Sister Kissing Update

In recent days, the probability of a 269-269 electoral tie has increased slightly in our simulations. This is mainly because Ohio has shifted from a lean Obama state to a toss-up, and the way that the math works out, it is very difficult to come up with plausible tie scenarios if Obama wins Ohio.

In this afternoon's simulation run, a tie occurred 66 times out of 10,000 simulations, involving 10 distinct scenarios to produce such an outcome. A lot of the more far-fetched scenarios that the model had imagined before (scenarios involving McCain winning Massachusetts or Obama winning Texas, for instance) have come off the board as we draw closer to the election and as the huge demographic earthquakes these things would require become less likely. The flip side of this, however, is that with a smaller conceivable set of battleground states, some specific, tie-producing scenarios come up more frequently. The two most plausible scenarios for producing a tie are as follows:

(22 times out of 10,000 simulations): Obama wins Kerry States + Iowa + New Mexico + Nevada. I somewhat dismissed this scenario in the polling write-up today, arguing that Obama was unlikely to win Nevada if he lost Colorado, but in fact such possibilities occur reasonably often.

(22 times): Obama wins Kerry States + Iowa + New Mexico + Colorado - New Hampshire. This is simply Al Gore's map, plus Colorado.

The only other scenario to come up in the double digits was this one:

(10 times) Kerry States + Iowa + New Mexico + Colorado + Virginia - Michigan. The five Bush states that Obama is most likely to flip are Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia. If Obama succeeds in flipping four of the five, but loses Ohio and the companion state of Michigan, we'll have a tie.

From here onward, we get pretty obscure:

(5 times) Kerry States + Iowa + New Mexico + West Virginia. Obama has not made much of an effort to contest West Virginia, but we know very little about it -- it hasn't been polled much and its demographics are very unique -- so our model has it coming into play occasionally.

(2 times) Kerry States + Iowa + Colorado + Nevada - New Hampshire. This is mathematically equivalent to the first scenario we discussed, but with New Mexico replaced by Nevada. Since Obama's polling considerably better in New Mexico than Nevada, it is unlikely.

Here are the remaining five scenarios:

(1 time) Kerry States + Florida - Minnesota
(1 time) Kerry States + Colorado + New Mexico + Montana
(1 time) Kerry States + Colorado + New Mexico + North Dakota
(1 time) Kerry States + Ohio + Colorado + New Mexico - Michigan
(1 time) Kerry States + Ohio + Iowa - Minnesota

*-*

I am also going to introduce a slight change to our methodology. Previously, for the reasons explained here, we had all ties going to Obama. I am going to continue to assign all ties to Obama in instances where he wins the popular vote. However, in cases where the candidates tie and McCain wins the popular vote, I will split the ties 50:50.

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538's Battlegrounds as of Mid-August

Our final deep breath before the VP picks and the conventions is a good time to do the monthly update of battleground states according to our projection model. Mid-September's will come between the conventions and the debates, and mid-October's will come after we know the polling effects from the debate series.

The last month has seen a nearly across-the-board uptick for John McCain. That's his good news. The good news for Barack Obama is that no states have flipped in our projections since mid-July. Since that month showed more of the McCain states inside of five points closer to the dead-even line, it's now Obama whose states are slightly closer to that line. Two Obama-projected states sit on the precipice of flipping: Ohio and Colorado.

The mid-August projection -- using a winner-take-all model rather than the probabilistic version that we usually use here -- remains at Obama 293, McCain 245.

FiveThirtyEight's mid-August Battlegrounds, 136 EVs:



Since McCain's movement was small but consistent, we've added a column for this month called the "McGain." Movement toward McCain is represented by a positive number. The line demarcates McCain-projected states from Obama-projected ones. Although no state has flipped across the line this month, New Hampshire and Iowa found their way inside of five points and Indiana is now projected outside of five points for McCain despite a polling average under two points.

McCain Penumbra States (projected between 5%-10%), 40 EVs:



From July, South Carolina, Arizona and Texas have moved into double digit McCain projections, while Indiana joined this group's ranks.

Obama's Penumbra States (projected between 5%-10%), 66 EVs:



In the last month, Minnesota has made a strong move from double-digit land into this group, going from Obama +11.6 to Obama +6.4. Iowa and New Hampshire graduated to battleground status and the remaining states stayed put. While Minnesota's strong movement isn't good news for Obama, the truth is +6.4 and a far better ground game is still fairly comfortable.

In double-digit base EV projections, Obama leads 165-131. Including Penumbra States, Obama leads 231-171.

Significant Movement:

Obama made incremental gains in our projections for the battlegrounds of Nevada (0.6), Florida (0.4) and Pennsylvania (0.3), but mostly found his numbers slipping elsewhere. The biggest explanation can be found in the Super Tracker. Notice that in mid-July Obama's lead was roughly three points; today it is roughly one point. That two-point slippage tracks with the projection movement this month.



The next time we update our battleground projections roughly 11 days after the final gavel in St. Paul, remember that "par" is a lingering McCain post-convention bounce of just over two points on average; for an explanation why, see yesterday's post on what a convention bounce looks like. That means that if McCain is polling two points higher across the board than he is today, our projection will hold him steady.

This battleground report does not include today's polls, so this is our forecast as of Saturday morning. Colorado and New Mexico have ticked slightly closer; New Hampshire has slightly widened. North Carolina has edged just into the Penumbra category if we were including today's results, and Missouri is now almost there.

The significant story around field organizing will still have its say, mostly separate from the polling model. Remember that a strong field program working against a poor one (without doubt that is the case right now) puts McCain still in the position of either actually getting a field program working at better than 3% of Obama's output or risking these close states tipping in Obama's direction under the polling radar.

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Today's Polls, 8/16

Colorado polls had for some months shown a small but consistent lead for Barack Obama, but his advantage there appears to be gone. A new poll from the Rocky Mountain News shows John McCain with a 44-41 lead.

McCain now holds the lead in three current polls of Colorado: Rasmussen, Quinnipiac, and this Rocky Mountain News poll, while Obama holds the lead in two others -- Frederick and Public Policy Polling. In all cases but PPP, the leads are within the margin of error. Our model still regards Obama as a very small, half-point favorite in Colorado, but the state has tightened.

Colorado is not quite a must-win state for Obama. It likely won't matter at all if he wins Ohio, for instance. But without either Colorado or Ohio, Obama faces a fairly difficult path to 270 electoral votes. Winning the Kerry states plus Iowa and New Mexico -- two states that still look quite strong for Obama -- leave him at 264 electoral votes, just five vote shy of a tie and six shy of a win. But those five votes might be tough to come by. It's hard to imagine Obama winning a state like Missouri or Indiana if he doesn't win Ohio. It's also somewhat hard to imagine him winning Nevada -- which would get him to a 269-269 tie and probably a win in the House of Representatives -- if he loses Colorado, although the two states are not as similar demographically as they might seem. The key state, then, would probably be Virginia. The more difficult that Colorado looks for Obama, the more important Virginia becomes.

UPDATE: Although, this could be a major problem for McCain in Colorado.

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Friday Afternoon Leftovers

I don't usually do a lot of this, but several things that I've been meaning to link to:

The Associated Press reports on an obscure law in Ohio that allows voters to register and vote on the same day, and creates a week-long early voting window that Obama is poised to take advantage of.

Speaking of which, Justin Sizemore cites numbers from the Democratic primaries in North Carolina and finds that newly-registered voters turn out in considerably higher numbers than voters who were registered prior to 2008.

...and Chris Hayes references me in an article on Obama's voter registration efforts at The Nation.

Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are figuring out what we reported a week ago: the Gang of 10 puts McCain in a very difficult position.

Wesley Clark Jr. implies that his dad had not been vetted (h/t Giordano).

PUMAs hang out with 9/11 thurthers in front of a Burger King.

Phil Vogels at the Huffington Post finds little historical relationship between experience and the quality of a Presidency.

Me on student radio in Denver.

It's probably not the war in Georgia that is driving McCain's numbers.

And I maintain that Evan Bayh is getting a raw deal from parts of the left, but here's a reason to oppose him.

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Today's Polls, 8/15

There's not a lot of action in state polling today, but national numbers point toward some movement toward John McCain.

The Gallup national tracker is tied at 44-44 -- the first time it has been tied since August 1st, and a downtick from the 3-6 point lead that Obama had held in the Gallup tracker in recent days. The Rasmussen tracker has Obama with a 2-point lead (actually a point improved from yesterday), and the Economist/YouGov poll has Obama ahead by just a single point.

