckabee wins South Carolina.

Nevada, South Carolina

2008-01-19T12:45:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting. It has been a busy week.

Here are my thoughts on today's contests.

In Nevada, both the Democrats and the Republicans are holding their caucuses. On the GOP side, it seems pretty clear that Mitt Romney will take away a victory (making him the first candidate to win two contests in a row). He is the only one really campaigning here, so that should allow him to take the prize.

The Democratic race will be much closer. Senator Clinton had a big lead (20 points or more) in NV as recently as December, and she has the backing of most of the Democratic party establishment (including Majority Leader Harry Reid's son). Obama made a big splash last week by picking up the endorsement of one of NV's most important unions: the culinary workers. This, along with his Iowa victory, gave him a significant boost in the state. The most recent polls show Clinton still in the lead, although much more narrowly (5 or 6 points).

One other interesting note about Nevada. Last week, Edwards was polling in the 20's, and now he is polling in the low 10's (the most recent poll has him at 6%). Where are his supporters going? Well, interestingly, it seems like they are splitting rather evenly between the two frontrunners. Take the following two polls:

January 9-14: Clinton - 35, Obama - 32, Edwards - 25

January 17-18: Clinton - 45, Obama - 39, Edwards - 6

Clinton gained 10, Obama gained 7.

So, what's my prediction? Well, I wasn't able to use my combined polling method because there haven't been enough polls. So the following is basically gut feeling combined with pure conjecture:

Clinton - 43

Obama - 40

Edwards - 13

My guess is that Clinton will eke out a relatively narrow victory in Nevada, which she will characterize as a big victory. By picking up the Culinary Workers' endorsement, Obama gained instant credibility in the state, making the contest competitive. When Clinton wins, in spite of that endorsement, she will be able to call it a "big comeback," just like New Hampshire.

Luckily for Obama, there will be much bigger news today. The Republican contest in South Carolina is going to get much bigger coverage. As the TV networks will no doubt say, over and over again, no Republican has won the nomination without South Carolina. Combined with that is the fact that there is a very interesting, and close race in SC. McCain and Huckabee are battling it out here. McCain needs a victory here to prove that he can win among actual Republicans (he actually narrowly lost among self-identified Republicans in New Hampshire). For Huckabee's part, he needs to get back in the "Win" column. It's been two weeks since Iowa and his meteoric rise is threatened if he can't get back in the spotlight and the media loses interest.

Here are my predictions (again, based on gut feeling and conjecture):

Huckabee - 33

McCain - 29

Thompson - 16

Romney - 14

Paul - 4

Giuliani - 3

Next post, after the results.

Economic Stimulus

2008-01-11T15:25:00.000-05:00

With all the troubling economic news, it was only a matter of time before the economy took center stage in the Presidential election. Last night, the Republican candidates spent a good deal of time during their debate talking about whether we were headed for a recession. And today, Senator Clinton released her plan for a $70 billion economic stimulus package.

What is an economic stimulus package?

Essentially, a stimulus package is a combination of policies that are designed to spark increased economic activity in the hopes of avoiding a negative economic spiral.

Why do we need one?

It looks increasingly as if the effects from the mortgage crisis have spread into other sectors of the economy. When it became clear that millions of home-loan borrowers were going to be unable to make payments on their suddenly skyrocketing mortgages, it caused a huge squeeze in the credit market. Lending money became much riskier and therefore borrowing has become more expensive. The American economy runs, in large part, on the credit. There is a huge amount of consumer debt in the economy and as long as credit is still easy to come by, people will still buy stuff. With the credit crunch, consumers have been a lot less inclined to go out and purchase goods and services. That's led to weak retail sales as well as a slumping stock market. Now the worry is that diminishing demand for goods and services will spur employers to make cutbacks (read: layoffs). When people lose their jobs, they are especially unwilling to spend money. So layoffs lead to even less demand which leads to layoffs, and that's your downward economic spiral. Until last month, unemployment had been holding steady (at a relatively low 4.7%). In December, it jumped to 5% (a huge increase). That has spooked a lot of people and that's why we're hearing talk of economic stimulus now.

How does an economic stimulus package work?

There are basically two ways that the federal government can seek to stimulate economic activity. First, it could increase spending on domestic programs. Second, it could send increased financial resources to directly to the consumer.

The first method rests on the fact that the government is itself a massive consumer. We can raise demand for goods and services merely by having the 800 lb gorilla eat more.

The second method assumes that if each individual consumer has more money, they will be more willing to spend more in the marketplace, thus keeping demand nice and high. Recently, the main vehicle for this has been tax cuts. But other policies would work too (and some would actually work a whole lot better). For example, increased unemployment benefits would probably be the most effective and efficient way to reverse falling demand. If the recently unemployed have a safety net, they are much more likely to continue spending in a manner similar to when they had their job. Without that safety net, they are likely to cut back.

Is Senator Clinton's plan any good?

Its not bad. Senator Clinton focuses on the first method, increasing spending. She proposes:

setting up a $30 billion fund to help defaulting homeowners pay their mortgage
allocating $25 billion to help people pay for home-heating
$10 billion to extend unemployment insurance
$5 billion in alternative energy programs

As mentioned, the unemployment benefit is especially good. The $25 billion for home-heating would be very good as long as it gets passed quickly. Obviously increasing spending in that area won't do much if it comes in July. I'm less enthusiastic about the $30 billion. While I think that would likely go a long way toward easing the mortgage crisis, it may take a while for those effects to be felt in the wider economy. Stimulus packages should seek to have much more immediate impacts.

It will be interesting to see if the other candidates come out with plans of their own. For now, score one for Senator Clinton for releasing a thoughtful, fleshed-out plan.

The Way Forward

2008-01-10T00:00:00.001-05:00

With the first two contests behind us, where does the 2008 election go from here?

Michigan.

Next Tuesday, the Michigan Republicans and Democrats will hold their primary. However, only the Republican race will mean anything. Last year, the Democratic party set up some rules to try to bring some semblance of order to the primary calendar. The rule was that no state (except New Hampshire and South Carolina) could hold its primary before February 5. Michigan and Florida both broke those rules and moved their primaries earlier. In fact, it was Michigan's decision to hold its primary on January 15 that prompted New Hampshire to move its contest up to the eighth. There were two additional consequences. Not wanting to appear insulting to New Hampshire voters, most of the major Democratic candidates took their names off of the ballot. So when Michigan Dems go to the polls next week, they will find only Senator Clintons's name. ~~Of course, they can still write in Barack Obama or John Edwards or Ronald McDonald, but most won't bother.~~ The second consequence was that the Democratic party stripped Michigan of its delegates to the national convention for breaking the party rules. This means that even when Senator Clinton wins Michigan in a landslide, she won't win any actual delegates and therefore will be no closer to the nomination. The combination of Obama not contesting the race and the fact that it has no material impact means that no one will be paying any attention to the Democrats on the 15th.

Not so the Republicans. There has been no recent polling out of Michigan but there is good reason to think that this will be a close, three-way race. Mitt Romney was born in Michigan and his father was a three-term Governor of the state. John McCain scored a big victory in Michigan in 2000 with Independents and cross-over Democrats helping him across the finish line. Mike Huckabee is looking at the significant Evangelical community (about 24% of the total voters in the 2004 general election) to give him a boost. According to the more recent polls, taken a month ago, all three were essentially tied at around 20%, with Giuliani also scoring significant support.

