Yesterday, I argued that Joe Biden is not an especially popular politician, and would start out with an unusually high number of unfavorables for a VP selection, almost all of whom have been either relatively unknown at the time of their selection (allowing the campaign to build a favorable narrative around them), or almost universally well-liked to begin with.
However, Biden's case is probably stronger than I indicated, because he tends to be most popular among voting groups with a lot of undecided voters, which means a lot of persuadables. In particular, Biden's strength with senior citizens could be a real asset. How so? Because seniors are far more likely to be undecided in this election than their younger counterparts.
Below, I have averaged the Gallup national tracker crosstabs by age over the course of the last three weeks. The only thing I am interested in is the number of voters who are not committed to either Obama or McCain (either truly undecided or claiming that they'll vote third-party). This is how that vote breaks down by age group:18-29 9% undecided/otherSeniors are about 50 percent more likely than other voters to be uncommitted at this point in the race. Voters aged 65+ will eventually represent about 20 percent of the electorate, but they may represent more like 30 percent of the pool of persuadables.
30-49 9% undecided/other
50-64 10% undecided/other
65+ 16% undecided/other
Now, what did Joe Biden's favorables look like in that recent Rasumussen poll?VF = Very Favorable
That is a pretty strong age-based correlation. The only figure that breaks the pattern is Biden's relatively strong performance among 18-29 year olds, but that is probably because that cohort is so overwhelmingly Democratic at the moment that they are likely to support any Democrat.
SF = Somewhat Favorable
SU = Somewhat Unfavorable
VU = Very Unfavorable
Age VF + SF = Favorable SU + VU = Unfavorable
18-29 3 + 26 = 29 14 + 8 = 22 (+7)
30-39 4 + 19 = 23 17 + 16 = 33 (-10)
40-49 8 + 19 = 27 22 + 18 = 30 (-3)
50-64 19 + 24 = 43 19 + 18 = 37 (+6)
65+ 21 + 24 = 45 12 + 21 = 35 (+10)
Biden's net favorable score among seniors was the highest of any Democrat that Rasmussen tested, except for John Edwards, who has since disqualified himself:Edwards +21What a Biden pick really would be is a redux of Gore-Lieberman. Al Gore got quite a large bounce in Florida when he selected Lieberman, and if Obama were to pick Biden, he is probably committed to playing Florida out to the end, or at least until the last 15 days of the campaign.
Biden +10
Clinton +8
Kaine +1
Webb 0
Sebelius -1
Bayh -6
Hagel -9
*-*
By the way -- I wouldn't read too much into Biden's "I'm not the guy" statement because his demeanor seemed to be pretty sarcastic and jocular. Then again, assuming it was an unplanned joke, his statement couldn't have gone over too well with the Obama campaign. Hell, if they were really evil, they could have told all the candidates they weren't the one and then saw who leaked or broke their game face.
In any event, based on my 99.99% uninformed aggregation of information and intuition, I'd probably place the candidates into something like the following tiers:
1. Biden, Kaine
2. Sebelius, Clinton
3. Bayh, Reed, Other
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Biden: A New Trick for Old Fogeys
-- Nate Silver at 3:30 AM
Labels: demographics, seniors, swing voters, undecideds, vice president
57 comments
Sebelius, you heard it here first!
The Oracle tells you exactly what you need to hear.
And remember, there is no spoon.
Another Matrix fan!
We will know the name of the VP in a few days. The suspense is fun...like being a child waiting for that special birthday gift. Will it be the one we really, really want?
I certainly have no inside knowledge of who Obama plans on choosing, but Biden would surprise me, because he's been in the Senate for decades and has a mixed record, including the fact that he supported the Iraq war and recently made the bizarre statement that the recent fighting in Georgia was the most important event in Europe since the fall of Communism. (The turmoil and mass killing in ex-Yugoslavia after the death of Tito wasn't more important and, for that matter, more obviously in Europe?) To put it bluntly, he's an establishment Washington Democrat (his commute from Wilmington is not relevant except to his constituents) who can be construed to represent everything that's been wrong with Congress as an institution.
Choosing Biden would contradict Obama's theme of new politics. I could more easily see him being nominated for Secretary of State or U.N. Rep in an Obama administration, if one indeed eventuates.
I expect Obama to pick someone for VP who can be construed in some way to represent a "new" politics, either because s/he's relatively young, has been proven to have appeal in what are STILL thought of as traditionally Republican states (e.g., Schweitzer, Sebelius, Bayh), or/and has some kind of innovative ideas s/he will promote. Because of Biden's long record as a not particularly visionary establishment Democrat, he would be justly made to share the blame for all the failings of the institutional Democratic party in the Senate. I believe that even Gore, despite his baggage, could more easily represent himself as someone who is engaging in new thinking and was an innovator ahead of his time than Biden. And Gore is over 5 years younger!
I'm getting nervous about the idea of putting a "foreign policy" guy on the ticket. I don't want the central issue of the campaign to be foreign policy. If we do that we're fighting on their turf. We need to make the central issue the economy and keep talking about it.
We've fallen into the trap of letting them set the agenda.
Its the economy stupid!!
Stick to it.
I've got to say that the data on the old folks is persuasive. Thanks, Nate. It's always useful to have some facts.
Today we are going to learn how to play veepstakes.