As for the state numbers, Rasmussen has John McCain ahead by 6 points in North Carolina, up from 3 points last month, but Obama ahead by 14 points in Maine (which we previwed this morning), an improvement from 8 points last month.

I'm not going to attempt a ton of analysis beyond what I articulated yesterday: these are encouraging numbers for John McCain, but we know very much about the breadth, depth or length of whatever momentum he might have. And frankly, it may not matter very much, since once Barack Obama names his VP candidate sometime next week, we're going to be on a roller coaster until the election, with sleepy August afternoons like this one long since forgotten.

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Road to 270: Maine

Note: Over the course of the next two months, we will be previewing the Presidential Election matchup in each of the 50 states. The previews are built around a key set of demographic variables in each state. We continue this morning with the Pine Tree State, Maine.

FIERCELY INDEPENDENT, Maine is an ironic state to follow our Mississippi preview, if only because each state was once a cornerstone of the other party’s electoral column. While Mississippi was formerly part of a solid Democratic South in the pre-Civil Rights Act era and is now solidly Republican, Maine spent most of the 20th century as a pillar of Rockefeller-style rock-ribbed Republicanism but has voted Democratic in presidential elections four straight times. Between 1916 and 1988, Maine voted only twice for Democrats – the LBJ landslide in 1964 and with home-stater Edmund Muskie on the Democratic ticket in 1968. Not even FDR’s broad popularity could penetrate Maine’s Republican bent, which went all four times for the Republican candidate.

Even as the state moves toward regular support for Democrats in presidential elections with the rest of New England, it retains two generally popular Republican Senators who seem to be immune from the regional wave of anti-Republican sentiment that claimed Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee in 2006.

Along with Nebraska, Maine is one of two states to divide its electoral votes proportionally, with the winner of each congressional district getting one EV and the statewide winner getting two. The more conservative of Maine’s two districts is CD-02, encompassing most of Maine outside of Portland and Augusta, including most of the places where people die in Stephen King novels. In 2008, most polling shows Barack Obama comfortably ahead and it’s fair to say that if John McCain is winning any electoral votes here, he’s probably got the election well in hand.

Key Demographics



Note: Factors colored in red can generally be thought to help McCain. Factors in blue can generally be thought to help Obama. Factors in purple have ambiguous effects. Except where otherwise apparent, the numbers next to each variable represent the proportion out of each 100 residents in each state who fall into that category. Fundraising numbers reflect dollars raised in the 2008 campaign cycle per eligible voter in each state. Figures for seniors and youth voters are proportions of all residents aged 18+, rather than all residents of any age. The figure for education reflects the average number of years of completed schooling for all adults aged 25+. The figure for same-sex households reflects the number of same-sex partner households as a proportion of all households in the state. The liberal-conservative index is scaled from 0 (conservative) to 100 (liberal), based on a Likert score of voter self-identification in 2004 exit polls. The turnout rates reflect eligible voters only. Unemployment rates are current as of June 2008.

What McCain Has Going For Him

When it votes Republican, Maine has appreciated its “mavericks.” Thus, the John McCain of 2000 would have had a strong shot here. Maine’s tendency toward anti-establishment candidates was recently reflected in the election of independent two-term governor Angus King, Jr. If McCain had not had to work so hard wooing the culturally conservative Republican base to win his party’s nomination this time around, and had George W. Bush not so badly hurt the Republican brand in general, McCain’s earlier reputation for willingness to buck his party would have played well in the state. In addition to its independent streak, a high percentage of military veterans helps McCain here, and the fact that Maine has the fewest percentage of 18-29 year olds as a segment of voting population also helps.

What Obama Has Going For Him

The fact that Maine has turned into a fairly liberal state compared with the rest of the nation and has high turnout in general elections does most of Obama’s work for him. The 5-1 disparity in fundraising and roughly the same in field offices foreshadows an enthusiasm gap in Obama’s favor. While some may be tempted to see Maine’s very old and white population as a potential inhibitor of success, this is a more socially liberal state that ranks 4th nationally in same-sex households as well as ranks low on the list of white evangelicals at 3.3%. David Sirota's discussion of the Race Chasm effect during the Democratic primaries is worth a read, and points out that Obama did well in states versus Hillary Clinton where either a very small or very large percentage of the Democratic electorate was African-American. In Maine, Obama won by nearly 20 points. Lack of racial polarization in states where blacks make up such a small percentage of voters should ironically help Obama in a state like Maine.

What To Watch For

As with Mississippi, there shouldn’t be a lot of drama unfolding in Maine. If Democrats are able to capture a 60th Senate seat it may well come here. Watch to see if Obama puts significant field resources into the race to help Rep. Tom Allen in his race against incumbent Sen. Susan Collins. Allen didn’t exactly race to embrace Obama during the primary contest, but governing with as close to a filibuster-proof majority as possible might tempt the folks in Chicago to make a substantial investment in helping Allen beyond the six or so field offices open now. Of course, with it still unclear how Obama’s Campaign for Change will interact with downballot field programs, we’ll have to wait and see whether Allen’s will mostly be a standard DSCC-funded coordinated campaign. If you see Obama making visits to the state and putting in significant field resources in Maine, take it as a sign of confidence (or cockiness, as you prefer) that Obama expects to win and wants to run up his majority in the Senate.

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What a Convention Bounce Looks Like

The convention bounce is one of the more vexing problems in presidential forecasting. That is particularly so this year. Both conventions are being held late -- the Democratic convention dates are the latest since at least 1952 for the challenging party, and the Republicans' are the latest since at least 1952 for the incumbent party. Moreover, the conventions are being held right on top of one another, with just one week of separation between them. Most years, there is at least a three- or four-week gap between the opening dates of the conventions. That gap was as small as 14 days in 1996 and 15 days in 2000, but it has never been so small as the seven days that we have this year.

But the convention bounce is also not something that can simply be ignored. If we looked at the polls from the weekend immediately following the Democratic convention, for instance, and did not adjust them in any way, that might give us an inflated idea about Barack Obama's chances of occupying the White House.

What I have done, then, is to boot up my database of national polls, which covers all elections since 1952. I looked at the average margin for all polls conducted within 150 days of the election; for instance, the average of all polls taken within 150 days of the election in 2000 had George W. Bush ahead by 2.0 points. Then, I looked at to what (if any) extent the candidate was overperforming that average in the 21 days commencing from the first date of his party's convention. For instance, if GWB polled 9 points ahead of Al Gore in a survey conducted one week from the start of the Republican convention, that would be considered evidence of a 7-point bounce -- his 9-point lead in that poll less his long-term, 2-point advantage.

Plotting all such polls produces a graph like this:



That chart, frankly, is a little hard to interpret -- but fortunately, we have statistical software that can help us to discern the patterns. After playing around with a number of functional forms, I eventually found one based on the combination of two logarithms that that had a decent amount of explanatory power. That function looks like this:



(Mathematically, this is the function:

Ln(d)*20.1 - 31.8*Ln(d+4) + 43.4

...where 'd' is the number of days elapsed from the start of the convention (the first day of the convention is counted as '1' rather than '0'). Note that I weighted recent years somewhat more heavily in coming up with this equation. The function is defined as zero where it takes on a negative value).

What the chart shows is that the bounce begins to manifest itself in earnest as of about the third day of the convention. This makes a fair amount of sense intuitively. The first day of the convention, usually nothing much happens; there may not even be network coverage of the events. The second day, something does happen -- the keynote speech, frequently -- but it happens in prime time, after the pollsters have already closed shop for the day. So it's on the third day when you can generally expect to see some tangible effects.

From there, the bounce accelerates quickly, peaking approximately 6-7 days from the start of the convention -- that is, the weekend afterward, if the convention runs from Monday through Thursday. It then dissipates in a roughly linear fashion over the next 3-4 weeks.

Note that we find the average peak bounce to be about 6 points. This is highly consistent with Tom Holbrook's research, where he found the average bounce to be 5.9 points in conventions conducted since 1964. A 6-point convention bounce represents par. If a candidate gets a bounce larger than 6 points, that can be considered to be a good sign. If the bounce is smaller than 6 points, that can be considered to be a bad sign.

Of course, this gets more complicated if you have two conventions occurring back-to-back, as we have this year. If we take the superposition of a convention bounce curve and an inverse convention bounce curve that begins one week later, we get the following rather strange-looking result:



Our default expectation is that Barack Obama will get a decent-sized but short-lived bounce, which will quickly be compromised by the start of the Republican convention. However, the Republicans' bounce might not be as big as it otherwise would be, because there may still be some lingering afterglow from the Democratic convention.