I have no doubt that there will be 10 or 15 polls of for the Michigan race by the end of the weekend, and I will reserve my predictions (suspect, though they are) for next Monday. For now, suffice it to say that this race is probably not a do-or-die situation for any of these candidates, but some do need the win more than others. Huckabee has a stronghold coming up in South Carolina, where he is likely to win, so he's not really sweating this (though a surprise victory here, in a northern swing state, would be huge for him). Giuliani is betting all his chips on Florida on January 29, so he's not worried. But the real focus of this race will be Romney and McCain again. In a lot of ways, McCain's in the tougest position. After Michigan is South Carolina, where Huckabee is really strong and Nevada, which is a closed caucus (meaning only Republicans get to vote, no independents). Neither of those are good bets for McCain. Then its Florida, where Giuliani will make his first (and perhaps last) stand, and where Huckabee has been surging. Then its Super Tuesday. If McCain doesn't win Michigan, he's going to limp into Super Tuesday without much momentum or press coverage. McCain's campaign is not in great financial shape, and a loss next Tuesday could make what's left of his coffers dry up pretty fast. A win, on the other hand, would probably allow him to spend his money (strategically) and go into Super Tuesday focused on states he could win.

Romney's situation is different. He's won "silver," as he puts it, twice now. That's not great, but he's actually ahead in terms of delegates and he's got an essentially endless campaign warchest (because he's using his own personal fortune). That means he could just keep chugging along, winning some delegates here and there (and Michigan is yet another state that does not award its delegates on a winner-take-all basis -- second and third place winners will get some spoils too), while everyone else splits each state. It's not the strategy he'd prefer, but it means that winning first isn't everything for Romney.

Now, I think the pundits will try to label this race as a "last chance" for Romney, but expect to hear his campaign shift some of the emphasis to later states, indicating that he's in it for a lot longer yet. It would be odd for the delegate leader in the GOP race to drop out, especially if he picks up yet more delegates in Michigan.

So...Michigan this week. Then we all turn our attention to Nevada and South Carolina.

Update: An earlier version of this post incorrectly suggested that supporters of Barack Obama and John Edwards could write in their names on the Michigan ballot. It turns out that Michigan law prevents write-ins for candidates who have not authorized a write-in campaign, and neither Senator Edwards nor Senator Obama have done so.

Can We Trust the Polls?

2008-01-09T12:58:00.000-05:00

Nearly everyone, including Clinton campaign insiders, thought she would lose the New Hampshire primary. Some people (not naming any names) even thought it would be a blowout. This was based on wide, and consistent polling showing Obama with a big lead. This morning, it sure looks like those polls were way off base. Does this discredit the polls? Can we ever trust again?

I think the first thing to highlight is that the polls were only partly wrong. The weighted average support for Obama in the post-Iowa polls was 37.1%. Obama's actual vote share: 36.4%. The polls were spot on for Obama's support. This should put to rest any suggestion that Clinton's victory was a product of the "Bradley Effect." Essentially, the Bradley Effect is when voters tell pollsters that they're willing to vote for a Black candidate, but then when it comes time to actually pull the lever in the privacy of the voting booth, that support melts away. It's named after LA mayor Tom Bradley, and examples of it include, of course, Bradley himself, as well as NY mayor David Dinkins. It should also be noted this "effect" was absolutely absent in Obama's 2004 primary victory over several well-funded, establishment, white Democratic opponents.

So if the polls got Obama right, then how come they got Clinton's support wrong? As I noted in the pre-New Hampshire post, polls were also showing that about 9% of the likely Dem voters were undecided. Now obviously, not every undecided ultimately voted for Clinton, but exit polling does suggest that voters who decided very late broke more heavily for Clinton than for Obama (although, again, not by enough to explain the entire Clinton boost). Another likely source of additional Clinton voters came from Edwards and Richardson, both of whom underperformed by about 2% each (compared to the polls). Those voters, like the undecideds, seem to have gone mostly to Clinton.

So, if Clinton gained a 4 or 5 point net bump (meaning that some undecideds went to Barack, but some Barack voters also changed their minds and went to Clinton) from the undecided break, and then another 2 or 3 net bump from Edwards and Richardson supporters, that explains somewhere around 7 or 8 points of the 10 point gap between polling and actual. The rest could have been ordinary sampling error.

Yes, the polls were wrong. But not quite as wrong as it first appears.

Reality vs. Predictions

2008-01-09T09:49:00.000-05:00

OK, so I, along with basically everyone else in the world, was wrong about the Democratic race. But, before you decide you'll never read this blog again, take a look at the GOP results compared to my prediction:

McCain +1% (meaning he got 1% more than I predicted him to get)
Romney +2%
Huckabee -1%
Giuliani +0.6%
Paul -1.5%
Thompson -1.5%

Not bad at all. And I made another prediction that was right: "Early reports are suggesting that turnout is way up, and people in the state are expecting around 500,000 votes to be cast today, which would be a record. My guess is that it'll be a little higher than that."

Turnout, with 98% reporting, was 522,069.

I wrote, "I'd guess the Dem totals gets close to 300,000 and the GOP will be up towards 250,000."

Dems: 285691
GOP: 236378

Not bad.

Of course all of this is just a way of avoiding the fact that I got the Democratic race so very wrong. More on that in the next post.

Wow.

2008-01-09T00:21:00.000-05:00

What a night. I have quite a few thoughts on what transpired in New Hampshire tonight, and most of them I will post tomorrow. But for now, suffice it to say that both the GOP and the Democratic nomination races are very much undecided.

A preview of tomorrow's posts:

1. What happened? How did Clinton turn it around?
2. Can we trust the polls?
3. Where does the race go from here?
4. The politics of expectations.

Ok, forget it.

2008-01-08T21:38:00.001-05:00

I'm not going to say anything else until all the results are in. As soon as I published that last post, the trend reversed itself and now the difference is 4336 votes with 47% reporting.

We'll see what happens.

Upset?

2008-01-08T21:24:00.000-05:00

I write this at 9:24 PM, EST, and at this moment, with 40% reporting, Hillary Clinton is ahead of Barack Obama by 2619 votes, about 3%. Are we about to witness a massive comeback?

Maybe. But I don't think so. The two counties that have the most precincts reporting are Clinton backers. The other counties, which are skewed towards Obama are trickling in. Furthermore, I've been tracking the difference between the two candidates over the past 45 minutes, and here are the differences, as shown on MSNBC:

3326
3237
3212
3091
3025
2841
2916
2972
2619
2689

and just now...2331.

Whatever happens, it looks like my ten point blowout prediction will be off the mark.

Turnout

2008-01-08T14:53:00.000-05:00

What will turnout be like at the end of the day. Early reports are suggesting that turnout is way up, and people in the state are expecting around 500,000 votes to be cast today, which would be a record.

My guess is that it'll be a little higher than that. In 2004, about 218,000 people showed up to vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary (and there was no Republican contest). If the pattern from Iowa holds, I think we can expect a big increase in the number of people turning out for the Dem side of the election. How big? Well, in 2004, turnout for the Iowa caucuses was about 120,000. This year, it was almost 240,000, fully double the previous election. Will turnout double in New Hampshire? Unlikely. For one thing, there was more room to grow in Iowa. Caucuses, because they are so structured, almost always lead to low turnout. In New Hampshire, primary turnout was even pretty big in 2004 (about 50% of registered Dems and Independents voted in the 2004 primary compared to only 15% of registered Dems and Inds who caucuses in Iowa in 2004). For another, only 675,000 people cast ballots in the general election in 2004. I would be shocked if today's vote totals approached that number.

So, turnout is unlikely to double, as it did in Iowa, but it's still going to be big. I'd guess the Dem totals gets close to 300,000 and the GOP will be up towards 250,000.