1. Pick a candidate at random.
2. Put together a list of adjectives that describe the candidate.
3. Claim that people sharing those adjectives will be more likely to vote for the candidate.
4. Take a look at what state the candidate is from. Is it a swing or lean state? If so, the candidate can win it. If not, point out that historically the effect of VP's on swing states has been small.
5. Picture the candidate in a tank, then picture the candidate wearing a hard hat, while visiting a steel mill. Which of these images appeals most to do? If you said tank, then the candidate is strong on national defence. If you said hard hat, the candidate is strong on the economy. CEO's are automatically strong on the economy, while veterans are automatically strong on defence.
6. The next part is tricky. Is your veepstake selection more similar to the presidential candidate or more different. If similar, then the VP will increase the salience of key issues. If different, then the VP will make up for strengths. If neither, think of an issue they might have mentioned. They are now strong on that issue.
7. Are they a congressman? They have Washington experience. Governor? They have executive experience. Political outsider? They are a fresh face who can clean up Washington. Or VP/first lady? They will guarantee a victory, unless they don't.
8. Finally, we have ideology. Centrists are smart picks aimed at increasing appeal to independents. Hardliners are smart picks aimed at appeasing the base.
Worried that your analysis might be crap? Don't be. VP's don't matter anyway, so it would be hard for you to be proven wrong.
What if somebody points out that the candidate you suggested is horrible, and has reasons that lie outside this handy guidebook? That probably won't happen. The common form of Veepstake argumentation is to say "no it won't" to all suggested positives, while asserting different positives for a different candidate. Sometimes it may help to just assert positive qualities for your preferred candidate. In Veepstakes the longer list of positive traits generally trumps any shorter list, even if that list is more accurate or contains salient things.
Still confused? Lets try an example.
John McCain should run with... Paris Hilton.
Paris Hilton is...
* Young
* Hot
* White
* Rich
* Female
So she helps limit Obama's lead among attractive young voters (random aside but did anybody else notice that Huckabee rallies were absolute dogshows). White voters are about 80% of the electorate, so that's always good. Rich people vote more than poor people. Oh and she is a female, so she will appeal to Clinton supporters.
Hilton's home-state is California or New York. Not a swing state. However, that doesn't matter. Vice presidential candidates have rarely made a difference in modern history.
Probably in the course of the Simple Life, Paris Hilton wore a hard hat, but I would reckon it didn't suit her. However I do recall Paris Hilton mentioning energy policy once, and she often says "that's hot", so she is an expert on energy policy and climate change.
Paris Hilton is a fresh face who can bring a new era of politics to Washington. She is not a hardline ideologue, which will appeal to centrist voters. As we all know, centrists are more numerous than extremists. Moreover, Paris Hilton will help compensate for McCain's weakness in not being a celebrity, or being hot.
And now for some random assertions. Paris Hilton has more name recognition than other VP contenders. This will be a good thing in case voters forget McCain's name. The key demographic in the next election will be people who vote for the first candidate whose name they can remember (so Florida will be a swing state).
Paris Hilton is blonde. There has never been a blonde vice-president since the onset of colour television. Thus, Paris Hilton would make history.
No VP candidate that likes to carry around small dogs in a purse has ever lost an election.
Paris Hilton is ineligible because of her age? That is a fair point, but it doesn't refute the long list of reasons I have presented. I have like 12 points, while you have just one point of criticism. Lets determine who wins this argument.
12 positives - 1 negative = 11 positives. McCain-Hilton '08.
Nate,
Have you done a study about how demographics have changed in the last four years and if everybody could vote again what the margin would be if every living person voted the same way they did four years ago and Kerry got new 18-22 voters by say 20 points?
I know this is morbid to think of it this way but...the preboomer generation is one of the most conservative generations in the last century.
Bush won 60 and older voters by 7 points. Since he won 45-59 by only 2 and what I know about older boomers vs preboomers, my guess is he won the 70+ demographic by well over 10 points.
You see where I'm going. A lot of Republicans have died in the last 4years. A lot of new Democrats have turned 18.
I know people tend to think all early 20s are always liberal and all older voters are always conservative but that isn't really true.
Take a look at the 1988 election. You see that youths were actually more Rep than seniors. The preboomer generation (at this point 45-59) really jumps out at you here.
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_88.html
Obviously things change throughout people's lives, but certain generations are just different than others and to a certain extent, people keep the values of their youth throughout their entire lives.
The fact is one of the most Republican generations is dying at the same time one of the most Democratic is turning 18.
This will probably have big implications over the next 25 years.
I figure that if everybody gets 12 elections as an adult, then the people that died would represent 8.33% of the vote. If you replace a R+10 subgroup with a D+20 subgroup and the subgroup represents 8.33% of the population, then you have caused a 2.5% shift in the overall population.
In other words, demographics changes alone might have wiped out Bush's entire 2004 margin and if we had the election again, Kerry would win the popular vote by 0.1%.
Assuming that today's 14 year olds turn out to be as liberal as their 18 year old siblings, the 2012 election would be a fairly comfortable Kerry win.
Obviously, people are also shifting and some Bush people will be voting for Obama. Some Kerry people will be voting for McCain. Some 2004 voters will stay home. Some eligible 2004 nonvoters will show up. Not everybody that died in the last 4 years was a preboomer, etc etc.
The fact is there is a big demographic change going on.
I believe that a major reason for the Republican success over the last 20 years occured when the FDR seniors started to die as the Reagan youth started to come of age in the late 70s and 80s.
The demographics are definitely shifting back.
Interesting post, clarkejeffery.