It might take until roughly the time of the first debate on September 26 for the convention effects to dissipate completely. The polls are going to be extremely difficult to read in the interim: we don't quite know how these two curves are going to interact. I would say that, if Barack Obama still holds the lead in the race in the weekend following the Republican convention, that is probably a pretty good sign for him.

The curve you see above is also relevant to our methodology, since polls conducted in the convention bounce window will be adjusted according to it. In other words, if Barack Obama is polling at a +9 in the weekend following the Democratic convention -- at which time we'd typically expect him to be experiencing about a 6-point bounce -- we will treat that poll as a +3 for purposes of our forecasting. By extension, if Obama only experiences a 2-point bounce in the weekend following his convention, it will actually harm his forecast.

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McCain Improves With Base, Obama Stays Flat

Good news for John McCain in one key area – Pew finds his base support is firming up while Barack Obama’s continues to hold steady. Last month, the two candidates held an even share of the base at 83%. While Obama is holding steady after quickly consolidating most of Clinton’s support (69% in June, 72% since July), McCain has 88% support of his Republican field-mates’ former support, up to 87% overall of the Republican base from 83% in June.





Pew has an even more interesting chart measuring hard support compared with swing voters. While 35% support Obama with no chance of supporting McCain and 32% support McCain with no chance of supporting Obama, one in three remain swing voters. Of these, 36.4% lean Obama with a chance of McCain, 33.3% lean McCain with a chance of Obama, and 30.3% are truly undecided.



Each candidate’s supporters can find solace in the numbers. McCain supporters will be happiest knowing the "McCain, no-chance-Obama" supporters have upticked from 29% to 31% to 32% since June and that Obama’s support from the "no-chance-McCain" group dropped from 38% to 35% in July and stayed steady at that number in August. Among former Clinton supporters, the percent planning to support McCain in the fall upticked slightly from 17% to 18%.

Obama supporters will note that within the swing voters group, August’s 36.4% lean Obama - 33.3% lean McCain - 30.3% undecided pattern has reversed itself from June, when it was 36.4% undecided - 33.3% lean McCain - 30.3% lean Obama. Assuming an equal likelihood of Obama leaners flipping to McCain as McCain leaners flipping to Obama, McCain would have to win a hard break of better than 70% true undecideds to win the popular vote (often, but not exclusively, a proxy for an electoral win). Another bit of good news here for Obama's supporters is that among former Clinton supporters who weren’t sure who they’d choose in the fall, Obama has gained roughly 75% of the ones who’ve now made up their minds.

If the 3/4 pattern among the supported-Clinton-but-now-undecided continues to break at the same 3/4 rate for Obama, we can expect a roughly 80-20 split of former Clinton supporters overall (if we assume he does not eat into any of the Clinton-to-McCain voters between now and the election, an assumption to be tested after Clinton's performance at the convention and on the trail). This would mean that McCainocrats would out-percentage Obamacans as a percentage of each party’s respective base. However, a word of caution: many of those who consider themselves Obamacans may have switched party identification to Democratic or independent over the past four years and would thus not be counted in the percentage of Republican base McCain support.

The bottom line in the Pew findings is that McCain is steadily consolidating his base while Obama is treading water, so McCain's supporters should take more comfort. On the cusp of a VP pick that could impact McCain’s numbers with his base support, it’s useful to take a snapshot of where we are. For example, the floated idea of pro-choice Tom Ridge (who would “deliver” PA, per Chris Matthews) might be very unpopular with many members of McCain’s base and reverse this trend in the polling that is helping McCain stay very close behind Obama. Though there are rumblings from the Democratic blogosphere that Evan Bayh would represent an unacceptable choice because he supported the Iraq War, for example, I’m not sure I buy a hands-sitting affair by Dems over something relatively insignificant like a VP choice, particularly when we are told that picking Bayh would be an olive branch to Clinton Dems who Obama has not fully reeled in yet.

One key difference between base Democratic objection to Obama choosing someone like Bayh versus base Republican objection to McCain choosing someone like Ridge is that Dems do not mistrust Obama on ending the Iraq War and would not suddenly do so if Obama picks an Iraq War-supporter, whereas the Republican mistrust of McCain is about his commitment to social conservative issues that would be badly shaken by picking a pro-choice running mate.

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Today's Polls, 8/14

The presidential polls have been more or less stable for several weeks now. With Barack Obama in Hawaii and most of the country focused on the Olympics, you'd probably expect them to stay that way until someone holds a convention or names a vice president. However, three new polls released today show significant movement toward John McCain.

In Washington, SurveyUSA has John McCain trailing by 7 points. This hardly moves Washington into competitive territory, however, SurveyUSA had polled Washington no fewer than nine times since Super Tuesday, and had shown Obama ahead an average of 13.4 points, including 16 points in a survey released in mid-July.

A similar pattern manifests itself in Minnesota, where Rasmussen has Barack Obama's lead eroding to 4 points; Obama had held a 13-point lead last month. And in the critical swing state of Colorado, Rasmussen has John McCain edging into a 1-point lead; last month, it had been Obama by 3.

Colorado, Minnesota and Washington are quite similar to one another demographically. There are no overwhelmingly strong hints about what's going in from the cross-tabular results, but it appears that McCain has gained ground with independents (as is almost always the case when the polls move) and also that some Republican voters are moving from undecided to McCain.

Still, it's a little bit perplexing to see movement like this without any obvious proximate cause. As usual, we are simply going to have to wait for more data to find out whether it means anything.

p.s. Although it doesn't quite fit into our storyline above, there is also a University of Texas poll out in the Lone Star State, showing John McCain with a 43-33 lead.

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Clinton Campaign Didn’t Grasp Rudimentary Proportionality Math

This is malpractice. Clinton National Field Director Guy Cecil’s January 19 internal memo discussing February 5th’s congressional districts and the threshold numbers from gaining or defending the gain of an extra delegate is replete with error.

Set aside the malpractice of discontinuing polling in caucus states where the blind-flying Clinton campaign allowed Obama’s team to run up the score, this revelation shows that the Clinton’s HQ apparently did not have simple calculators.

With proportional allocation, since delegates are rounded up and run to the thousandth decimal, to gain a 4-2 split on needs to win 3.5/6ths of the vote. In 6-delegate districts, that percentage is 58.334%. This is undoubtedly what Cecil is referring to when he cites “59%” as the blanket significant threshold. In 4-delegate districts, 2.5/4ths is 62.500%. In 8-delegate districts, the 5-3 split number is 56.250% (4.5/8ths). In 7-delegate districts, a 4-3 becomes 5-2 at 64.286% (4.5/7ths).

Cecil specifies a 59% threshold for 22 critical run-up Clinton's or hold-down Obama's score districts – 16 strong Clinton districts and 6 strong Obama districts. The strong Clinton districts, according to the internal memo, were AL-6, AZ-7, NJ-16, NJ-17, and CA districts 18, 19, 21, 23, 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 43, 45, and 51. (For those of you wondering about New Jersey’s nonexistent 16th and 17th congressional districts, New Jersey structured delegate allocation by “delegate districts,” of which there were 20.)

Not one of Clinton's 16 favorable districts that Cecil cites were 6-delegate districts. In 14 of them, there were four delegates, the extra-delegate threshold for a 3-1 split being 62.500%. New Jersey’s DD-16 was only 3 delegates, meaning a bare one-vote majority up to a 66.666% margin of victory would result in a 2-1 split. Spending effort running up the score in 3-delegate districts that are comfortably yours by majority simply doesn’t get any more wasteful and Clinton came nowhere near the 3-0 shutout. Finally, Clinton-favored CA-23 was a 5-delegate district where a bare majority gets the winner 3-2, but a 40% win is required to get a 4-1 split. Obama won it outright.

In the six Obama-favored districts where Cecil advocated playing defense (AL-1, AL-2, GA-3, GA-4, GA-5 and TN-8), three of them (AL-1, AL-2, GA-3) were 4-delegate districts, TN-8 was a 5-delegate district, and GA-5 was a 7-delegate district. Out of all 22 districts where Cecil cited “59%” as the critical threshold, only one – GA-4 – was actually such a district. Obama won it, with 79.441% of the vote, and got a 5-1 split.