Who is the big winner with all this turnout? Obama, first, and the Democrats in general, second. New voters lean to Obama big time, so he should get a little boost out of this. But it's worth noting that in 2000 (the last time both parties had a competitive primary here), the GOP candidates outpolled the Dems by 80,000 votes (and then Bush went on to win NH in the general election).

New Hampshire Polls - GOP

2008-01-07T15:05:00.000-05:00

On to the Republicans. Here are the weighted polling averages for the GOP candidates:

McCain - 33.3%
Romney - 28.7%
Huckabee - 11.3%
Giuliani - 8.9%
Paul - 8.1%
Thompson - 2.9%
Other/DK - 6.8%

Again, we need to guess at what those undecideds will do. This is much harder to figure out than for the Dems. New Hampshire voters have gotten a good look at both McCain and Romney, so it's possible that the undecideds won't go to them. On the other hand, there is a chance that some of those folks used to be in the Romney camp and have been shaken loose by his Iowa loss and the McCain resurgence. Some of them could go back to Romney, and some could break loose to someone else.

The overall trend in New Hampshire has been towards McCain, but there doesn't appear to be much of a micro-trend within this data. On balance, I'd say this all points to a slim but solid McCain victory. Here's my final prediction:

McCain - 36%
Romney - 29%
Huckabee - 12%
Paul - 9%
Giuliani - 8%
Thompson - 3%

New Hampshire Polls - Dems

2008-01-07T14:49:00.000-05:00

Bearing in mind the lessons from Iowa, I combined all the recent polling out of New Hampshire to try and get a sense of what's going to happen tomorrow.

Brief methodological reminder: I'm combining these polls with a weighted average so that polls with higher sample size are more important than those with small sample size. Also, my method allows me to calculate a new standard error so that we can have a margin of error.

There have been no fewer than 17 new public polls (see here) in New Hampshire that were conducted entirely after the Iowa caucuses on January third. I've used only these post-Iowa poll. Here are the weighted polling averages for the Dems:

Obama - 37.1%
Clinton - 29%
Edwards - 18.8%
Richardson - 6%
Other/DK - 9%

There are two questions that we need to answer to get a better sense of what's going to happen. First, how will those undecideds break? If they break mostly for Clinton, she could win. If they break mostly for Edwards, he won't win but he will beat expectations and claim the mantle as the number two. If they break for Obama, then it'll be a landslide, a 10 point or more victory. I think it is really unlikely that they'll break for Clinton. She's been the "front-runner" for a year now (she was polling in the 40's as recently as October), and if these folks haven't planted themselves in Clinton's camp by now, they probably never will. My guess is that they'll break mostly for Obama but some for Edwards.

Second, we need to ask if there is some micro-trend going on even within the very limited time frame of these polls (as happened with the Iowa mega-poll...see earlier post). The answer to this is easy: no. There is no statistical difference between the earliest five polls and the most recent five polls. Even beyond statistical difference, there is almost no nominal difference. Here's the data:

First Five Polls:

Obama - 37.1%
Clinton - 28.3%
Edwards - 19.4%

Last Five Polls:

Obama - 37.6%
Clinton - 28.1%
Edwards - 19.5%

So, what's the prediction. I'd say that the eventual vote totals will look something close to this:

Obama - 40%
Clinton - 30%
Edwards - 22%
Richardson - 5%

Post-Iowa

2008-01-07T13:42:00.000-05:00

So how did I do?

Well, it depends. On the GOP side, I'd say I did pretty well. I nailed the top two, calling it correctly for Huckabee and Romney, respectively. Thompson finished barely ahead of McCain, and then Paul did indeed come in fifth, leaving Giuliani at the back of the pack. As for percentages, here's how it came down:

Huckabee +5.6%
Romney -1.5%
Thompson +3.3%
McCain +0.8%
Paul +2.7%
Giuliani -3.4%

As for the Dems, my final prediction was the best. I wrote, "Recent reports have suggested that Richardson and Biden are encouraging their supporters to caucus for Obama, should they not be viable and Kucinich has already officially gone ahead and done this. This could cut into Edwards' lead as second choice candidate. It's hard to say how much this might matter, but...a bigger swing to Obama would put him over the top." I think it's fair to say, that's basically what happened. A lot of the Richardson, Biden and Dodd people ended up caucusing for Obama, and that, combined with the huge turnout, gave him the victory.

That being said, I still think I blew it on the Dem side. My basic (non-second choice adjusted) numbers were pretty far from the mark (relatively). There were two reasons for this. First, public opinion polling is best suited to "one person-one vote" elections, and the Democratic caucuses in Iowa are not that. Second, I should not have given the same credence to polls taken 10 days before the caucuses as I did to those taken one to five days before.

It does appear as if there was some real movement in Obama's direction over that time. I included fifteen polls in my analysis to come up with the following numbers:

Clinton – 28.8%
Obama – 27.13%
Edwards – 25.55%

However, take a look at what happens when you compare the weighted averages of the oldest five polls to the most recent five polls:

Oldest:

Clinton - 30.3%
Obama - 25.5%
Edwards - 25.1%

Newest:

Obama - 29.6%
Clinton - 26.8%
Edwards - 26%

Because I'm using five-poll weighted averages here, I can confidently say that there was some actual movement away from Clinton and towards Obama (how confident? well, statistically speaking, we'd say there is less than a .01% chance that the difference between Obama's earlier support and his later support is zero). This real movement, along with the strong turnout and second-choice breaks lead to Obama's big victory.

Looking ahead to New Hampshire, I know two things. First, I don't have to worry about second choice shenanigans, and second, I'll be more careful to look for trends even within small periods of time. More on that in the next post.

Pre-Iowa

2008-01-07T13:34:00.000-05:00

On the day before the Iowa caucuses, I sent out the following e-mail to friends, family and co-workers:

I may have mentioned to some of you that I am continually frustrated by the media's coverage of public opinion polling. Almost invariably, the media will report the latest poll as if it actually contains totally new information from the last poll ("So and So Widens Lead" or "Candidate Slips"). This, in general, is a poor interpretation of polls and is an especially poor interpretation when the changes have been small (as they have been in the past two weeks).

Instead, I think it's much better to think of all these polls of near simultaneous snapshots of a moving target. Thought the latest one may give you a slightly different perspective from the first one, if you really want to get a good idea of what the thing looks like, it's best to put all the snapshots together. Because of the nature of public opinion polling (polls with bigger samples have less error than small samples), an ordinary average isn't a good method for combining these polls because not all polls have the same error (as measured by the Standard Error, or more popularly, the Margin of Error). Luckily, as long as you have the sample sizes for all these polls, you can reasonably create an average, weighted by original sample size – meaning polls with bigger samples will be treated as slightly more accurate than polls with lower sample sizes. This method has the added benefit of allowing us to attach a new margin of error to our estimates.

All that said, looking at every publicly available poll (see pollster.com) in the final two weeks of the campaign before January 3rd and combining those polls as described above, we get the following results

DEMS (MOE = 1%)

Clinton – 28.8%
Obama – 27.13%
Edwards – 25.55%
Richardson – 5.22%
Biden – 4.55%
Other/DK – 8.76%

GOP (MOE = 1%)

Huckabee – 28.76%
Romney – 26.68%
McCain – 12.25%
Thompson – 10.08%
Paul – 7.34%
Giuliani – 6.89%
Other/DK – 8.01%

Notice that the Margins of Error are substantially lower than for most polls (which usually have MOEs on the order of 4 or even 5%).

