The Clinton campaign yesterday released a PowerPoint presentation that trumpets their candidate's performance in so-called "tough" districts. These are districts with a freshman Democratic member of Congress but that voted for Bush in 2004. The PowerPoint calculates that Clinton has won 16 of 20 such districts.
Naturally, I've decided to take a somewhat more comprehensive look at this question. Below is a table containing all House, Senate and gubernatorial races that are presently rated as competitive by the Cook Political Report. Clinton does indeed have a 40-31 lead in competitive House districts. In many of these districts, her wins have been by impressive margins (although the same is true of many of Obama's districts). However, Obama leads 8-2 in states with competitive Senate races, and 5-1 in states with competitive gubernatorial races. If the three types of races are combined, Obama has a tiny, 44-43 edge over Clinton. In races that are classified as "highly competitive" (toss-ups or leaners), Obama's lead is 29-27, though Clinton maintains a 24-21 edge in highly competitive House races.
(Notes: States marked with an asterisk have not compiled their primary or caucus returns by Congressional District. In these instances, the winner of the district was inferred from county-level results. Also, I am not counting Michigan districts toward the totals, although I am counting Florida.)
One other issue is that it does not necessarily follow that the candidate that won a district would necessarily have longer coattails there. Obama's primary electoral weakness is that a relatively large number of Democratic voters presently claim that they'd defect to vote for John McCain in an Obama-McCain matchup. However, if these crossover Democrats are splitting their tickets, this would not necessarily hurt the downballot candidates. Clinton's primary electoral weakness (given the ways that she might win the nomination at this stage) is that she might depress turnout among Democratic-leaning voting groups like black voters and young voters. If these voters do not turn out, they will not be able to cast a ballot for the Democrat in downballot races.
A related question is whom the legislators and executives in competitive districts have chosen to endorse. That tally is below. Note that since most of the competitive districts this cycle are held by Republican incumbents, there was no endorsement available in many cases. I also do not list an endorsement where the Democratic incumbent is retiring.
Obama leads Clinton 14-8 in endorsements from competitive districts, including an 12-7 edge in House races. (EDIT - Have now added Obama's new endorsement today in AZ-5). Three sitting Democratic congressmen in competitive districts (PA-8, NH-1 and IN-9) have endorsed Obama even though Clinton carried their district. None have crossed over to endorse Clinton in an Obama-won district. If these legislators are behaving self-interestedly, they may evidently believe that Obama will carry longer coattails for them than Clinton.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Does Clinton really lead in Swing Districts?
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Even though the Governor of NC, Mike Easley, endorsed Clinton, he's not running for reelection. Both Democratic candidates for Governore endorsed Obama.
OK, I can fix that.
Thank you, Pablano, for the point about competitive senate seats. Indeed, the democrats have a much bigger need to pick up senate seats than House seats right now. To put it bluntly, you can't filibuster the house. I'm much more interested in seeing the dems pick up senate seats in Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico, Virginia, Alaska, North Carolina, Oregon, and Maine than worrying about a half a dozen house seats. Ideally, we'd get at least 58 seats, so that we could invoke Couture with the help of the likes of Specter and Snowe.
(Besides which, most of the Clinton districts have blue-dog democratic reps, anyways... while they're nice for their organizational vote, I'm more interested in getting real progressives elected.)
Of the two competitive Senate races taking place in states where Clinton won the primary (NM and NH), I'd note that your current poll/regression average has Obama doing 3.4% better vis-a-vis McCain in NM and only 0.1% worse in NH. Given recent polling, I suspect the NC Senate race will soon be added to Cook's list of competitive Senate races and clearly Obama is the stronger candidate there.
thank you for all that. make a post on dailyKos about it if possible.
Maybe a Clinton win in some conservative districts a congressman's "kiss of death." Of the 13 non-NY districts she won, congressman from only 3 have endorsed her. 8 out of the 13 have chosen to not endorse her even though she won their district. They know why they have refused to; it is likely that the Clinton brand will bring out the right wingers and that would be bad. Two out of the thirteen have chosen to endorse Obama even though he lost in their districts. I don't know why this weak argument is being presented.
And '58-seat' situation may or may not permit the Democrats to attain cloture.....
You seem to forget the monkey wrench in the machinery........Lieberman.
I wouldn;t count on his unwavering support when the going gets touch.
I would prefer a 59 or 60 seat total.
This analysis is excellent, but it seems to overlook the political point of the Clinton campaign's release: conventional wisdom says Obama would have far longer coattails, but even after dissecting the Clinton campaign's claims it appears both campaigns can make good arguments. So your analysis actually supports their attempt to negate Obama's perceived advantage. Privately they are no doubt pointing to the GOP's Wright ads in by-elections to emphasize that Obama is a liability in many competitive races.
No, Darren, you have it backwards.
Since the Clinton campaign is making the assertion, the burden of proof rests on them.
Their assertion is "I can help them win these districts, moreso than Obama."
Pablo's responsibility, then, is to disprove this assertion. He has done so, by stating that the Clinton premise is false, at best, they both have coattails of varying lengths, and at worst, he has them while she doesn't.
He has done that more than adequately.
GayIthacan, Liberman, for all his neoconservative foreign policy positions, (indeed, I'd rather have a real democrat in his seat), more or less falls in with democratic party line on domestic issues, and foreign policy in the senate would be much less important with a democrat in the white house. (If we had a republican, we'd need a veto-proof majority, which isn't gonna happen).
The GOP actually sets the bar for how many seats they need to retain to block filibusters higher than I do - they think they need at least 45 seats. Of course, that's probably a conservative estimate, but in reality, it depends on what the vote is on WHICH seats they keep. If they held Collins and Smith's seats, for example, we'd be able to get through more than if they held Steven's seat, although still less than if democrats won the Oregon and Maine seats.
I'm skeptical about the Clinton camp's claim that she needs to be on the ticket for House incumbents in "tough" districts to win. The two New York districts on the list, NY-19 and NY-24, do not seem particularly endangered since Republicans have had great difficulty recruiting quality opponents. In NY-24, FEC records show no declared opposition so far--at least none with a dollar in the campaign.
So even assuming some coattails, which is iffy, I'm not sure the Clinton presentation really shows what they say it shows--never mind the faulty assumption that just because Clinton won those districts in the primary, those Democratic voters wouldn't come out to vote for Obama in the fall. (Oh, and let's not forget that some states, like NY, have closed primaries which would not take into account Obama's strength with independents.)
Anonymous - From a PR perspective, it doesn't matter that we can disprove their positive assertion that "Clinton has longer coattails". There is an implied negative assertion that has not been disproven: "Obama does not have longer coattails". They have successfully muddied the waters and with good reason since poblano confirms that there is supporting data on both sides. This blurs Obama's strategic advantage of being perceived as the better candidate for downballot races. That blurring was undoubtedly the goal of the release, not to overnight convince superdelegates that Clinton has better coattails, just that she has a legitimate claim as well.
Just more cherry picking of polls by the Clinton's. Furthermore WHO CARES?! You can't take a few polls in May and have them override the entire election. Good grief these people are ridiculous!
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