In Clinton’s defense, she was actually successful in California in most targeted districts with a 3-1 split, with extra effort probably making a difference in six districts where she won between 62.500% and 65% of the vote and might not have gained the extra delegate without it. On the other hand, she won five California districts so comfortably (with 69%-76% of the vote and victory margins of between 38%-52%) that worry about 58.334% and a 16.667% margin of victory was probably moot to begin with. Had Clinton spent her 38%-52% winning margin districts in 5-, 6-, and 7-delegate districts, she'd have been far more efficient racking up delegates. Her campaign did not understand this.

Failure to understand the math clearly hurt in a few other places. For example, in AZ-07, Clinton eclipsed the 58.334% threshold with 58.501% of the vote… and the delegates split 2-2. In CA-19, Clinton eclipsed 58.334% with 59.965%… and the delegates split 2-2.

The upshot is that the Clinton camp missed easy preparations and unnecessarily wasted and/or misdirected valuable effort. With limited post-Iowa resources, they made miscalculations that surely gave away free delegate points at a time when the pledged delegate race was very tight. With the nomination now long-settled and many other mistakes pointed out by others, the purpose is not to belabor what went wrong because assuredly many things did. Simply, as a site dedicated to the efficient and accurate use of data by political campaigns, we could not let this revelation from Josh Green's piece pass without comment.

At this point, it’s much more a cautionary tale for future campaigns to make sure they hire people who know how to work a calculator and look up some basic information. High school interns would probably do it for free. In short, one key aspect of the epitaph on Clinton’s 2008 campaign will be that simple numbers that any old math-minded person could figure out escaped her top people.

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The Next Laura Ingraham?

After Nate announced that he was not, in fact, Chuck Todd, I’ve been thinking of dropping the semi-anonymity of just “Sean.” My full name is Sean Quinn, and I’m a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. Two classes behind Jake Tapper at Dartmouth, I walked across America for the meatier part of two years with a backpack and a journal, was a lead writer on several of the You Don’t Know Jack editions while living in Chicago (paid smartassery produces a reinforcing Pavlovian response). I’ve taught LSAT prep in Charlottesville, hold a JD from Virginia Law (FBI director Robert Mueller gave the commencement address on “integrity,” I kiddeth you not). I’m a certified Enneagram teacher in the Helen Palmer school, have played poker professionally for several years and have worked in Democratic campaign/party circles doing both field and research work, with most of that experience in beautiful Montana.

As a longtime amateur political observer/analyst and eventual activist, my blogging career was serendipitously launched by the unique delegate math circumstances of the Democratic primary, when posting at DailyKos under the pseudonym PocketNines. That’s where I encountered “Poblano.”

I’ll try to balance Nate’s baseball references with football and hockey ones, particularly when they involve my beloved St. Louis Blues or Dartmouth/Blue Lee Stempniak. Finally, I just want to say hello to any fellow members of Mr. Walker’s 1981 and 1982 Khoury League Bantam I/II U. City (MO) Warriors baseball team who might be reading this. Go Warriors! Down with the Cobras!

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How McCain is Winning on the Economy

In a fresh article up at the New Republic, I argue that McCain is winning the argument over gas prices -- and thereby eroding Obama's advantage on the traditional Democratic territory of the economy.

Nevertheless, the impact of higher gas prices is quite literally more visible than that of other commodities--gas stations bellow their prices from every street corner. In the Pew poll, 38 percent of Americans voters identified energy prices as the most important economic problem facing the country. That was far and away the plurality response--unemployment was cited by only 11 percent of the sample, and the housing crisis by 10 percent.

The economy is the election. And gas prices have become the economy. John McCain has been smart to champion the issue. The policies that McCain has advocated--a suspension in the federal gas tax and expanded offshore drilling--are both fairly popular, with the latter being favored by around a 70/30 majority.

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Road to 270: Mississippi

Note: Over the course of the next two months, we will be previewing the Presidential Election matchup in each of the 50 states. The previews are built around a key set of demographic variables in each state. We continue this morning with the Magnolia State, Mississippi.

A POLARIZED STATE OF EXTREMES, Mississippi is a demographic Republican bulwark. More than any other state, it’s impossible to talk about Mississippi without discussing its dark racial history; though it’s the state with the largest number of black voters (who vote Democratic), its white vote is more numerous and almost monolithically Republican. After the Civil War, Mississippi was a reliable Democratic state, even voting for Adlai Stevenson twice over Ike. However, its white citizens were so strongly opposed to allowing blacks privileges of basic citizenship that it went for States’ Rights Party’s Strom Thurmond in 1948, Harry Byrd in 1960 (with Thurmond on the ticket), Barry Goldwater over Civil Rights Act-signing LBJ in 1964 (by 74 points!), and segregationist George Wallace in 1968 (by 40 points). Although the southern and "born-again" Carter narrowly won back the state for Democrats in the Watergate year of 1976, Ronald Reagan launched his campaign in Philadelphia, MS in 1980, a tiny town known only for being the site of three brutal lynchings during the Freedom Rides summer of 1964. Reagan hailed “states’ rights” and sent the message loud and clear that Nixon’s Southern Strategy was to be continued by the Republican Party. Mississippi went Republican in 1980 by a nose and has not been close since.

The poorest state and 2d least educated, Mississippi is a rural gun state with huge numbers of evangelicals and high unemployment. Culturally conservative, its Starbucks:Walmart ratio is the 2d lowest in the nation, and the lowest percentage of same-sex couples live here. Emphasizing its partisan polarization, the fewest number of independents live in Mississippi. Given the clear demographic lines, neither campaign appears likely to seriously contest Mississippi, ceding its six electoral votes to John McCain and the Republican column. To the extent there is action in Mississippi this year, expect it all to come from the Ronnie Musgrove-Roger Wicker Senate race.

Key Demographics



Note: Factors colored in red can generally be thought to help McCain. Factors in blue can generally be thought to help Obama. Factors in purple have ambiguous effects. Except where otherwise apparent, the numbers next to each variable represent the proportion out of each 100 residents in each state who fall into that category. Fundraising numbers reflect dollars raised in the 2008 campaign cycle per eligible voter in each state. Figures for seniors and youth voters are proportions of all residents aged 18+, rather than all residents of any age. The figure for education reflects the average number of years of completed schooling for all adults aged 25+. The figure for same-sex households reflects the number of same-sex partner households as a proportion of all households in the state. The liberal-conservative index is scaled from 0 (conservative) to 100 (liberal), based on a Likert score of voter self-identification in 2004 exit polls. The turnout rates reflect eligible voters only. Unemployment rates are current as of June 2008.

What McCain Has Going For Him

The culturally conservative Deep South. This is safe territory for Republican presidential candidates. Republicans enjoyed a 9-point partisan ID edge in 2004, but given some lingering Democratic affiliation in name only from decades earlier, the true Republican edge is a bit wider. McCain can take heart from the fact that white Democrats went almost unanimously for Hillary Clinton in the primaries, reflecting a discomfort with Obama's skin color. On the religious front, although evangelicals’ response to McCain has been tepid compared with some other Republicans (and certainly George W. Bush), the Arizona senator enjoys a 61-17 lead nationally over Obama among evangelicals and Mississippi has the 4th highest percentage of evangelicals in the country. Two other demographic factors heavily on McCain’s side are gun ownership (6th highest) and those who answer “American” to the census question on ancestry (5th highest). Both of these factors strongly favor McCain, as the NRA plans to target Obama as the most dangerous presidential nominee for gun rights ever, and because Obama's mixed ethnicity will surely be a hard pill to swallow for Mississippi's "Americans."

What Obama Has Going For Him

Large African-American population. Mississippi has the single highest percentage of African-Americans of any state in the Union at over 37%. Demographically, Mississippi skews younger (8th most voters 18-29), fewer elderly (6th fewest 65+) and female (8th highest percentage). As he did in the primary, Obama seems likely to excite the imaginations of black voters in Mississippi, but if there’s anywhere his candidacy will motivate “anti” voting, it’s probably here. High unemployment favors the change candidate, but it’s likely that overlap with black voters who are Obama’s anyway will negate this impact. Obama can take heart from the May special election results of Congressional District 1, where Democrat Travis Childers surprised most observers by winning the most culturally conservative district in the state (Hillary Clinton even won more delegates than Obama here in the March 11 primary). This result suggests that while Obama may still have a tough time here due to his racial heritage, the enthusiasm gap between the parties this cycle is also present in Mississippi and will impact turnout.