On the GOP side, I would wager that this is a really good estimate of how things will turn out this evening. For the Dems, however, because of the crazy caucus rules, things could turn out quite differently. We can try a little data jujitsu to make some guesses though. Assuming that most of the 18% of voters who are currently leaning toward someone other than the big 3 will have to change to their affiliation to one of the top candidates, the question becomes, "How will these voters break down?" Most of the recent polling does not ask about second choices, but 4 of them do, and they all suggest that Edwards is the most popular second choice (to varying degrees). Using a similar weighted average method on these four polls gives us the estimate that if forced to choose between Clinton, Obama and Edwards as a second choice about half would choose Edwards, and the others would split pretty evenly for Clinton and Obama. If that's what happens, then the final results would look more like this:

Edwards – 33.5%
Clinton – 33%
Obama – 31%
Biden – 1%
Richardson – 1%

One other possibility. Recent reports have suggested that Richardson and Biden are encouraging their supporters to caucus for Obama, should they not be viable and Kucinich has already officially gone ahead and done this. This could cut into Edwards' lead as second choice candidate. It's hard to say how much this might matter, but if second-choicers break 40% to Edwards, 35% to Obama and 25% to Clinton (instead of 50, 25, 25), the outcome would be:

Clinton - 33%
Obama - 32.75%
Edwards - 32%

A bigger swing to Obama, however, would put him over the top.

One final wrinkle: for the Dems, Iowa doesn't report the vote total, only the State Delegate total which comes out of each precinct. Geographic quirks could skew the results (similar to the potential for the electoral college to skew results).

A Good Answer

2004-06-09T01:30:00.000-04:00

Ok, so one of the great things about blogs is that the blogger can ask a question like, "Why do people have such a strong reaction to Thomas Friedman?" and then you actually get some good answers. Kudos to Oregonian for posting a thoughtful and well worded account of his frustrations with Friedman. I think it deserves front page billing, so here it is in full:

"Back when I was in college, I loved Thomas Friedman. I thought his columns did a wonderful job of explaining a complex world and making it easy to understand. Ten years later, I realize that the simplicity in Friedman's columns is a form of dishonesty. The world really ISN'T as simple as he portrays it and his dreamy musings on peace, prosperity, and international goodwill are often based more on wishful thinking than on any hard assessment of the facts. Go back and read his crap about "the new middle east" to see how it looks in the cold light of hindsight.

In the case of the Iraq war, Friedman bought this administration's nonsense about liberation, peace, and democracy. I'm mad about that because he shouldn't have bought it. Anyone who follows the news - certainly anyone who makes a living following the news - should have been able to see that this administration wouldn't be able to pull it off.

If Bush doesn't give a damn about democracy in Florida, why would he stand up for it in Iraq? But Friedman gave his intellectual cover for the invasion and now he's getting his due share of the blame for the mess we're in.

Globalization is the same story. In his columns and interviews Friedman keeps telling us how he went to a call center in India and saw the employees using Dell computers and drinking bottled water from Coke. His thesis is that outsourcing creates new consumers who, in turn, will buy U.S. products. It's a nice dream, but it's baloney. Those PCs were made in China and the water was bottled right there in India. Money is flowing back to the U.S., but it's only going to executives and shareholders. The call center employees who lost their jobs aren't very likely to have an MBA or a large portfolio, so they're getting screwed by this process. It's a rigged system and Friedman is helping to sell it. No doubt someday he'll apologize."

I still think that Friedman is constrained by his column length, so we shouldn't hold his "simplicity" against him to the degree that many do. Also, while I agree that Friedman tends to see what he wants to see, my answer for that is simple: don't we all. Perhaps as a nationally syndicated columnist in the most important newspaper in the most power country Friedman should be held to a higher standard, but we all do what Friedman does. We all filter out the stuff that doesn't necessarily fit with our previously held conceptions of the world (cognitive dissonance, I think its called in big words). I'm not sure Mr. Friedman is any more guilty of that than anyone else.

Friedman Bashing

2004-06-08T01:49:00.000-04:00

Atrios, along with Jesse, along with many lefty blogs, really really hate Thomas Friedman.

As you might guess, I really like him. Sure, he often oversimplifies things in his columns, but then again, he's only got 500 words. Read his books.

Friedman is thoughtful, nuanced, and I think he's very honest with himself and his readers. I know that he took the "wrong" position on the war, and I know that he's pro-globalization in a way that people on the left really dislike. But I think he takes these positions for the right reasons. He didn't support the war in order to steal Iraqi oil, or to help his buddies in the Bush Administration. He argued for it because his conscience told him it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power and give democracy a chance in the Arab world. I think we can see now from his column of a few weeks ago that his heart was in the right place.

Look, I too was disappointed by his columns on the war in Iraq for the past 2 years. But why the need to bash him so much. Every time he writes a column it shows up on Eschaton or on Daily Kos with some header like "Friedman's an Ass" or "More Friedman Crap" (I'm paraphrasing).

I honestly don't understand why he arouses such ire among lefties. Perhaps someone could explain it to me.

Are We Winning?

2004-06-07T15:19:00.000-04:00

Apparently, there is (understatement alert) some debate as to whether or not we are winning the so-called War on Terror. According to a recent poll just 40% of Americans think we are winning, while 34% disagree and 26% are unsure.

Hesiod, over at Counterspin, takes aim at the righties, assailing them for using the fact that the overall number of terrorist attacks are apparently down as evidence that we are winning. He is absolutely right to say that this is a really stupid way to measure our success. His point, basically, is that the overall number of attacks means very little if the sophistication or scale of the attacks has escalated (which, one could argue, has happened).

However, he veers off into his own pretty stupid way of measuring our success. Hesiod seems to wants to do a body count. If there are less bodies this year than last, then we're winning, otherwise, not so much. My guess is that he doesn't really mean this. My assumption is (because I like Counterspin) that Hesiod is just reacting to the idiocy of the righties with a little idiocy of his own.

The fact is we can't measure our success in this war based on numbers of dead or numbers of attacks. I don't think there are good numbers out there that allow us to make an honest assessment. One of the reasons I think President Bush's push for a War On Terror is so dishonest is because he has yet to spell out what we should view as terrorism, nor how to defeat it, nor how to tell if we've won. With this kind of War on Terror, we'll be fighting forever.

So maybe the Righties rejoice because there's fewer terrorist attacks. Even so, there were still many many attacks (as Hesiod points out). And maybe the lefties condemn because more people are being killed in ever increasingly devious ways. But even if fewer people had been killed, can we say that terror has been vanquished? How do you fight a war on a tactic, on methods? How do you assess such a war?

Michael Moore

2004-06-07T11:07:00.000-04:00

Steve over at the Left Coaster thinks that Michael Moore's new movie Farenheit 9/11 is going to have an impact on the election this November.

I'm not so sure. I'd like to think that a reasoned, well-presented, feature-length film can chance some minds, but I suspect that won't be the movie's main effect. For reasons only partly stemming from Moore's own actions, he has been pegged as a wacko, far left nutball. This movie, more so even then Bowling for Columbine, seems to have already been characterized as a personal attack stemming from a personal political agenda. While it may or may not be justified to paint Farenheit with this brush, I think it will affect the political make-up of the audience. Best guess: half are lefties who already agree, 45% are righties who want to debunk, and the other 5% either wandered into the wrong movie or got dragged along by a friend.

I don't know how much actual impact this will have. I'd like to see some polling firm do some "exit polls" as it were to find out who is actually going to see this film.

Not the Jews After All

2004-05-26T19:22:00.000-04:00

Well well well. It seems as if fears about foreign interests getting us into the Iraq mess might not have been so far fetched. Except for one thing. A lot of lefties, especially in blog comments, have claimed that the United States is only in Iraq to help Israel. Despite there being no evidence whatsoever to suggest this, it remains a popular strain of thought among those who like to see shadows of Jews lurking everywhere.

But it turns out that it wasn't the Jews after all. In fact, according to the above linked Guardian article, it may have actually been...the Iranians. Hmm. So it wasn't the Elders of Zion. What a shocker.

After a Long and Troubling Post

2004-05-21T02:53:00.000-04:00

A wonderful ray of hope. I have had the great good fortune to see Barack Obama up close and this article only scratches the surface. Without too much hyperbole, this man has the potential to fundamentally change the way we experience politics.

Ok, well, that's a lot of hyperbole. But really, Obama is inspiring. Go to his website. Read about him. Feel good.

Soul Searching

2004-05-21T01:53:00.000-04:00

I think that it's fair to say that I was a reluctant opponent of the Iraq War. When friends of mine were going off to New York or Washington to protest, I sat at home. When others were writing angry letters, posting to blogs, and otherwise making their voice heard, I kept largely silent. Understand, I did not support the idea of the then-upcoming war in Iraq. I did, however, strongly support the war against the Taliban and Al Queda in Afghanistan, and I maintain to this day that I could have been convinced with regard to the war in Iraq. You could say I largely agreed with Thomas Friedman that there were good reasons for going to war with Saddam Hussein's regime but I parted ways with Friedman when he placed his trust in the Bush Administration to successfully and righteously prosecute the war effort.

Looking back, I had three major reservations with the Iraq war. First, I was not at all convinced that our mission in Afghanistan was complete. While I agreed with President Bush that toppling the Taliban could not be the only battle in the "Global War on Terror," I was extremely concerned that a shifting of resources away from Afghanistan that early was a recipe for trouble. Second, I harbored a healthy skepticism that Iraqi regime change was really the next logical step in undermining terrorism worldwide. Third, as I said above, I simply did not trust the Bush Administration to do this job well.

Taking all this into consideration, I planted myself firmly in the anti-war camp. In truth, I only came to this final judgment on the day the war actually started. So, yes, a reluctant opponent. Deep down, I have to admit that I wanted to believe in this war. I think many people did and many people still do. I wanted to believe in that myth we all created about Bush's "strong leadership" after Sept. 11. For many people (those with more foresight than I had, and lots more than Thomas Friedman had), the President's seemingly single-minded focus on Saddam Hussein broke the spell in the fall of '02. For me, I still clung by a slim thread to a part of that myth until the first bombs dropped.

Now, in late spring of '04, we are all at a crossroads. Us reluctant opponents, along with hard-core anti-war activists, as well as reluctant supporters and even semi-conflicted supporters all stand together at this junction. We all had reservations. Some had more than others. But now, with things in Iraq seemingly spinning out of control, we are back to where we started. We again have to decide how much stock to place in those reservations.

I understand the tendency to look back and wish we had all placed more faith in that little voice in our heads saying, "Hold on there..." For the war opponents, I understand the temptation to play the, "I knew it all along" card. In some ways, we all want to avoid making the same mistakes over again. If we silenced or marginalized our own concerns in favor of national unity or support for the President, or simply because, in our calculus, the benefits outweighed the costs, and now it seems we should have added it up differently, then we certainly don't want to undervalue our skepticism again.

When President Bush and Senator Kerry talk about staying the course, I can feel that same feeling I had a year and a half ago. That little voice starts screaming, "hold on there," and yet...

We probably made a mistake in invading Iraq when and how we did. We have undoubtedly made many mistakes since then. We will make more mistakes (even ones as bad as Abu Ghraib and the Wedding bombing). And yet...

President Bush has, in my humble opinion, betrayed the public trust. He has further mismanaged the war effort while simultaneously subsuming security concerns to domestic political ones. And yet...

There are no easy answers here. Pulling out is no answer. Staying the course is no answer.

I'd love to hear some of our leaders go through some of the same soul searching. It's time to really start digging deep.

Too Many Days...

2004-05-20T01:33:00.000-04:00

when defending Israeli actions and policies is just really really hard.

And yet, I find myself doing it so often. Two basic reasons for this. First, because unfortunately Israel keeps doing things that aren't so great and need nuanced (some would say overly complicated) explanations that too often take me down roads I don't like traveling. Second (and the the really compelling reason, for me anyway) is that so many people, especially on the left, seem to take a special amount of joy in pointing out that Israel does bad things.

I know Israel does things that are morally questionable. I recognize that there are many legitimate reasons for people to be angry with certain policies or policy outcomes. Look, I'm a peacenik. If I were living in Israel (which I am currently not) then I'd have been out there with these folks. But how come lefty blogs, including The Left Coaster, Daily Kos and others love to point out when Israel screws up (and that is what the Rafah incident is looking like, a big giant screw-up).

No doubt, some will say that the fact that the United States gives Israel $3 billion in aid each year demands that we pay closer attention to Israel. Ok, fine. I accept that. But let's also start paying as close attention to Egpyt (which comes in second in US aid with $2 billion). When was the last time any left wing blog talked about human rights abuses in Egypt? Is that because Egypt has no human rights abuses? Unlikely.

So, why is it that so many blogs and blog readers for that matter make a special case out of Israel? I'd love a genuine answer to this question.

Jews and Politics

2004-05-19T16:18:00.000-04:00

Kevin over at Political Animal has a post in which he criticizes the LA Times for emphasizing the impact of Jewish votes, when in fact, claims Kevin, the real impact of Jews in politics is... money (what a surprise!).

Now Kevin does try to sidestep the obvious (and classic) Anti-Semitic undertones by entering this caveat:

I'm well aware that stereotypes of greedy, moneygrubbing Jews make this a touchy subject, but writing about politics without writing about money is basically telling a lie. And refusing to mention money simply because the topic at hand is Jewish voters is the worst kind of journalistic lie: a cowardly one.

Here is my quick and dirty rebuttal of Kevin's point.

First, Jewish money doesn't matter to Republicans. Bush's appeal to Jews is not about filling his own coffers. Bush doesn't need more money. It's not as if he is struggling to fundraise. If money enters into this at all, it is about denying money to the Democrats. J.J. Goldberg, in his book about Jews and politics points out that while Republicans can glean money from all manner of businesses and wealthy individuals, Democrats have ,in recent history, relied heavily on funds from Jewish Americans. If, however, this is the case, then doesn't it make sense for Bush to try and eat into one of the Democrats' only major sources of funding? Well, no. First, I would argue that the Republicans have already hit their limit when it comes to Jewish supporters. It was all new and exciting about 20 years ago when the first prominent Jewish Republican voices started to be heard, but in the two decades since, the Republics have yet to make any real headway (nearly 80% of Jews voted for Al Gore in 2000, second only to African Americans). Second, in case nobody noticed, for all the hubbub about money in politics, this year's election seems to be defying all conventional wisdom. Bush's massive warchest has not been able to knock-out Kerry early and Kerry has been able to keep pace. Methinks that dollar signs just aren't gonna do it this year. Which brings me to my next point...

Kevin's claim that "Gaining 10% of 4% of the vote isn't something that Karl Rove is spending any time worrying about" forgets the obvious point that, a) while Jews make up only 4% of the electorate they make up a much higher percentage of likely voters in several swing states (most notably Florida) and b) a swing of 10% of Jews in Florida in 2000 would have made a recount unnecessary. So, no Kevin, I don't think Karl Rove is up nights thinking about swinging 10% 0f 4% nationally, but he does want 10% in states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan (all battleground states with significant Jewish populations).

Look, I'm not going to accuse Kevin of Anti-Semitism or even anything close to it. There's nothing wrong with bringing up the issue of money and where it comes from. But to say that the presidential candidates are appealing to any one group of people only because of their financial status is to marginalize that group. Jewish political power comes from the ability of certain sectors of US Jewish communities to mobilize lots of different kinds of political pressure (of which, financial pressure is only one). I also realize that this is a touchy subject, but I am committed to rebutting the myth that Jews in the United States have too much power or that they bought their power. Jews happen to live in swing states, happen to vote in high numbers and tend to be more attentive to politics. That's the foundation of Jewish political influence.