What To Watch For

Mississippi is not especially complicated; expect it to be called for McCain the moment the polls close. This is still a largely rural state where there is a white side of town and a black side of town. To win the state, Obama would need to turn out nearly every single black vote, including as of yet unregistered but eligible voters. With the large national voter registration drive underway and an historic candidacy, expect a surge in the African-American vote. If black voters made up something closer to 45% of the state's population, you’d probably see a lot more competition here; as 95% of that vote and a mere 15% of the white vote would get the job done. But even now, if Obama could capture 95% of the black vote he’d only need a bit over 23% of the white vote to win the state, but 23% of whites in this racially polarized state is likely a bridge too far.

What will be especially interesting this year is one of the two Senate races. Thad Cochran is a heavy favorite to win re-election, but the seat vacated by Trent Lott’s need to beat the calendar under the Obama-sponsored new federal lobbying law should be a close one. Our current projection is a Republican hold by 3.5%, but in the end the racial contours of the top-of-ticket contest should boost turnout for both downballot candidates. As our profile comes before McCain's VP selection, whether he picks a candidate that excites (e.g., Huckabee) or alienates (e.g., pro-choice Tom Ridge) the white evangelical base may also affect the outcome of the Senate race due to turnout impact. Watch to see if either the DSCC or the Obama campaign put money into voter registration that might capture this Senate seat for the Democrats. Though Mississippi will not be determinative in the presidential race this year, an extra seat in the Democratic Senate majority would be crucial to legislative efforts, particularly if Obama wins.

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Sending Out an S.O.S.

A couple of times each week, I get e-mails from concerned citizens -- almost always Democrats -- who ask why I don't devote more time to issues like vote fraud, and are convinced that the Republicans are going to "steal" the election from Barack Obama.

This is a pretty natural fear to have after 2000. However, if there is actually a recount, or some other kind of rules dispute around the election, it is more likely to be resolved in the Democrats' favor. That is because, of the 15 most important states according to our Tipping Point metric, the Secretary of State is a Democrat in 11 of them, and the governor is a Democrat in 12 of them. The tally follows below the jump.

State         SOS        Governor 
Ohio          Democrat   Democrat 
Michigan      Republican Democrat
Virginia      Democrat   Democrat
Iowa          Democrat   Democrat
New Mexico    Democrat   Democrat
New Hampshire Democrat   Democrat 
Florida       Republican Republican
Pennsylvania  Democrat   Democrat
Nevada        Democrat   Republican
Indiana       Republican Republican
Montana       Republican Democrat
Oregon        Democrat   Democrat
New Jersey    Democrat   Democrat
Wisconsin     Democrat   Democrat

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Bayhdenkabelius

Marc Ambinder raises a simple but important point about the Democratic veepstakes:

Item: the Democratic National Convention Committee confirms that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has been given a Tuesday night speaking slot. Evidence that she won't be chosen as vice president?

Not really. The convention schedulers and Obama's VP team are entirely separate and segregated.

It's been a lot of fun, but we've probably been guilty of overinterpretation. Having been a partner in a small business, I can attest to the fact that rumors are contagious, and that the risk of leaks is an exponential function of the number of people let in on the secret.

The fact is that if the convention planners and schedulers in Denver know the identity of Obama's Vice Presidential selection, that means a lot of people know. And if a lot of people know, that means the media would know.

But the media doesn't know.

Ergo, not very many people do know. Perhaps only some combination of Obama, Axelrod, Plouffe, Gibbs, and the candidate him or herself, if the candidate has been chosen at all.

Ergo, we know nothing.

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Today's Polls, 8/13

Our busiest polling day in several weeks:



Let's get the easy ones out of the way first. Kansas and New Jersey were two states that the campaigns talked early on about being competitive, but they have since retreated into their respective red and blue corners. Each of these polls have moved slightly toward Obama from their previous edition, but otherwise there's nothing to see here.

Wisconsin may have tightened some; McCain's 5-point deficit in the Strategic Vision poll is the closest he's been in any individual survey since April. Still, the race has consistently polled outside the margin of error, and Strategic Vision's polls are notoriously Republican-leaning -- their only prior poll of the state, taken at about the time of the Democratic primary in February, had Obama ahead by just one.

We're listing a different result from the Franklin & Marshall poll of Pennsylvania than some other outlets, using Obama's +8 among registered voters rather than his +5 among likely voters. A couple of weeks ago, in the brouhaha over the Gallup-USA Today poll that showed a huge likely/registered voter split, we established a policy of deferring to the registered voter version of a poll when given the choice, until the time of the first Presidential Debate on September 26, after which we will switch to the likely voter version. There is some evidence that likely voter models are more accurate near to the election -- but very little that they work this far out, and in fact there is some evidence to the contrary.

Of course, it is relatively unusual for a pollster to list both registered voter and likely voter numbers -- most just pick one or the other. But when in doubt, we're going to defer to allowing voters to speak for themselves -- which means using the registered voter version until there is a good empirical argument not to.

That notwithstanding, the difference between a +5 and a +8 hardly matters, considering that Pennsylvania has been polled extensively, and not really shown any daylight for John McCain in a couple of months now.

Nevada has been one of the most vexing states to us poll junkies, with only Rasmussen surveying the state on a regular basis. Their latest result has McCain up by 3 -- a reversal from last month, when Obama had pulled into a 2-point lead. As I said last month, I think these numbers may be lowballing Obama somewhat, considering that the Democrats have made significant gains in party registration, something which might be hard to detect in a poll (like Rasmussen's) that weights based on party ID.

Lastly, two polls out of Virginia show the race essentially tied: McCain leads by one point in the Rasmussen poll, the same margin he held last month, and by a fraction of a point in the first InsiderAdvantage survey of the state. The last six Virginia polls have all been in a tightly-banded range between McCain +1 and Obama +2, and it looks like the state may come down to turnout operations.

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Road to 270: Indiana

Note: Over the course of the next two months, we will be previewing the Presidential Election matchup in each of the 50 states. The previews are built around a key set of demographic variables in each state. We begin this morning with the Hoosier State, Indiana.

PERHAPS NO STATE better embodies the difference in philosophy between the McCain and Obama campaigns than Indiana. For Obama, it represents a chance to rewrite the conventional wisdom and redraw the map: Indiana has gone Democratic just once in the past 15 elections, but Obama is serious about winning it, with intentions of opening as many as 30 field offices in the state. McCain, meanwhile, is acting as though he is calling a bluff; his campaign has not been advertising there, nor has it devoted any resources to the ground game. What gives each campaign such confidence about their prospects?

Key Demographics



Note: Factors colored in red can generally be thought to help McCain. Factors in blue can generally be thought to help Obama. Factors in purple have ambiguous effects. Except where otherwise apprent, the numbers next to each variable represent the proportion out of each 100 residents in each state who fall into that category. Fundraising numbers reflect dollars raised in the 2008 campaign cycle per eligible voter in each state. Figures for seniors and youth voters are proportions of all residents aged 18+, rather than all residents of any age. The figure for education reflects the average number of years of completed schooling for all adults aged 25+. The figure for same-sex households reflects the number of same-sex partner households as a proportion of all households in the state. The liberal-conservative index is scaled from 0 (conservative) to 100 (liberal), based on a Likert score of voter self-identification in 2004 exit polls. The turnout rates reflect eligible voters only. Unemployment rates are current as of June 2008.

What McCain Has Going For Him

History. Not only has Indiana voted Democratic just once since World War II, but it has also voted more Republican than the nation as a whole in each of those elections. Indiana voters are moderate on pocketbook issues, but conservatives on cultural ones, and as of 2004, the Republicans had a 14-point advantage in party identification. Indiana has a Republican governor who will probably win re-election, and Republicans control 33 of Indiana's 50 seats in the State Senate. Indiana also has one of the nation's toughest voter ID laws, which has been upheld in the face of court challenges. In addition, its polls close early, by 6 PM local time, which tends to limit participation, especially among shift workers. Indiana is among the top states in the country in vehicle miles per capita, so issues like the gas tax could prove to be an effective wedge.

What Obama Has Going For Him

A lot of little things, which might add up to a big thing. Indiana has the most manufacturing-intensive economy in the country, with 18 percent of its jobs in the sector; Illinois-based unions are used to working its territory. Approximately 20-25 percent of the state is in the Chicago media market, and Obama overperford in the Northern portion of the state during the Democratic primaries. Indiana has several major colleges and universities, and an above-average number of young voters. Obama has outfundraised McCain in Indiana better than 2:1. The Bayh brand name remains extremely powerful in the state, and Evan Bayh can be an effective surrogate, whether or not he is Obama's vice president. Obama has a head start, having focused intensely on the state during the primaries, and essentially keeping his organization intact since then.