On Blogging

2004-05-14T13:04:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in a week or so and it got me to thinking...on a blog, does empty space have meaning? What I mean is, do blog consumers assume that a blogger's silence on some matter or other is a reflection of that blogger's opinions.

I am under no illusions regarding the number of people who read Centerpiece. I know that very few people read my blog (I'm new...yeah, that's why), so I don't think I have this problem, but I've noticed over the past few days that other bloggers do.

Witness this exchange that Josh Marshall has with a reader of his. The reader writes of his disappointment (nay, outright disgust) that Josh has neglected to write about Nick Berg:

I am very disappointed that you've written nothing on the execution of an American citizen in Iraq by what looks to be al quada.

Also, take a look at this post by Matthew Yglesias.

Readers most certainly should infer that my lack of commentary on the Nick Berg beheading indicates that, secretly, I favor both the goals and the methods of both Zarqawi and bin Laden or, rather, that I'm so consumed with hatred for the United States that I don't have any time left to dislike Islamist radicals who'd kill me at the first chance they got.

Again, it appears that Matthew received some angry e-mails not about what he wrote but about what he didn't write. I find this really interesting. I thought Blogs were supposed to be, as Andrew Sullivan puts it, "written day by day and hour by hour, not a carefully collected summary of [one's] views." Josh Marshall responds to his reader by saying that, "This isn't a publication of record."

Of course, Josh is right. No one expects Josh or Andrew or Matthew, or anyone else to cover every single story. We really only expect that of the NY Times or the Washington Post, or the 24 hour news channels (and most people complain about them too). But that raises a question. The NY Times is usually recognized as the "Paper of Record," and CNN is basically the news channel of record. Is there a Blog of Record? Should there be? Can there be? What would that mean? Just some thoughts on blogging.

(Some of) Israel Votes

2004-05-03T01:52:00.000-04:00

The blogosphere is eerily quiet on the subject of today's vote in Israel. I don't quite know why that is. One would think that this would be a hot topic. Bloggers are usually pretty vocal (mirroring the obsession all American media seem to have with the Israel-Palestinian conflict) when it comes to this part of the world. I was definitely assuming that the lefty blogs would be all over this. A resounding defeat for Sharon (one of the grand villains for the American & European far left)...what great fodder!

But I suspect that no one's clucking because the outcome over there is toughto swallow when put in context. On the one hand, Sharon is seen by many on the left as a far-right hard-liner. On the other, his "Disengagement Plan" was defeated today by the right-wing in Israel. That must mean that Sharon's proposal was more centrist and moderate than people like to think. You see the bind that we're in. While Sharon's plan is hugely unpopular among the American and European left, it is even more unpopular among the Israeli right. Again, that places Sharon, strangely, in the center.

But we all know that Sharon isn't in the center and neither is his disengagement plan. But the funny thing here is that I suspect Bloggers can't bring themselves to overtly cheer a victory for the really far right. Truthfully, neither can I. I don't much like Sharon, his politics, or his Pullout Plan, and I do look forward to a day in Israel when the government is run by a center-left coalition. So it's really hard to get pumped over a vote in which the far right flexed its muscle, even if it means a potentially deadly blow to Sharon.

In any case, the silence here in the blogosphere is deafening.

God is a Liberal, Part I

2004-04-30T17:39:00.000-04:00

I think it's time to shoot back at the religious conservatives who claim that Bible and God and Heaven are all on their side. The truth of the matter is, as Body and Soul points out, there are very religious people on both sides of the aisle. Furthermore, it's not entirely clear at all that the Bibles ( both Hebrew and Christian) support modern day right-wing policies. I think it's actually pretty easy to find a few gems of Biblical wisdom that support a more progressive approach. Let's start...

Deuteronomy 15.7 "If, however, there is a needy person among you...do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman." God commands us to help the less fortunate.

Deuteronomy 15.11 "For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kinsman in your land." God tells us that poverty will always exist and we must always fight against it.

Deuteronomy 24.17 "You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless; you shall not take a widow's garment in pawn." God reminds us that even the most vulnerable have rights and that we should be guided by true compassion.

Exodus 23.10-11 "Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but in the seventh you shall let it lie fallow. Let the needy among your people eat of it." God institutes the first welfare system.

There is plenty of basis in Bible for today's progressive stances. Let's not let the radical right have a monopoly on religion.

Bitter Lemons

2004-04-30T17:10:00.000-04:00

In case you might be unfamiliar with this website, I want to introduce it to you.

Bitter Lemons is a web-based publication edited and operated by a Palestinian and an Israeli. It attempts to offer multiple takes on issues mostly relating to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Of course, it mostly caters to left-leaning Israelis but I like to think that it has a committed fan-base of Arabs as well. I would be really interested to know who actually reads it besides me.

Let me draw your attentiont to a really interesting piece that is up right now, written by Ziad Asali, a Palestinian living in the United States. Here is the money paragraph:

"Whatever strategies the Palestinians have utilized in the past have not worked. It is time to reflect, reassess and innovate. Violence may preclude a solution but it will not achieve one. The Palestinians alone cannot liberate Palestine. No people have sacrificed more, or longer, than the Palestinians have, but sacrifice without a strategy designed to win is not enough. In a struggle of this magnitude, more allies who, for their own reasons, share the vision of a state of Palestine alongside Israel are indispensable. Allies in the United States and in Israel, the two countries that play a pivotal role in the outcome of this conflict, have to be identified and mobilized. Violence against civilians alienates these potential allies and the Palestinian people must make the fateful choice between military confrontation and peaceful resistance and negotiations." (emphasis mine)

Asali is exactly right. Though I may disagree with him that "no people have sacrificed more" than the Palestinians, that's not really the point. The point is that the Palestinians need to reasses their tactics. They need to model their struggle after the American Civil Rights movement. What the Palestinians need is a Martin Luther King or a Neslon Mandela. The trouble is, people like that don't come around all that often and when there seems to be a spark of that sort, too often Israel or the United States or the Palestinians themselves throw water on it, extinguishing it and any hope it had of growing into something larger.

Witness Mahmoud Abbas. Here was a guy who was basically the first public Palestinian official to say that the Intifada might have been a mistake. Here was a guy who at least thought Arafat had passed his prime and probably thought a lot more than that. Here was a guy with legitimacy and gravitas and common sense. And what did the Sharon Government do? They ignored him. They undermined him. They did everything but help him build a moderate alternative to Arafat and Hamas. I'm not saying Abbas could have been a Mandela, but he showed promise. He had potential. He could have been that "partner" that Sharon claims does not exist.

Asali is right. The Palestinians need to forgoe all violence in favor of non-violent resistance. They especially need to stop all attacks on civilians. But Israel needs to help by strengthening people like Asali. Israel and the US need to make it clear that as soon as there is any indication whatsoever of a Palestinian Gandhi that they will do everything they can to help.

America's Finest News Source

2004-04-30T14:12:00.000-04:00

This small piece in The Onion is another example of how amazing that newspaper is. Of course the piece is funny but it is also incredibly stinging. I hope people who love President Bush for his bravado and his "stay the course" one-mindedness, and his macho tough-talk read this and it gives them pause:

Bush To Iraqi Militants: 'Please Stop Bringing It On'
WASHINGTON, DC—In an internationally televised statement Monday, President Bush modified a July 2003 challenge to Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces. "Terrorists, Saddam loyalists, and anti-American insurgents: Please stop bringing it on now," Bush said at a Monday press conference. "Nine months and 500 U.S. casualties ago, I may have invited y'all to bring it on, but as of today, I formally rescind that statement. I would officially like for you to step back." The president added that the "it" Iraqis should stop bringing includes gunfire, bombings, grenade attacks, and suicide missions of all types.