What To Watch For

Democrats have not made a serious effort to compete in Indiana since at least 1988, when Dan Quayle was George Bush's VP nominee and effective cordoned the state off to Michael Dukakis. And since the state has usually held a late primary, it had not gotten much attention during the nomination process.

The essential question then is whether there has been some sort of latent Democratic vote in Indiana that the Democrats simply haven't bothered to fight for. Indiana has generally had one of the lowest turnout rates in the country, which might be a consequence of its early poll closing times, but might also reflect the apathy caused by the lack of attention paid to it. That alone might not be enough to make the state competitive. But when coupled with the fact that the Democratic nominee is a Midwesterner from a neighboring state, that the state's blue-collar economy is really struggling, and that one campaign is invested in the state when the other isn't, you might have the right mix of circumstances necessary to tip the state.

Geographically, Obama will need to carry Marion County (Indianapolis) -- which John Kerry won by just 2 points -- by perhaps as many as 25-30. He will have to do even better than that in the Northwest suburbs. And he will have to hold his own in the Northeast portion of the state -- losing by not more than 5 or 10 points -- while keeping Southern Indiana to within 20. If he is able to accomplish substantially all of those things, the math will be there for him.

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Warner Will Be Dems' Keynoter [UPDATED]

A little birdseed for the night owls out there: the AP is reporting that ex-Virginia governor Mark Warner will deliver the Tuesday night address at the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Senate candidate and former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner is scheduled to deliver the Tuesday night keynote address at this year's Democratic National Convention — the same role that launched Barack Obama to national prominence four years ago.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival during the Democratic presidential primaries, is also scheduled to speak that night, Aug. 26. But Warner is being given the plum position, according to an e-mail that Obama campaign adviser Mike Henry sent to Virginia supporters late Tuesday.

I have to confess to being a little bit surprised by this. Contrary to the reporting of some outlets, Hillary Clinton had never formally been guaranteed the keynote slot -- rather, she had merely been guaranteed a prime-time speaking slot on Tuesday. But the perception out there was that Tuesday would be "her" night, and we can expect some growling from the PUMAs about Hillary being snubbed.

One would hope, however, that the Obama campaign was not so callous as to give Warner the nod without vetting/negotiating their position with the Clintons -- perhaps in exchange for the prime-time slot that Bill was given on Wednesday night. To have had Hillary keynoting on Tuesday and then Bill headlining on Wednedsay -- he will surely upstage the VP's speech -- might have risked a Clinton overdose. There are risks in doing things this way too, however.

Biggest loser in all of this? Tim Kaine, who if given the VP slot, might seem like sloppy seconds next to Warner.

MORE GOSSIP: As a couple of commenters have pointed out, there are some interesting tea leaves to read here regarding Kathleen Sebelius.

According to the Kansas City Star:

Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will speak at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

The Democratic National Convention Committee said Tuesday that McCaskill will speak on the convention’s opening day, Aug. 25, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Obama. They will talk about national unity.

Sebelius — a co-chairwoman of the convention — also will address the delegates, a party spokeswoman said, although the exact day and time has not been decided.

And here's what Sebelius told CQ Politics on Monday:

On Monday, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Obama adviser Anita Dunn announced the themes for the various nights of the convention, including "Securing America's Future" for the third night, when the vice presidential candidate will speak.
When asked whether the thematic choices could be read as an indication that the VP pick would be someone with a strong background on veterans issues, according to CQ reporter Marie Horrigan, Sebelius said that nothing should be read into that.

"Every potential vice presidential choice also has a speaking slot and so nothing should be read into themes or issues or ideas," Sebelius said.

So every potential vice presidential choice has a speaking slot. Kathleen Sebelius has a speaking slot. Except, unlike Claire McCaskill, or Mark Warner, or Ted Strickland, or Hillary Clinton, the Democrats are not yet ready to assign her a specific slot. She is, to my knowledge, the only Democrat thus far guaranteed a speaking slot without having a particular night assigned to her.

To be fair, a lot of people speak at the convention, so the mere fact that Sebelius has a slot shouldn't mean all that much. But it certainly seems that she's (still) on the short list. I would also note that there would be a certain symmetry to the following pattern of speakers:

Monday -- Michelle Obama
Tuesday -- Hillary Clinton, Mark Warner
Wednesday -- Bill Clinton, Kathleen Sebelius
Thursday -- Barack Obama

You would have, essentially, three "couples" speaking: Michelle and Barack to bookend the convention (the present), Hillary and Bill in the middle (the past), and then Warner and Sebelius (the future), who aren't a couple, but who hit many of the same themes.

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Today's Polls, 8/12

Yet another pollster has weighed in on Florida, and they have good news for John McCain. This time, it's InsiderAdvantage, which shows McCain with a 4 point lead. This is InsiderAdvantage's first poll of the state, and consists of a small sample size -- barely more than 400 people. Nevertheless, this is about where Florida feels like it should be. True, as the InsiderAdvantage write-up notes, Barack Obama has been investing a ton of advertising money into Florida. On the other hand, he's coming back from margins that consistently showed him 7 or 8 points behind earlier in the cycle -- and while McCain hasn't invested on the airwaves, Florida is the only state where he has an advantage on the ground, with more than 30 field offices open.

SurveyUSA has new polls out in North Carolina and Kentucky. The North Carolina result is McCain +4, a nominal decline from his 5-point lead last month, but essentially the same result we've seen in poll after poll of North Carolina for months and months. McCain's lead in Kentucky is 18 points -- a significant improvement from his 12-point margin in SurveyUSA's last poll in mid-June, but a long way behind some of his previous margins in the state, as SurveyUSA had shown McCain ahead by as many as 36 points earlier on.

The poll getting the most buzz today is in Alaska, where Hays Research Group shows Barack Obama ahead by 5. For the time being, however, I am not including this poll in our averages. Although the poll was published on the Hays website in full view of the public, the fine print says that it was paid for by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which qualifies as a Political Action Committee (as well as a union that endorsed Obama). I have e-mailed the pollster to clarify the origins of this poll and may include it based on their responses to those questions -- however, for now, I am considering it an internal poll and leaving it out. For those of you who are desperate for some fresh numbers in Alaska, I did come across this poll from Ivan Moore, which had John McCain 2.4 points ahead of Obama as of mid-July.

Obama's overall win percentage has ticked upward a bit to 65.4 percent, its highest point in a couple of weeks, largely because Obama has held a pretty decent position in the national tracking polls for several days running now. But really, there's been very little movement in this race for nearly a full month.

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Senate Polling Weekly Update, 8/12

This is going to be a brief update; there were few dramatics in the Senate numbers this week. But there is one exception, and it is good news for the Republicans. In Oregon, Gordon Smith has opened up a lead over Jeff Merkley; a new Rasmussen poll shows Smith ahead by 6 points, and SurveyUSA , which is polling this race for the first time, has him up by 12. There is, at this point, a fairly clear dividing line between the five GOP-held seats that the Democrats appear likely (Colorado, Alaska) or nearly certain (Virginia, New Mexico, New Hampshire) to pick up, and everything else.

It may be out of the Democrats' power to gain a 60-seat majority by means of a piecemeal approach. Instead, they will need something that shifts the national numbers in several races at once. For the time being, their numbers are moving in the wrong direction, as Republicans have ticked up slightly in generic ballot tests.

Also, the Democratic challenger has been determined in two races. In Georgia, Jim Martin will challenge Saxby Chambliss. Martin has a better chance at making a race of it than his opponent in the primary run-off, Vernon Jones, but remains about a 20:1 underdog according to our metrics. And in Tennessee, Bob Tuke is the choice; he's about a 100-to-1 longshot to upset Lamar Alexander.

Polls follow.

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Spears-Hilton Week Over, McCain's News Coverage Falls Again

The Clintons’ re-emergence into political storylines last week reversed John McCain’s temporary catch of Barack Obama in news coverage, according to newly-released Pew findings.

The fluctuation in coverage of McCain compared to the steadiness in coverage of Obama mirrors the complaint from Republican corners that McCain’s team has been reactive and struggled to provide a clear and consistent message beyond “Don’t vote for Obama.”



The level of McCain's media attention undulates with the traction of any specific way McCain articulates that core argument. Spears-Hilton gained McCain more attention because it was a surprising and original angle for attacking Obama. But the upshot remains: McCain is dependent on Obama for his messaging; Obama’s messaging is independent. Notice how flat the line is for Obama coverage. McCain’s line is all over the graph. That’s a strong statistical signal McCain’s message team is not in full control.

Notice the Boston Globe's recent visual depiction of the different most prominently featured words on each candidate’s official blogs.



Little wonder that stories about McCain are more easily pushed aside; McCain’s own stories are mostly about Obama; McCain gets more attention by attacking in unexpected ways – Spears-Hilton Week was unusual and so the "Look what McCain’s doing!" and "What is McCain thinking with this?” stories led to his tying Obama that week in news coverage.

But unless and until John McCain can consistently drive a message untethered to Barack Obama, expect to see the news coverage graph to stay the same – a stable Obama line and a zigzagging McCain line.

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Black Vote Was Invisible To Penn

There are three demographic variables that explain almost all of the votes in the primary -- gender, party, and income.

-- Mark Penn, 3/19/07.

Each of these factors, of course, was important in determining candidate preferences in the Democratic primaries. But Penn gives short shrift to the most important demographic variable of all, which was race. (Penn did reference race in the sentence that follows this passage, but does so only in passing -- "Race is a factor as well, but we are fighting hard to neutralize it.").

Let's look at a simple chart:



This tracks Hillary Clinton's performance among black voters over the 18 months of the primary campaign -- first using a series of public polling numbers, and then from South Carolina onward the actual voting results. Clinton began with, roughly speaking, a 20-point advantage over Obama among black voters; this was temporarily diminished by the excitement surrounding Obama's entry into the race in early February, but had worked itself back up to as many as 24 points by October.

Some of Clinton's support was undoubtedly very soft. Between October and November, Obama moved from about 20 points behind among black voters to essentially even with them, as the campaign coverage picked up, Obama had a chance to introduce himself, and Clinton had a few stumbles. There was relatively little negative campaigning during this period. But it was the period in between "now the fun part starts" and "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina" when the bottom really fell out, with Clinton losing about 60 points' worth of African-American support in a month's time. And things actually got a little bit worse thereafter, with Clinton going from a -60 among black voters in South Carolina and Super Tuesday (a margin that might have allowed her to salvage the nomination) to a -80 in the primaries that followed.

Overall, Clinton lost 100 points of support among black voters in about 120 days: a truly remarkable achievement. Since black voters make up about 20 percent of the Democratic primary electorate, a 100-point swing among black voters translates to a 20-point swing among all voters. And that, essentially, was how the primary was lost. In national trial heats, Obama was polling about 20 points behind Clinton throughout most of calendar year 2007, and wound up polling about 5 points ahead of her for most of the period after Super Tuesday. That is a 25-point swing, and 20 of those 25 points came from black voters.

It is clear from reading the Penn Memos that the Clinton campaign had very little idea this was coming. There is abundant discussion about how to squeeze every last nanometer of a vote out of groups like "waitress moms", but very little substance about how to build or retain their support among African-Americans. Penn revealed himself as a pollster rather than a strategist; polls are inherently backward-looking, whereas a good strategist must anticipate future trends.

The question is whether this was more or less inevitable, or caused by specific behavior of the Clinton campaign. If the former, the Clinton campaign would still have had to chart a different strategic course. Penn had carefully constructed what amounted to a 55 percent coalition, but it was one that implicitly leaned on support from working-class blacks, and especially working-class black women, without which 55 percent quickly dissolved to 47 percent. If she had understood the softness of her African-American support, Clinton might have been able to target a different demographic instead, such as 18-39 year old white women, which might have implied a toning down of some of her experience rhetoric and more emphasis on her being a trailblazer.

The other option, of course, is that the Clinton campaign deserved every last black vote it didn't get. After reading some of the race-baiting rhetoric in Penn's memos, it is easy to jump to this conclusion. Penn, certainly, comes across as too cute by half, thinking he could press the narrative of Obama being un-American without the black community -- not to mention the (predominantly white) liberal blogosphere -- picking up on the subtext.

Clinton, to her credit, declined to press many of Penn's more venomous lines of attack, although they came out occasionally through surrogates, including Clinton's husband. More fundamentally, though, one senses that the Clinton campaign simply took the black community for granted, and didn't understand how certain of their core lines of argument might go over with African-Americans. In particular, Clinton's claims to being experienced were always fairly specious, considering that she had spent barely more time in elected office than Obama (less, if you count his years in the Illinois State Senate) and had relatively few accomplishments to her name (there is a humorous passage in one of the Penn Memos in which he begins to recite Clinton's legislative achievements, but is unable to provide more than one example thereof).

The point, certainly, is not that Clinton's "experience" argument was some kind of racist dog-whistle. But it was far less self-evident than Penn (and Clinton) seemed to assert, and raised the question of what exactly did give Clinton the right to take the first bite at the apple. If Clinton, by contrast, had campaigned on life experience rather than work experience, that might have resonated with a broader series of voters, including minorities. Clinton was effective when she campaigned on her biography, but she did far too little of it.

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Today's Polls, 8/11

Four polls are out today, but the Presidential race looks to have settled into something of a steady state.

In Colorado, a Public Policy Polling survey has Barack Obama ahead by 4 points. The margin is identical to a poll conducted last month, although each candidate has gained a point against undecided.

In Virgina, it's McCain by one in a new SurveyUSA poll. SurveyUSA's Virginia numbers have fluctuated somewhat wildly over the course of the cycle, with margins ranging from Obama +7 to McCain +12, but this is a modest improvement for McCain from their late June edition, when Barack Obama had led by 2.

Lastly, Rasmussen Reports polls have Barack Obama ahead by 5 points in Iowa -- down from 10 last month -- and ahead by 10 points in Oregon -- up a tick from 9 points last month.

Let's set Virginia aside for a moment, as well as Oregon, which has never looked especially competitive and where neither campaign is doing any advertising. It's Colorado and Iowa, along with New Mexico, that form Obama's firewall. If Obama holds the Kerry states but wins those three, he doesn't need to win Ohio, Florida, or any of the higher degree-of-difficulty states. And so far, Obama's lead in these states has been very consistent. In 16 Iowa polls conducted since Super Tuesday, Obama has led all 16. In 11 New Mexico polls over the time span, he has led 9, been tied in one, and trailed in the other. And in 14 polls of Colorado, he has led 11 times, trailed twice, and been tied once.

If I were John McCain, I'd be very skeptical about my prospects in Iowa, where I didn't really campaign during the primaries and where my agricultural policies are unpopular. Likewise, I'd look at Obama's strong national numbers among Hispanics, and conclude that New Mexico is probably moving in the wrong direction. Which means that I'd be devoting an awful lot of resources to Colorado, possibly conceding states like Pennsylvania and Minnesota in order to do so.

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The Georgia Conflict and the Case for Clark

Barack Obama is fortunate that the conflict in South Ossetia has occurred during the Olympics, depriving it of some of it of the coverage that it otherwise might receive. He is also fortunate that Americans don't have much attention span for foreign affairs outside of matters involving Iraq and Al Qaeda.

That is not to endorse McCain's more hardline stance toward Russia, the particulars of which this blog has no standing to comment upon. I have no doubt, however, that the lingering memory of the Cold War makes an anti-Russian stance an easier sale from the standpoint of electoral politics.

But the unscripted drama in the Caucasus also serves as a thought experiment of sorts, especially as it regards Barack Obama's VP selection. Would Obama be better off if he had, say, General Wesley Clark flanking him right now?

I think absolutely so. The reason does not necessarily have to do with Clark's experience per se. Rather, it is a question of how well positioned Obama is to win arguments about foreign policy on the campaign trail. In this case, it is Obama's position, rather than McCain's, that is closest to the consensus of NATO -- as well as, ironically, the Bush Administration. But in matters of global affairs that Americans don't know very much about -- and again, pretty much everything but Iraq, Al Qaeda, and perhaps Israel qualifies there -- they are more likely to defer to the brand name opinion on foreign policy, which means John McCain's

In this case in particular, the Obama side has some good arguments to make about Georgia -- for instance, that our moral authority to condemn Russia for its actions is undermined by our own invasion of Iraq, and that our tactical position to place our footprint in the Caucasian theater is undermined by the number of troops we have committed to Iraq. But these are big picture, macro-level arguments, and ones that require the right salesperson. Someone like, say, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.

To be clear, while these arguments hold to a certain extent for someone like Joe Biden, they are mainly an argument for Clark in particular. Joe Biden has a lot of credibility on foreign policy, but the aesthetics of what he could do on the stump and in interviews aren't really a match for those of a bona fide, ex-General. Biden might leave Obama better equipped to defend news cycles in which something like the South Ossetia conflict is the central topic; Clark might actually be able to win them.