Annan Criticizes Arafat?

2004-04-30T12:14:00.000-04:00

Apparently, Kofi Annan has sent a letter Yassir Arafat telling him that, "The Palestinian Authority should immediately start taking effective measures to curb terrorism and violence." He even goes on to say, "You are aware... that the Palestinian side too has obligations it has not fulfilled."

Now the reason this is so interesting, at least in my eyes, is that in Israel the UN is seen, even by those on the left, as being entirely beholden to the Arab World and its allies. The perception is that the UN focuses on Israel's mistakes (and sometimes inflates them) while wholly ignoring both the circumstances and the actions taken by those who would seek to harm Israel. A quick anecdote: I was traveling in Israel a few weeks ago and we saw a convoy of UN SUVs. Apparently, they are fairly common in Jerusalem. Anyway, a joke was made about, "Drive-by condemnings," the idea being that these guys in the UN Jeeps ride around and every so often they roll down the window and yell, "We don't like that!" I think that's a fair assessment of how the UN is perceived in Israel.

You might not agree that the perception is the reality (I tend to think it is pretty close) but that's the perception none-the-less. That's why this letter is a pretty big deal. Although, I don't want to overstate it. First, it was a letter from Annan himself, not a non-binding resolution voted on by the GA, as so many of the "We Condemn Israel" statements are. Second, it was a private letter, not necessarily meant for the public. So, all things considered, I'm glad that, at least privately, Mr. Annan is willing to criticize Arafat, but I suppose it won't go very far toward changing the perception of the UN within Israel.

In His Own Words

2004-04-30T00:56:00.000-04:00

In 2000, then Candidate Bush said "A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming."

On this day when we have lost 10 more of our brave and courageous soldiers, I think it is appropriate for us to remind President Bush of his own words. Remember the lessons of Vietnam. The goal must be clear, the cause must be just, and we must be sure that a foreign war never again tears our country apart as did Vietnam. I hope, too, that President Bush is looking to the West Bank for new, more modern lessons. Occupations don't end well. The Israelis have never been clear enough about their intentions to leave the West Bank and help peaceful Palestinians in their quest for self-determination. I fear that we are walking the same path.

I hope that as we come to the this next election, Americans will look deep into their own hearts and ask themselves, "Have we learned the lessons of Vietnam? Have we understood the lessons of the West Bank?"

Jews and US Foreign Policy

2004-04-19T14:10:00.000-04:00

Since President Bush's endorsement of Sharon's withdrawal plan, there has been a significant amount of discussion over whether or not Jews are doing to defect to the Republican Party this year. Similarly, some have said that John Kerry taking the same position as President Bush on this issue is clearly just a pander to Jewish votes.

I have several problems with both of these lines of discussion. Let me start with one.

First and foremost, I get uncomfortable whenever people seem to be suggesting that politicians tailor their policy to meet the "demands" of American Jews. I don't like it because, historically, charing Jews with having too much power in and over government has been an excellent way to stir up popular anti-semitism (as an aside, this very fear is why many US Jews were upset when Congressman Moran (Virginia) said, "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.") The truth, of course, is that the fact that the United States claims the largest, wealthiest, most educated Jewish Diaspora community must have some impact on our Israel policy. However, the extent of that impact is extremely hard to measure. Can we honestly say that the US policy would be much different if US Jews were not politically active? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Some would argue that the US's Israel policy stems from shared values (both democracies, both immigrant societies, share many elements of Western culture). Others say that our support for Israel really began in the cold war and as such should be seen as a purely pragmatic phenomenon (we supported Israel because the Soviets supported the Arab countries, especially Egypt). Either way, we'd still be Israel boosters even sans our Jewish communities.

Then again, the cold war is over and besides, Jews make up significant voting populations in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and of course, Florida! What do those states have in common? So, as a result, what do most Democrats and Republicans have in common? A shared support for Israel.

Anyway, in my view, it's not entirely clear to what extent the US Jewish electorate affects US policy on Israel. But even so, I worry when people ascribe too much influence to it.

2004-04-08T08:51:00.000-04:00

A couple of days ago, Senator Kennedy characterized the conflict in Iraq as George Bush's Vietnam. Apparently, the anti-American cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr agrees. The press has been all over this comparison. They love it because it speaks to something very deep within the American collective memory. And in many ways, I think we can all understand the reasoning behind this comparison. But, I would contend that Iraq is not another Vietnam. Rather, it is another West Bank.

Think about it. A modern, western-style democracy is occupying an Arab country and doing so using tactics such as house demolitions, checkpoints, and shutting down whole towns (ie Falluja). Among the occupied are militants who use terrorist tactics (including suicide bombing) as well as angry young men as an "army." The truth is that the Arab media has already begun calling this an intifada, and, incidentally, so has Al-Sadr.

Of course, there are even more comparisons one could make. The incident yesterday of the US military firing rockets at a Mosque is a great example. US troops were taking fire from the Mosque so they returned fire. Seems reasonable. Unfortunately, the Mosque was also full of non-combatants and the US rockets killed up to 40 of them. This is basically a scene right out of the west Bank. The effect, of course, will be to stir up even more resentment and anger at the occupying forces, but on the other hand, what would we have the troops do? Just sit back and take fire without responding? Does anyone else smell a "cycle of violence" brewing?

Now, there are differences between the situation in the West Bank and the situation in Iraq. No one really expects the US to be in Iraq for 35 years and I would be really shocked if we started building American settlements in Basra. Nonetheless, the similarities are striking and I think the US would do well to have a good long look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (especially the last 3 years). Talk about quagmire.

Don't Delay

2004-03-25T02:51:00.000-05:00

Political Wire has a report from Roll Call that Tom Delay, the power behind (and sometimes not so behind) the GOP in the House, might be stepping down from his post as Majority Whip.

Of course, this is a long way off from an official announcement, but jeez... every sane person in this country would rejoice.

Covering Clarke

2004-03-25T02:27:00.000-05:00

I just watched the first 45 minutes of the Clarke testimony. Granted, I have about 2.5 more hours to go, but my first instinct is that he comes across as really competent. He has good answers to the questions. He talks about what went right and what went wrong. He doesn't let the committee members get away with distortions (even small ones). So far, I'm impressed.

I think what's going to be important is how the mainsteam media plays it.

So far, the Washington Post is saying that Clarke was "cool under fire."

The New York Times focuses mainly on the hightened sense of partisanship on the panel. It does, however, feature a picture of 9/11 victim families appplauding Clarke. That's a powerful symbol.

CNN's website leads with Clarke's charges and the article online doesn't even mention the counter-attacks from the Bush team (although it does have a link to another article entitled Clarke told different story at 2002 briefing .

The point of all this is that Clarke's testimony won't mean much even if his performace was superb if the media choose to highlight the Bush team's attempts to discredit. If the lead-in is, "A former White House counterterrorism official apologized yesterday for government failures in the September 11 attacks, but his credibility was challenged...," as it is in the Washington Times, then the real importance of Clarke's accusations gets lost.

Most of the other news sources have Clarke's charges at the top (which is good). Fox and CNN both have the '02 Breifing close underneath. We shall see if the Bush spin gets equal billing with Clarke's testimony.

Does Sharon Have A Plan?