UPDATE: Chris Bowers points to some other interesting tea leaves on Clark. And Clark is surging on Intrade right now, essentially turning the Big Four (Bayh, Biden, Sebelius, Kaine) into a Big Five.

UPDATE x2: For the record, if I had to rank Obama's potential VP choices -- culling from the quasi-official short list plus a couple of other names that are trading well on Intrade -- my choices would probably look something like this:

1. Clark
2. Schweitzer
3. Sebelius
4. Bayh
5. Clinton
6. Biden
7. Kaine
8. Reed
9. Nunn
10. Hagel
11. Dodd

This is opinion, not analysis.

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Why Howard Wolfson is Out of a Job

Not to re-litigate the Primary Wars -- we're in a snarky mood this morning -- but Howard Wolfson tells ABC News that, were it not for John Edwards, Hillary Clinton would have beaten Barack Obama in Iowa:

Obama won 37.6 per cent of the vote. Edwards won 29.7 per cent and Clinton won 29.5 per cent, according to results posted by the Iowa Democratic Party.

"Our voters and Edwards' voters were the same people," Wolfson said the Clinton polls showed. "They were older, pro-union. Not all, but maybe two-thirds of them would have been for us and we would have barely beaten Obama."

Iowa actually didn't turn out to be that close, with Obama defeating Edwards by 7.9 points and Hillary Clinton by 8.1 points. For Clinton to have beaten Obama, she would have needed (as Wolfson correctly points out) about two-thirds of those Edwards voters.

The thing about Iowa, however, is that unlike virtually any other electoral contest, second choices matter, since Democratic caucus rules dictate that a voter may caucus for her second-choice candidate if her first choice does not achieve the 15 percent of the vote required for viability. As such, Iowa pollsters did a lot of work in trying to determine voters' second choices. And in virtually every survey, Clinton did rather poorly as a second choice: an average of several surveys in December showed that she was the second choice of about 20 percent of voters, as compared with 25 percent for Obama and Edwards (an even later version I have sitting on my hard drive showed the second-choice breakdown as Edwards 30, Obama 28.5, Clinton 23.5)

So the odds are that, if John Edwards had dropped out on the morning before the Iowa caucus, Obama would have won by more points rather than fewer.

It was also the case that Barack Obama appeared to get the lion's share of Edwards supporters once Edwards dropped from the race:



This is not to say that Edwards couldn't possibly have impacted the race in ways that were favorable to Barack Obama. He was probably useful to Obama, for example, in attacking Clinton early on, increasing her negatives without Obama having to pay the price. His endorsement of Obama in May was undoubtedly a big assist to Obama's endgame.

But Wolfson is making a much cruder sort of argument based on the polls, and the evidence cuts against him.

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The Persistent Myth of the Bradley Effect

Many commentators -- the preponderance of them conservative but also some liberals -- take it as an article of faith that the current polling numbers overstate Barack Obama's position because of the so-called Bradley Effect: the notion that some material number of voters will lie about their intentions to pollsters, claiming that they will vote for a black candidate when in fact they will vote for the white guy.

A fairly typical example comes in the form of a blind quote from a Democratic strategist this morning at The Politico:

A huge challenge for Obama, insiders say, is simply determining how much skin color will matter in November. Race is nearly impossible to poll – no one ever says “I’m a racist” – and no campaign wants it revealed they are even asking questions on the issue.

“It’s the uncertainty that kills me – we know it’s going to be factor, but how big a factor?” asks a Democratic operative with ties to the Obama camp. “How do you even measure such a thing?"

Is there really so much uncertainty as this "operative" implies? Black candidates run races every cycle for the Congress and for the Governor's Mansion, and academics have spent copious time dissecting those results. And while we've never before had a major party nominate a black man for President, we did just finish an exceptionally competitive primary campaign in which a black candidate ran against an extremely popular white candidate with more than 35 million voters participating.

As we have described here before, polling numbers from the primaries suggested no presence of a Bradley Effect. On the contrary, it was Barack Obama -- not Hillary Clinton -- who somewhat outperformed his polls on Election Day.

The table below reflects 31 states in which at least three separate polls were released within 14 days of that state's primary or caucus. We compare the final trendline estimate from Pollster.com against the actual results from that state:



On average, Barack Obama overperformed the Pollster.com trendline by 3.3 points on election day.

There are some important differences by region. Using regions as defined by the US Census Bureau, Barack Obama overperformed his polls by an average of 7.2 points in the South. This effect appears to be most substantial in states with larger black populations; I have suggested before that it might stem from a sort of reverse Bradley Effect in which black voters were reluctant to disclose to a (presumed) white interviewer that they were about to vote for a black candidate.

Obama also outperformed his polls in the Midwest and the West (although there is not much data to go on in the latter case). The one region where Hillary Clinton overperformed her numbers was in the Northeast, bettering the pre-election trendline by 1.8 points. Recall that the Bradley Effect phenomenon describes covert rather than overt manifestations of racism. It may be that in the Northeast, which is arguably the most "politically correct" region of the country, expressions of racism are the least socially acceptable, and that therefore some people may misstate their intentions to pollsters. By contrast, in the South and the Midwest, if people are racist they will usually be pretty open about it, and in the West, which is nation's most multicultural region, there may be relatively little racism, either expressed or implicit.

The good news for Barack Obama is that, among the Northeastern states, only New Hampshire appears to be competitive -- and Obama would gladly trade a Bradley Effect in New Hampshire for a reverse Bradley Effect in a state like North Carolina. (Pennsylvania, it should be noted, is also defined by the Census Bureau as being in the Northeast, but in terms of political demography, it shares far more in common with the Midwest).

So why do we keep hearing so much about the Bradley Effect? Apart from the fact that it is a good way to fill column space on a slow news day, it seems that there are three or four reasons why the myth perpetuates itself:

1. Misunderstanding the Bradley Effect. Denying the existence of the Bradley Effect does not mean denying that some people vote on the basis of race. I have no doubt that some people will vote against Barack Obama because he is black. Indeed, I suspect that almost all of us either know such people, or know people who know them (friends and relatives of friends). I also have no doubt, by the way, that some people will vote for Barack Obama because he is black.

But the Bradley Effect is not an argument about whether people vote based on race. It's an argument about whether people will lie to pollsters. So long as race-based voters are honest about their intentions, Barack Obama's position is no worse than it appears to be in the polls.

2. Confusing Past with Present. There is fairly strong academic evidence that the Bradley Effect used to exist back in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, the evidence is just as strong that it does not exist any longer. The people who vouch for the existence of the Bradley Effect are not wrong so much as they are relying on dated evidence.

3. Confusing Exit Polls with pre-Election Polls. Unlike the normal, pre-election polls, exit polls conducted on the day of the election did substantially overstate Barack Obama's margins throughout the primaries. This is something to keep in mind at about 5 PM on November 4, when Matt Drudge and Jim Geraghty begin to leak exit poll results. It is not anything to worry about now, when we are trying to forecast the outcome from pre-election polling.

Nor is it clear the the discrepancies in the exit polls have anything to do with race; John Kerry, somewhat infamously, also underperformed his exit polls. The mechanics of conducting an exit poll are rather haphazard, involving a bunch of college kids and temp workers running around outside a polling place with clipboards and attempting to pass out survey forms to every Nth voter who leaves the ballot booth. This is not much easier than it sounds, and introduces a lot of human error and other forms of sample bias. For this reason, exit polls are not really intended to be used as they so frequently are in the panicked hours before ballot counting begins -- the results need to be calibrated and weighted, and exit polling firms rely on comparing their polls against actual voting results in order to do so.

4. Cherry Picking Results. The notion of the Bradley Effect gained a lot of currency after the New Hampshire primary, when Hillary Clinton did much better than anyone expected and won the state. However, the 8.9-point gap separating the pre-election polls and the actual results in New Hampshire represented only the seventh-largest error in the primaries. There were bigger discrepancies in Iowa, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Wisconsin and Mississippi, all of which favored Barack Obama. These discrepancies did not receive as much attention as New Hampshire because they did not change the outcome of the election. But mathematically speaking, they were just as important.

A related phenomenon is that the media often cherry-picks polling results within a given state. The Zogby poll that had Barack Obama ahead by 13 points in California received widespread attention; the SurveyUSA result that had Clinton 10 points ahead did not. Over the course of the primaries, polling results that had Barack Obama performing well generally made for better copy, since until at least mid-February, Obama was considered the underdog. But an informed reading of the polls, such as the Pollster.com method, reveals that Clinton did not overperform in states like California and Ohio nearly so much as the media tried to imply.

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