2004-03-24T00:34:00.000-05:00

Just to prove the validity of my blog's title, I want to some other perspectives on the question of whether or not Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Government have an overall strategy. I, along with Kevin Drum, do not think he does (although Kevin and I part ways over whether or not the Yassin assassination was "justifiable and/or wise").

John, over at Kalblog takes a different view. He argues that Sharon might have a secret strategy (a la Sun Tzu), and we just can't know it.

And, for yet another view, David Ignatius at the Washington Post, thinks that Sharon is trying something bold in the hopes that it will radically alter the political landscape. Ignatius argues that Sharon has done this in the past, like in Lebanon, and it has had mixed results.

So, David Ignatius thinks Sharon is Machiavelli and John thinks he's Sun Tzu. Anyone want to throw out any other suggestions?

Israel & Yassin, Part III

2004-03-24T00:12:00.000-05:00

Kevin over at Washington Monthly's Political Animal has another interesting post on the Yassin assassination. Now, let it be known that the reason I keep referencing Kevin is because I think he's smart, observant, and thoughtful. That being said, I think his first post on this topic wasn't quite up to his usual standards.

He writes:

I guess I'll join the chorus wondering not if this is justifiable, but if it's wise. If merely killing all the terrorists were really a way of ending terrorism, I might not have a problem with it. But it really doesn't seem likely to work unless you're willing to annihilate the entire population along with it.

The main problem with this line of thinking is that Kevin seems to be saying that the entire population of Palestinians either are terrorists themselves or actively support terrorism. I do think that a large number of Palestinians tacitly support terrorism, but I also think that the best way to attack terrorism is by attacking actual terrorists. That's why I support Israel's decision to assassinate Yassin and why I don't usually support Israel's policy of demolishing houses of relatives and friends of terrorists.

The other thing, of course, is that this post initiated a big argument in the comments section (see my earlier post on this). I understand why people get upset when Israeli counter-terrorism actions results in the deaths of innocent bystanders (notice I did NOT use the term "collateral damage"), but I simply don't understand why people are angry about Israel killing a known terrorist. Yassin preached terror. He certainly didn't espouse non-violence or civil disobedience, he didn't argue for limited political violence directed at military targets, and he didn't even argue for attacks only on settlers (not that this would be any more acceptable). Yassin and his Hamas movement killed Israelis, civilian and military, children and adults, men and women, inside the green line and out, religious and secular, labor and likud. Indiscriminate killing is unacceptable and those responsible should face the consequences.

Now, here is where Kevin's second post comes in. He writes that Israel cannot only pursue a strategy of targeted killings and the like. It must also push a "grand strategy." I tend to agree. Though I will forever defend Israel's right to defend itself against people like Yassin, I agree that there's got to be more to Israel's security policy.

Kevin doesn't spell out what the grand strategy would be for Israel, and I don't necessarily expect him to. I have a couple of ideas. But that's for another post.

Incidentally

2004-03-23T17:05:00.000-05:00

Hesiod over at Counterspin has a great point about the validity of Clarke's assertions and the sheer ridiculousness of the White House's response.

Also, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo makes the same point I just did, although with a bit more sarcasm.

A Pattern

2004-03-23T16:38:00.000-05:00

I try not to count myself as one of the Bush-bashers but the President and his administration have really gone over the edge on this whole Clarke thing. Froomkin, of the Washington Post, has a good round-up of all the counter-attacks to Clarke's accusations.

I really believe that anyone who doesn't see a pattern emerging here isn't looking. Let's look at the development of the pattern:

1. Joseph Wilson, former US Ambassador, criticizes the Bush Administration's use of the forged documents as evidence for Iraq's WMD program.

What happens to Wilson?? Not only does the White House vilify him, but they retaliate, but leaking the identify of his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, to the media.

2. Paul O'Neill, former Sec. Of the Treasury, comes out with a stinging indictment of the President and how his White House is run.

What happens to O'Neill? Again, he is vilified and again retaliated against (the Justice Dept. initiates an inquiry to see if he illegally acquired documents).

3. Richard Clarke, former Head of Counterterrorism and civil servant under 4 administrations, accuses the Bush team of ignoring Al Queda and then after Sept. 11, of trying to find a link to Iraq where there was none.

What is happening to Clarke? Clearly, the Bush m.o. is to destroy anyone who criticizes it. This is really a disturbing trend. When the White House is a place where dissent is not only discouraged it is punished, then we really have a problem on our hands.

Labels

2004-03-23T15:14:00.000-05:00

I've been reading all the comments on Political Animal's post about the situation in Israel. The thread has been incredibly disturbing. Let me give you a little taste of what is on there.

Right of the bat, things get ugly:

"I'd like to see prominent Jews in this country take the lead in bringing Israel back under control. We can't afford to let one ethnic group selfishly manipulate our policies when our country's survival is at stake (talking about the U.S.)" - Chillio

I responded with:

"I can't believe you actually said that. You think it's those sneaky maniuplative Jews again, directing this country's foreign policy. Get yourself out of the 18th century and into this one. Your comments border on outright anti-semitism."

Now, I took great care not to actually call Chillio an anti-Semite. I said that his comments "border" on anti-semitism and I stand by that. For centuries, it has been a Jew-baiter standby to say that Jews have too much power. When Chillio implies that were it not for Jews in this country, the USA would not support Israel, he is drawing on a long history of anti-semitic claims. That's why I pointed it out to him.

A few minutes later Obe (another commenter) came to Chillio's defense:

"Count me among the new "anti-semites." I am a proud member, damn proud. Because what the idiot above who used this term really means is that anyone who criticizes the murderous conduct of Sharon or Likud is an anti semite. It's the same bullshit we hear in America: If you don't support the resident Bush, you are an unpatriotic trader. It's the same dumb reasoning and Nazi mentality.

So yes I AM AN ANTI SEMITE because I think Sharon is a murder, and Likud is an army of facists.

Israel should be brought to heel. I'm sick of funding their murder and whacked out government. I want accountability from these thugs before they get any more of my money. Let them be barbarians if they want, but why do I have to pay fund it."

I tried to explain to Obe that I was not equating criticism of Israel with anti-semitism:

"I was NOT saying that Chillio's comments bordered on anti-semitism because he criticized Israel. Read my post and you'll see that. One can criticize the Israeli government's actions and not be anti-semitic. What was anti-semitic was his charge that one small ethnic group (jews) was controlling the US's foreign policy. This is the anti-semitic chrage. Anyone with even the tiniest bit of history knows the explosiveness of that charge. And that is what I was underlining."

But that didn't seem to do it. Yet another commenter jumps on the "new anti-semite" bandwagon:

"I'll second this. This is exactly how I feel as well. Couldn't have said it any better myself."

And then topping it off with:

"Every decent person has to be a "new anti-semite". The old word for "new anti-semite" is "anti-fascist".

This line of thinking, that to be an anti-fascist is to be anti-jewish (thereby equating Jews and Fascists), is what is actually, "deeply troubling" about this situation. It should not be "deeply troubling" that Israel killed the known leader of a known terrorist group whose self-proclaimed goal is to destory Israel, kill Jews and target Westerners. It should not be "deeply troubling" that a democracy is trying to defend itself from people and groups who want to see it anihilated. It should not be "deeply troubling" when a country decides not to punish innocents but rather punish the actual perpatrators of terrorism (i.e. the leaders).

What is "deeply troubling" is the willingness of the American Left to rise to the defense of HAMAS!! Unbelievable! We're not talking about the duly elected leaders of a fledgling democratic movement, we're talking about HAMAS!! Hamas is not a group of "freedom fighters." The term "Freedom Fighters" implies that you believe in Freedom. Hamas doesn't fall into that catagory. If they did, they would take care not to target civilians. If they did, they would limit their political violence to the occupied territories. They are terrorists.